Distant Islands: 51 minutes of experimental SNES chiptune, treating the soundchip like the quirky 8-channel sampler that it is; featuring microtonality, glitches galore, heavy manipulation of the chip's available effects and parameters, and unusual, often homegrown sounds. All tracks were recorded straight from a single Super Famicom system, with the exception of live drums layered onto "Welcome Back to Dragon Airlines".

Someone once told me that when I write I "leave keys for distant islands" and the phrase has stuck with me ever since. This is my first full-length, non-compilation album in three years, and I focused on making something that resonated with me personally and employed the kinds of sounds I wanted to hear. I also went all-out in exploring just how strange, incredible, and absurdly messed-up the SNES could conceivably sound. I'd like to think this covers some new, fresh territory in Super Nintendo chiptune, and I hope you enjoy it!

All songs were composed and written to blank SNES ROMs using osoumen's C700 VST (or forks of the VST that add microtonal functionality and extra MIDI tooling), then recorded from my Super Famicom. The rendered audio is lightly mastered for consistency. The source ROMs (which simply play the song) are included with the album!

released June 2, 2023

https://iiiypad.bandcamp.com/album/distant-islands
https://h-v-b.bandcamp.com/album/distant-islands

All music written by Hunter Van Brocklin except where indicated in the titles: Track 3 features live drums written, performed & recorded by jaxcheese (jaxcheese.bandcamp.com); and Track 16 was co-written with doctorn0gloff (soundcloud.com/doctorn0gloff).

Cover art by Tomas Præstholm (twitter.com/TomasPraestholm).

Thank you to osoumen for creating and maintaining the C700 VST, as well as doctorn0gloff and blower5 for modifying the software to provide extra functionality. Without all of you this album could not exist.

Extra special shouts out to the other folks making microtonal music for the Super Nintendo: sean, doctorn0gloff, and blower5. You all are wonderful and inspiring.

Additional thanks: amimifafa, albatross, Button Masher, Chimeratio, Cryptovolans, DEFENSE MECHANISM, KungFuFurby, Promtastik, Razerek, sergio, and Sintel.

If you too would like to try your hand at writing authentic SNES chiptune, I have written a guide: samplemance.rs/snesguide

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