It’s a good thing you don’t need to understand Spanish to enjoy this.

Chiptune is a genre that, throughout recent years, has been growing and developing a lot. When most people think of it, they mostly recall to Nintendo style music with the bleeps and blops (and other onomatopoeia). But I think it is more than that; it is a great blend of styles since the songs can be simple or complex, it can be a hard rocking tune but it can also be a sweet calm melody. Songs that you can emote with, feel passionate about, and enjoy without any sort of visual or action on the part of the listener; like any regular song should be. The “Chido-Chip” compilation achieves that.

“Chido” is Mexican slang for “Cool”, and I do think that it describes the album quite well, it IS cool. The first time I listened to it I was amazed at how awesome each song was in their own way. While it focuses on a somewhat electronic feel, every song has its own distinct style to it. Songs like Dubtrip (and no, it is not Dubstep!) that has a quick and progressive rhythm, or Skyward that has a trance vibe to it. Or more traditional songs like Viajeros del Espacio (Space Travelers) or Solaris that sound like if they were taken straight up from video games from the 8-bit era. There’s also the rock song Vinilo Bill (Vinyl Bill) which uses actual instruments and vocals (in Spanish).

Of course, this is a compilation and each song was made by a different person or band, so that is why each song feels different. But even then it is like everyone involved in this compilation album worked together to bring us such fantastic songs and none of them feel like out of place or it should not belong in the album. But this is “I Love That Song” so among the whole compilation my favorite would be the song Tráfico (Traffic) by Alex Powrs.

It was a tough choice though, the whole album is filled with so many great songs but Tráfico is probably the one that sticks out the most for me. I like energetic songs like it so it is probably my personal bias talking right here, but anyways. Tráfico starts out with hard and quick beats, and then it builds up to even more hard beats. I either start banging my head or start stomping the floor because it truly captures you with its hypnotic rhythm. That is for the first half of the song, after that it starts slowing down while still keeping up some of it pace from the beginning of the song, until it eventually ends. I would say that it truly lives up to its name.

My only complaint with this song is that it is kind of short, but it is still worth the ride. And if I should talk about a really close second to being my favorite track of the album, it should be Dubtrip. It has the same catchy feeling that Tráfico has, but while the latter has the energy, the former has a weird yet catchy feel. I may talk it in a future article.

But like I said, this compilation album is amazing and you should check out all of it on their Bandcamp site, http://chipotle.bandcamp.com/.  The album has a “Pay what you want” model, so you can basically download it for free if you want, but I suggest giving them at least a dollar or two (if not more), if like me want to support the artists for making such great music. 

You can also visit 56KBPS Records website, http://www.56kbpsrecords.org/, where you can check out each individual artist and other compilation albums there as well.

Well, that is all for now on ILTS. Opinions, like always, are welcome and of course suggestions for future articles. You can either leave a message in the comments section below or head out to the requests thread too.

Until next time, sigan siendo chidos!