Everett pair's Web site draws chiptune fans from around the world

For music with byte, look no further than chiptunes, an odd little way to write songs using reprogrammed Game Boys.

While the music has far-flung creators stretched from England to Japan, two Everett 20-year-olds hope to put their hometown on the map with a new Web site, CrunchyCo.com.

The site re-launched on July 1 to cover more terrain. It now sells T-shirts, promotes locals like Everett chiptune artist Nick "Fighter X" Walthew, and strives to become a one-stop shop for the cultish group that is chiptune fans.

Gabe Hayward and Aaron Campion, the site's creators, seem programmed to make the site. Rows of video games and sci-fi movies decorate a wall of their home on Everett's north side. The two have been friends since grade school.

Along with Walthew, the guys sound of one mind on chiptunes. For instance, they're quick to note the music is different from DJing.

"DJing is when you have a couple turntables and you're just playing the song," said Walthew, aka Fighter X. "You're not really doing that much."

"We don't really respect DJs," Hayward added.

"DJs play other people's songs and they kind of suck," Campion said.

Chiptunes itself isn't a genre, the guys said. Game Boys -- which use a four-byte sound system -- and other video game consoles can create folk or metal, for instance, just like a guitar. Still, most chiptune artists focus on dance music, filling their songs with hurried blips and beeps.

The music's not for everyone.

"People older are very confused," Campion said.

Younger teenagers, who grew up with video games that use polished cinematic scores, also may miss the point.

And while the music's nostalgic appeal to twenty-somethings is hard to miss, it almost undercuts the fact that the songs are often catchy.

"We have some obsessed fans that go to every single show," said Hayward, who also plays in a chiptune group with Campion called Kids Get Hit by Buses. "They see us, the same bands, over and over again. It's like, we're it."

With CrunchyCo.com, the duo hopes to expose more people to chiptunes. The site will gather material from far flung MySpace pages, offer free downloads and sell the work of other artists.

"It's really like a hobby thing," said Hayward, who also works at Staples. "We spend our money out of our pockets to do this. Any money that we make off of it through our own music and T-shirts, we just kind of feed back into it."



Andy Rathbun, Herald Writer, arathbun@heraldnet.com, 425-339-3455