We grew up with the 8-bit tunes blieping and blopping around our ears. When years later my brother, the one who’s now actually learning how to develop computer games in college, discovered Sabrepulse and his chiptune music we, my brothers and I, all became a fan. And about a month ago he came to Belgium, more precisely to a very small local bar only a few kilometres from where I grew up. No way we were going to miss that!

When I was a kid I never got a Playstation or a Nintendo 64 like most my age. My mom thought staring at the tv wasn’t good for us. So we couldn’t watch much tv and the game consoles weren’t allowed. Although I think it also had something to do with them being very expensive and we didn’t really had the money to afford ‘em at the time. The fact that when my older nephews got their Playstation and she didn’t object to us getting their old SEGA only confirms that. A bit later I also bought an old SNES from a friend for a nickel and a dime, who had gotten it from his nephew like us, but had replaced it by a Nintendo 64. So long story short, although it was kind of already over, we grew up with the tunes in Mario and Donkey Kong buzzing through our ears and actually kept playing on that SNES until it fell apart. Listening to guys like Sabrepulse brings back so many good memories.

When Sabrepulse started his set, the crowd went absolutely crazy!

How the guys at Eenders got him to come all the way to the little town of Buizingen is still a mystery to me, but I was stoked I was getting to see him live. The evening started off with two local drum’nbass djs, one local and one from Antwerp. Igneon System Ecsytie and Sub-Skit both played a pretty nice set, but unfortunately no one seemed to care. Everyone was just waiting for Sabrepulse to take over.

Buttonbashing like a nutter. It was pretty impressive.

When he finally did, the place exploded. It was incredible. The guy has so much energy that he is almost uncontrollably jumping around, turning al his dials like there is no tomorrow and bashing buttons on his old gameboy coming up with new tunes on the spot. It is so contagious watching him go crazy like that! I obviously enjoyed it a lot or the chiptune part at least. I didn’t like the fact that he switched to deejaying dubstep near the end, because it’s just not my thing, but others really were disappointed about the whole set. The guy had been drinking all night behind the bar before he went up so obviously was (a bit) drunk and as a result of that made quite a few mistakes along the way. Blowing transitions, turning the wrong dials and so forth. There were some very good sections, but I get what they mean. So dear Ashley Charles, If you ever come back to Belgium ease up on the juice! Everything here is probably quite a bit stronger than what you have over in the UK.

UPDATE – I went home after the dupstep started because, like I said earlier, I’m not really into that strain of party music. Apparently Igneon System, from Ghent, also played a set, but after Sabrepulse. I’m guessing he played some dupstep as well? Read organizer Steven’s comment, the reason for this update and a few corrections above, down below. Thanks again for letting me know, Steven!