Alex Mauer

From Bossies

Alex Mauer is a chiptune musician that has been writing for the better part of 15 years. He cut his teeth within the demoscene in groups such as the tracking group Ignition in the late 90's, as well at the tracking group Fromage in 2002-2003, writing modules under the name Akumapan at a young age. Alex worked at his craft, cutting his teeth in the later 90s in the modtracking scene participating in many different tracking competitions on the IRC network esper.net.

Alex's first exposure to synthesizers was by his uncle Sean, a then-disco record shop owner and WTSR Trenton College radio DJ in the late 80's, when his uncle bought a Yamaha DX21 synthesizer for his father. Alex took to it very quickly, and the same synthesizer can be heard in works that made their way to the ears of the world such as Blast, Blast 2, and Dialtone. One of the most interesting things about Mauer's work is his ability to innovate within many different chipsets, including fm synth, the atari pokey chipset. Through Alex's vision of what was possible, he went as far to acquire the elusive Panasonic MSX Turbo R System, even taking advantage of such obscure chipsets as the Konami SCC soundchip which was available for tracking only through painstaking modification in an attempt to create and meld many different chip styles as possible seamlessly. The payoff was heard in one of 2008's most important chiptune releases, the incredible 9999 album.

He has innovated within the chiptune genre by making cartridge-based albums such as Vegavox, Vegavox 2, and Color Caves, also featuring Phlogiston. His most well known work may be the 'blast' ep, released by 8bitpeoples. He is an important member of Pause, an electronic music label devoted to releasing more atmospheric lowrez music.

To date, he has made over 20 chiptune albums, and has moved on to develop and release music for original video games as well as music for cellphone games and making great success with well known titles and paving his way in a career writing modern game music. He is also a very proficient dancer, and has traveled the USA taking part in dance-off competitions over the years, as well as working on visual art and dancing videos with his crew, Animal Farm.