Music built inside the machine
Press Play Then Any Key gathers 33 AY-3-8912 chiptunes composed between 2017 and 2021 for Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum productions. They were written for games and demos rather than as an album, so every piece began with a machine, a scene and a set of real limits.
Those limits are part of the sound. The chip does not imitate an orchestra; it asks for a different kind of writing, where a small number of voices have to carry rhythm, melody, harmony and character.
An archive, not a museum
The compilation is a record of living hardware and contemporary homebrew culture. Old sound chips are still being pushed into new games, new demos and new musical ideas.
That is the thread connecting these tracks: not nostalgia alone, but the pleasure of discovering what else a familiar machine can say.