Many genres of DIY lo-fi indie music have blossomed thanks to the internet. One of the most unusual is ‘chip music’; tunes created by artists using and sometimes modifying 1980’s era electronics. Many equip themselves with what looks like the inventory sheet of a thrift store, appearances on this album include Game Boy, Commodore 64, Speak & Spell, Atari 2600, and many others. These musicians (calling themselves ‘8 Bit Operators’) have come to pay tribute to the fathers of electronic music, Kraftwerk. The pioneering Kraftwerk have been labeled as just about everything, antiseptic, electronica or dance, but no one can dispute their lasting effect on modern music. Also interesting is how their music seems so firmly rooted in the technology used to create it, yet the beauty and the soul of the music has survived many transformations from orchestral to salsa. It’s not enough to merely sequence the same notes as a Kraftwerk song, there is an essence to capture. Thankfully, the artists on 8 Bit Operators ply their retro tech sound to capture what Kraftwerks’ songs are all about, without getting too caught up in the 8 bit technology. Lick it, it’s just that good….