Pterodactyl Squad (2025)

08/09/2025

We got the sad news that Kageyama Masashi passed away. The composer of one of the most beautiful retro soundtracks of all time, Gimmick! I've listened to it so many times, and I have it on again right now.

We were so honoured to have Kageyama-san contribute a track to our Train Radio compilation in 2021. I believe it was the first music he'd released in a while.

RIP to a chip hero.

25/08/2025

It was great to put out Noisewaves' self-titled debut in 2010. As I've said before, there were plenty of other labels doing straight up chip releases really well around this time, so I aimed to put out chiptune + something else, whenever the opportunity arose. In this case it was 2A03 chip stuff with guitars as the special ingredient. I'd say there are plenty of similarities to The Depreciation Guild here.

Yeah, looking back from 2025, this EP really embodies a lot of what was happening and popular at the time. Post rock/indie mixed with electronic stuff, those verbose song titles (e.g. Do I Look Like I Want To Play Volleyball?), one word but plural band names, and album art with lots of geometric shapes. I miss that era a lot. I feel like chiptune really had a moment then. It was never mainstream but it did fit in with a lot of what was happening in the big indie and electronic scenes.

I seem to remember Noisewaves doing some live shows around this time (with live drums?). I haven't spoken to Shawn in a very long time, I wonder what he's up to now.

12/08/2025

I'm finally getting back on it, looking back through the label's releases. 5 months since my last post, but better late than never!

Today I'm thinking back to Short Attention Fan by Weave of K. which we released in February 2010. Weave of K. is Kevin Durr, who worked as a sound designer - still does I believe, check out A Sound Effect. This line of work definitely showed in his tunes.

While these tracks were 'songs' I guess, there was an emphasis on sound and texture more than anything. And they do sound lovely and crisp even now, produced to perfection. I remember on Kevin's MySpace page it used to read "Listen with good quality headphones".

Plenty of the samples for this 5-track EP were taken from Atari 2600 carts and circuit bent toys - I always enjoyed handling stuff that wasn't from LSDj and the Nintendo chips. And I remember digging the unusual nature of this EP but wondering if others would, and it kind of surprised me when this one got a lot of downloads and nice feedback.

And if you're wondering what the future holds for the label, I do know of a small handful of releases in the pipeline. I just checked and it's been a year since the last thing we put out (from Corset Lore), so I'm hoping we can get something new out sooner rather than later.

As always, if you have something you're working on, get in touch.

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