EXCERPT FROM "SOUNDS LIKE NERD HEAVEN"


Front page of NYTimes Art Section, June 12 2001
Neil Strauss
Copyright 2001 The New York Times

Afterward, at the Soundlab party, the quartet 8-Bit Construction featured an answering-machine message from a band member's mother, who was rummaging through his possessions looking for an old Atari computer. The band's stage show was a testimony to nerdiness. It wasn't enough for the group simply to play dance music on old Atari and Commodore 8-bit computers and show homemade "Star Trek"-like films. It continually stopped its show to announce the type of computer being used, how much memory it had, its assembly language and other technical minutiae. This was an attempt not just to show how difficult sophisticated electronic dance is to make on such retro technology, but also to savor the moment in the limelight that the group members' cumulative hours of computer reconstruction, programming and yard- sale searching had bought them.