Since 2003, I've played nearly one-hundred fresh, wild, fly and bold shows all by myself, but it's the ones with band mates that have been the most satisfying. There's a specific energy that builds unequaled by solo performances; and, because sequenced electronic music is, more or less, a setting wherein little can go wrong temporally, it's exciting to stand beside the suddenness of a slightly off-center hi-hat rushing like a runaway train or a fluke semitone sighed by the bellows of decades-old harmonium.

I'm mentioning this because my performance at Blip Festival New York 2012 will mark the beginning of a deliberate foray into composing, arranging and producing specifically for small musical ensembles as minusbaby y Su 8-Hit Combo. I chose the name for several reasons:

① The "y Su Combo" ("and His Small Band") suffix was popular among Latin big bands in the '40s through early-'70s as a way to showcase the leader's musical mastery upon a relatively small ensemble - comparable to Joshua Davis' personal musical precept, "…pushing minimal hardware to its maximum", which is shifting toward becoming a de facto definition of the chip music medium and, by wit, a solid reference to the history of musical composition and performance.

② "In video games, a combo (short for combination) is a term that designates a set of actions performed in sequence, usually with strict timing limitations, that yield a significant benefit or advantage." — Wikipedia

③ "8-Hit" sounds like "8-Bit".

This new project won't replace the ways I've been writing since 1999 — nor will I stop perfoming solo. minusbaby y Su 8-Hit Combo is the beginning of a musical future full of hand and mallet percussion, horns, an NES, servomechanisms, analogue drum machines, oddly-placed microphone arrays and whatnot. So yeah, I'll catch you by the bass bins, as always. Things are about to get fancy.

Thank you so much for helping make 2011 infinitely memorable. I hope to help make 2012 memorable for you.

Back in March, I learned that The C-Men and I would be the last to perform on the Engadget Show as hosted and chiefly edited by Joshua Topolsky at the Times Center. Having performed three times prior, I thought to myself, "oh, that's wack."

So I was happy to greet an email last month from Trent Wolbe of WFMU's DJ Tront fame and video producer, Chad Mumm, asking if I'd be cool with my music being used in videos for The Verge — Joshua and crew's new venture. The Verge went live today and as such you'll hear snippets, trifles and smidgens of my music in video reviews, interviews and whatnot produced for and by the company; via the site and their YouTube channel. For example, at the beginning of an interview with Nokia's Marko Ahtisaari.

Look out for audio clips by Bit Shifter and glomag, too. 8bitpeoples are reppin' hard.

• NORTH! · Danbury, CT
  AR(t)CADE
  with Burnkit2600, Seed A.I. and more
  October 8th
   
• SOUTH! · Baltimore, MD
  Byte Nyte
  with Da Pantz, exileFaker and more
  October 15th
   
• EAST! · New York, NY
  Re:Mix Lab
  with Paris and Eclectic Method
  October 21st
   
• WEST! · Chicago, IL
  GLI.TC/H
  with Mikrosopht, Nullsleep and more
  November 4th
   

It'd been a while since I'd written a new tune. This one's got legs.