It’s the hardwired Pikachu choir from hell!

This man has a wife and kids.

Japanzine is running this fascinating story which goes behind the scene of Japanese chiptune. Read it and weep (for some kind of 21st century nerd joy, naturally). Quote:

And then Kaseo appears. Wearing a full-on Don Quixote-bought Pikachu costume. Oh boy! There’s murmured laughing in the crowd as he approaches a table covered by a mysterious red cloth. He then starts flipping switches and strange lights begin flashing ominously under the table. Off comes the cloth, and then what I can only describe in Lovecraftian terms as a twisted abomination, a corruption so horrific as to leave the mind stunned in horror … A dozen yellow Pikachu figurines … strange bolts and dials soldered to their tiny forms … wires connecting them all to a cryptic metal tablet which somehow controls them. “Pika-chu!” one volunteers, its eyes flashing red. And then another speaks, and then another and another, a hellish Pika-pika polyphony … After about five minutes, as the twisted pitch-bent cacophonous shrieks of the zombie Pikachu choir become almost unbearable, Kaseo reaches toward a dial attached to his homemade goggles – and then suddenly a Pika-beat! A good ten minutes of Pika-techno later, and the crowd has gone utterly insane.

Much more here.

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