US House supremo and closet nerd Kerri Chandler is about to drop a new album on DJ Deep's Deeply Rooted House label entitled 'Computer Games'. Inspired by his healthy love for very old school computer games and the machines that made them, he's taken the bips & bleeps and little monophonic sounds that featured in these early games and turned them into some superb underground electronic house.

Its not so much the theme to Mario Kart with a 4/4 kick under it but more Kerri getting deep into the vintage equipment that made these games, pulling out some sounds and feelings and applying the Chandler dancefloor know-how to them.

Here's how Kerri tells it:

"My love for computers and programming games began about 24 years ago with a machine called the Challenger 2P. My best friend Stephen Thomas had gotten it for Christmas and I just got my second Technics SL-B1 and a Gemini mixer. What a Wonderful Christmas for a couple of 14 year olds. I think the only thing that didn't make us both nerds is that I was a DJ and we just practiced all the time. But when we weren't messing around with turntables, we would both start learning how to program this Machine(Challenger 2P). So every day we would sit there and take turns at his house programing this machine which was in "Basic". Neither one of us could type so it took days to get a page of code done, But it was magic when we got the programing right! The first game we made was a game that had the USS enterprise shooting a little black and white dot, (We used an old Black and white TV for a monitor). But WE WERE HOOKED!! This began my love for music and computers.

Kraftwerk became a huge part of my being, wondering how they made their machines, There was this company not to far where I lived, that still exists,called The Electronic Barn. We would get parts and hack the Machines and build things to make music and whatever else we could dream up. The parts were cheap, so we were able to experiment. After that we got hold of all sorts of other Machines and modified and programmed them: Trs80's(trash 80), Timex Sinclair, Atari 400 and 800, Commodore 64, Pet 2001, IBM PC JR, Magnavox Odyssey(with the voice module), But no matter what machine we used, we always programmed some kind of game. So about 3 years went by and I got my hands on a Compaq portable (it wasn't really all that portable by today's standards) but that's when I learned how machines and music could be combined (Mpu 401 and Texture). So here it is 24 years later and I'm re-living my childhood and digging out all these old machines to make music again. I hope you enjoy this project as much as I did making it. It has always been for me a labor of love to tame these machines and make them have a soul of there own.

And there ya have it in his own words. Here is also a list of the pensionable kit he used to make the album too:

Machines used for this project : Commodore pet 2001 (Wait 6502,1) with Eprom and cassette backup loop, Sega Dreamcast, Vectrex, Challenger 2p, Oddessy, X- box, opl-3 hacked sound card, Ibm pc Jr, Trs-80, text to speech, C64, intellivision, Pet 2001, Atari, Speaak and Spell, Nomad, 8086 & 8088, Turbografx.

The album's release date is set for Monday 25th February with digital promo's available on traxsource.com from 11th February.

DJ Deep has also lined up a tasty looking launch party at Rex Club in Paris with himself, Carl Craig and Kerri hosting.

All the info you need on http://drh.djdeep.com/

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Pic credit: ZH

conor_l @ 11 Feb 2008 23:08

I would hope Deeps not playing warm up. Far and away the best DJ of the 3. Good line up though, youd have to pay 40e for something like that here