Three musicians who stuff all the bleeps and bloops from your favorite new and classic video games into new compositions and songs are bringing their 8-bit instruments to Dallas next week as part of a national Total Destruction Tour.
Lyricist Brent "brentalfloss" Black, rapper Raheem "Mega Ran" Jarbo and Dan "Danimal Cannon" Behrens are on the road performing live renditions of their video game masterpieces. They are scheduled to make a stop in Deep Ellum at 8 p.m. at The Boiler Room on Elm Street.
Here's a basic primer on this Holy Trinity of throwback gaming music if you didn't have the luxury of growing up in a time when game controllers only had one directional pad and one to three action buttons.
Brentalfloss, a native son of North Texas, takes the instrumental themes to new and classic games such as Super Mario Bros. 3, Punch Out! (or Mike Tyson's Punch Out! if you're a purist) and Dr. Mario. Then he adds original lyrics to the melodies using the skills he picked up from his NYU master's degree in musical theater and various musical productions he's written and directed.
Mega Ran, a native of Philadelphia, creates original hip-hop using the beeps of classic home and handheld consoles, a style known as "chiptuning." He's the first hip-hop artist licensed by a gaming company and has massive, live shows at renowned game conventions such as PAX East and MagFest.
Danimal Cannon discovered video game music composition as a student at the University of Buffalo where he formed the game music band Armcannon that gave a metal edge to soundtracks such as Super Metroid and Castlevania 3. He also composes original tunes for video games and his solo albums use chiptuning in his compositions, most notably using the original Nintendo Game Boy.
