b2 band of the month

microchip

 

Norwich lad Tom Joy started writing music when he was 12 years old. Most of his work was guitar based and heavily influenced by 70s rock and roll. In aim to branch out Tom learnt to play bass guitar aswell, and played his first gig in September 2005, aged 13.

 

After gaining his first taste of live performing, he was determined to carry on his music, and learnt to do his own recordings at home. After a few months of practicing with his recording equipment and learning keyboard, Tom's music started to take a new, interesting direction, mixing basic keyboard sounds with heavy guitar lines and a simple drum machine instead of a real drummer. Tom found that he worked better with music when he was on his own, and started his own electronic music project in November 2006.

Tom's first one-man band was purely electronic, using simple sounds from his computer to make music. He thought that his music sounded like soundtracks from old video games and decided to base all of his music around this retro sound. As time went on the music gradually became less video game like and started entering new territories.
In April 2007, Tom and a couple of friends formed a punk band. Having a strong influence of Muse and Enter Shikari, the band decided that they should have some synthesizer and electronics in their music, a job which was handed to Tom. After doing this for a year the band dispanded!!

At this point Tom was fed up of the generic band set up, and not being able to work well with other people to try and create music that he liked playing he began a search of something interesting and new. After reluctantly being invited to a chiptune night at local Norwich venue B2, Tom found what he was looking for. Microchip was born

Check him out at:: www.myspace.com/microchiptunes

 

HIS NEXT GIG HERE:

TUE 30th MARCH