Apparently, we couldn’t hear the Casio keyboard over the Game Boy because of a busted cable. The connection worked fine during our sound check.... Thankfully, Mega Crush, my collaborator, figured out how to remedy the situation around the third song in our set. He propped up the base of the cable with the extra old-school Game Boy he brought. We knew it would come in handy!

He and I (as Aquma) performed together last week for independent game festival IndieCade’s year-end fundraiser get-together. Rather than go with the less-complicated laptop-DJ route that everyone else did, we wanted to try something a little more ambitious. Something...a little geekier. (Listen to two of our video-game-inspired songs at the end of this story.) 

We started with my little 10-channel mixing board and added a bunch of musical electronic gadgets. Mega Crush used Little Sound DJ and programmed a bunch of 8-bit songs for his Game Boy. I had a couple of beats that I had made on my (now deceased) laptop to play from my PSP.

To round things off, we added Jam Sessions, a guitar-playing program for the Nintendo DS; the DS game Electroplankton; a Casio keyboard from the 1980s; a midi drum pad hooked up to a netbook; and the Ethereal Dialpad app running on a smart phone.

Sounds straightforward enough, right? But Murphy’s Law didn’t cut us any slack.

The venue was Riot Games’ (League of Legends) swanky lounge room, complete with company-logo-branded bean bag chairs. A photographer was on hand with a Santa, Viking, reindeer, and pig hat. One wall had an array of decorated cards donated by artistic IndieCade community members for a silent auction.

The back wall had two projectors displaying an experimental 3D game. And throughout the night, an energetic, beer-and-eggnog-fueled crowd excitedly played through several rounds of Johann Sebastian Joust.

  
Naturally, between our initial sounds check an hour before the event and our performance, that cable just had to go renegade. We also didn’t realize how noisy the event would be with ~100 mingling people in the room. Next time, for sure, we’ll also make sure to have monitors, so we can actually hear and follow along with our music. But we eventually found our groove, and you can hear it in the embedded recordings of our last two jams. (Thankfully, we didn’t even draw a crowd until that point in our performance, anyways.)

The first song is a number called Kanch and Kanch. I’ve included my intended lyrics below for reference. The balance might be a little off, the “guitar” could be louder, and I goofed up some of my verse, but overall it has a fun vibe. We plan to put out a studio/bedroom-recorded copy, so follow me on Twitter (@Aquma) if you want the eventual link to that.

The other song is a jam session (ironically not including the aforementioned DS cartridge of the same name). For this one, you’ll have to forgive me if some of my rapping doesn’t make sense or if it isn’t smooth at times...I was making everything up on the spot as people shouted out topics to me.  

I’d like to thank the wonderful organizers at IndieCade who gave us this opportunity to perform. We learned how to improve our recently created, gadget-heavy set and definitely had a great time.

I hope you enjoy the music!

Aquma and Mega Crush - Kanch and Kanch

Aquma and Mega Crush - Untitled jam session

Kanch and Kanch lyrics:

You went and did it, picked Aquma from the menu
Summoned to the battlefield, I guess I have to end you
I cruse down Chavez, I ride around Cherry, and
either place I’m at, I always see the Virgin Mary.

From Boyle Heights to Lakewood, we light weight stay hood
Striving for excellence, at minimum we stay good
Headed for the next level, teamed up with Mega Crush
Lasers from a satellite will quickly turn your head to mush

It’s no money entertainment
All day we stay inside then wonder where the day went
Trying to unplug nightly, but
The Internet’s grip on my clings oh so tightly

No bourgeois no Armani Prada Gucci
Torrented a bootleg of Anamanaguchi
I play with just the knife, 99 extra lives
Haters rage quit when Aquma, the best, arrives

Cast a spell of lyrics, listeners in awe
A million hit points and maximum charisma
Don’t kill your hearing with that whack shit
You have an easy password, you haven’t been hacked, kid

Game porno parody, I’m playing League of Lesbians
1080 HD, no pixelated thespians
And if you don’t remember then I’ll enter the text again
Aquma and Mega Crush, don’t file with the rest of them