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He regularly plays to large crowds all across Eaurope, including Germany and Switzerland, now it appears that the rest of the world is catching onto his unique and quirky, but damn fine pop music. How did you come to use Gameboy’s in the process of making your music? I was experimenting with this low –tech stuff generally, doing something called circuit bending, which is basically re-wiring toys and manipulating their sound in different ways. Like the old ‘Speak and Spell’, which had the chip exposed, so you could hack into that. Then I kind of stumbled across a few people who were developing software for the Gameboy, to enable it to be used as a sequencer, a proper musical tool. It just captured my imagination. When I started using it, it became apparent that you could take it much further than just using it as a toy. It’s not a sampling exercise, when I was doing it a lot it got misunderstood, a lot of people thought I was just playing a game and sampling the sound. They thought that was the live show, which would have been pretty crap. I started off playing shows that were involved in the Chip Music scene, so it wasn’t people saying ‘oh look, there’s a Gameboy on the stage.’ The crowd was a lot more receptive and knew kind of what to expect. They already had an ear for it. So how do you convert your recorded music into a live show? There’s a live functionality on the software that allows you to trigger loops that are pre written. It’s almost a Djing experience when you are doing it live. But also, when I play live, I have a lot of outboard gear, filters and things like that, to try and make it more psychadelic. The thing about working with these things is that I always wanted it to sound as little like a Gameboy as possible. So that’s what I use all the extra tools for. Were you into the ‘Chip Scene’ before you started making this sort of music? No, I was just making my stuff and then discovered a whole lot of other people doing the same sort of thing. I ‘m not really doing much with the Chip Scene now. I was doing it solidly throughout 2004 and 2005. But I’m trying to take myself away from that a bit. What music do you listen to and get your influences from? Well, there was a long period in my life, where I didn’t listen to anything at all, because I was too busy doing my own stuff. But there are definite records that have been important in certain periods of my life. The Beastie Boys, I bought one of their records when I was about 9 or 10, a mate of mine’s band did a cover of ‘fight For Your Right..’ and they were a metal band, which I was into. So I thought the Beastie’s were a metal band and bought ‘Paul’s Boutique’, kind of by accident. Got that home and just thought it was the coolest thing ever. Then, really my favourite artist that I have repeat, listened to is Aphex Twin. But not for the reasons most people do. I just love his melody. How have you found people’s response to what you do away from the Chip Scene? It was kind of weird, when I first did the Chip thing live it had mixed responses. You know, some places people were just really into drum and bass and didn’t get it. But it got to a level where I was being invited out on only Chip Music tours and events, so I had to kill it a bit. It’s only one part of what I do. I didn’t really want to be the Gameboy guy. I was even in a bar in Shoreditch (London), a while ago, and I heard someone say ‘Oh, look it’s the Gameboy, guy’, and the other said, ‘No that’s just a PR thing.’ So that’s one of the main reasons I wanted to move away from that. It’s funny though, because since I stopped, there are a load of ‘tribute’ style acts that have popped up around that scene, who saw the original shows I did, and used a few of my ideas. Now I do a more improvised electronic thing and the crowds are really getting into it. It’s like a big party thing. So are you moving away from using a Gameboy in your music? Well, yes I guess. I will always have one in the studio with me to sketch out ideas on, but the new stuff I am doing is bass led. Bass guitar, that is. I use the Gameboy for little flourishes and trills, and things like that. But in the terms of full composition, not in the same way I was. What are you working on release wise at the moment? There’s this thing called Greco Roman Soundsystem, which is a party that goes on in London, run by Hot Chip, K7 records and some other guys. I played a party of theirs, last year with Hot Club De Paris; it’s basically a really sweaty rave in a warehouse. They went to New York and they wanted me to write a theme tune for the night. Then they liked it so much, they are gonna put it out. So what’s happened with it, is it’s going on this international remix thing. Hot Chip have remixed it, and there is a couple of minimalist guys from Germany, and maybe Scream on the dub step scene. So it’s kind of my track getting round to all these people and it will be put out on a twelve at some point in July, either through K7 or Moshi Moshi. Oliver Guy-Watkins www.myspace.com/davidsugar
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