Lately, we’ve been talking about newer, up-and-coming artists, but what have our veteran creators been up to lately? Well, the focus of our article this week is OG Café Artist Tobikomi, who has his own special project that he’s been working on. Tobi is pretty well known within our community, but on the off chance you haven’t heard about him, I’ll give you the rundown.
Tobi is a musician known for his cutsey, upbeat style of music, scientifically proven to put a smile on even the grumpiest of people. His smooth tracks serve as a nice contrast to some of the more explosive, edgy music that often come out of our section of the chiptune community. Tobi is also extremely adept with voice synthesizers, and uses them to great advantage in a lot of his music.
Tobi has been composing chiptunes for a solid 6 years now, and in that time has made quite a name for himself, amassing nearly 470 subscribers on his YouTube account and 200 followers on his Soundcloud. He’s participated in numerous different contests and compilations, the most notable being YM2017 (A Genesis compilation album) and Chiptunes = Win Volume 7, in which he had to beat out over 100 other entries to get onto the actual album.
Recently, however, Tobi has been working hard on a special project, and was kind enough to lend us some details about his latest endeavor, which just so happens to be his first ever album, titled “ROBOTS.” ROBOTS is the first in what is planned to be a trilogy of albums, all homages to classic 80’s soundtracks. According to Tobi, ROBOTS will primarily be a PSG album, while the second album in the trilogy, ALIENS, will focus on 80’s synthesizers. The third album, however, remains a mystery to us. Tobi noted that he chose the name ROBOTS as another reference to the 80’s, with the name being in reference to the popularity of robotic toys sold during the time period.
However, the names ROBOTS and ALIENS aren’t just simply shoutouts to 80’s culture. They also tie directly into another project that Tobi is working on, a conceptualized series known as The CPU Dimension. The series focuses on the titular CPU Dimension and the robots and aliens that live inside of it. The first two albums are named after these aforementioned creatures, with the mysterious third album being named after the unknown enemy which will threaten the dimension.
As for the musical style of this album, Tobi noted that while that many songs on ROBOTS will carry with them his trademark happiness, he wants to push his boundaries by composing music that are different in style than what he’s used to. As this is a homage album, Tobi plans to use numerous different sound chips in the creation of ROBOTS, both well known and obscure. With such a wide range of musical sound available from using all these different chips, I’m excited to see in what direction Tobi will take with the music on this album.
Tobi stated that he’s been working on ROBOTS for a very long time, but he isn’t sure how long it’ll be before we see it released. He estimates that he’s about 25% done with it, but noted that “with all of the things he wants to include in [ROBOTS], that might be subject to change.” No matter what, we’ll be sure to keep you updated on the blog as ROBOTS comes further to completion.
But hot damn, our last three interviews have been about people either announcing or dropping new albums, and frankly, I’m getting sick of talking about new releases. How about next time we take a look at some of the more technical aspects of chip music? There’s a certain tracker that I’d like to discuss the history of, but I’m not saying anything more than that.
As always, thanks to Tobikomi for agreeing to the interview, he’s a genuine guy and I can’t express in words how hyped I actually am for ROBOTS. Apologies for my recent lack of posting, I needed some time to clear my head but now the blog is coming back in full force! The next article should be out within a week, and I hope to see you then. Until then, adios amigos.