"I consider myself to be a dance orientated act."

It's not often that young musicians are taken seriously, but 17-year-old Oli Sabin of Unicorn Kid fame is definitely someone you should check out. Making amazing electronic dance music that instantly catches your attention he's not something to be missed. "I consider myself to be a dance orientated act. When composing I take a lot of influence from house and hardcore dance styles, I try to create those sounds whilst still maintaining the chiptune aspect of my music." According to Wikipedia, chiptune is "music written in sound formats where all the sounds are synthesized in realtime by a computer or video game console sound chip,
instead of using sample-based synthesis." Taking many other styles into account Unicorn Kid is full of blips and bleeps that probably shouldn't work, but that make something completely out of this world.

As good as Oli's music is, does coming from Scotland make it harder for him to get heard? After all, when you think of Scottish music the first bands that come to mind are probably something more like Biffy Clyro and Glasvegas than any dance artists: "Scotland actually has been home to several other chiptune artists before me,most notably Sabrepulse and Firebrand Boy, who I played with in Summer 2008 on the Chiptune Alliance Tour." If Unicorn Kid's version of chiptune is anything to go by, these guys are probably worth checking out aswell;
chiptune seems to be one of the happiest styles (if you can call it that) of music and something worth keeping an eye out for.

Oli has a double B-side single coming out in January called 'Lion Hat': "[It's] my first release through a record label... with 'Lion Hat' and two B sides 'Goodbye' and '8 Bytes'. The tracks were produced entirely at home by myself." A lot of artists are into self-production these days as it means having an extra skill and also making a little more money on the side, so it's always nice to know when someone who makes such good music can do this as well. It is slightly more predictable for electronic artists to do this but it never ceases to amaze, with the amount of time and effort actually put in."The digital release is due out January 8th and the physical CD will be out February 2nd." You can also look forward to a video being released along with the single: "I shot the music video for 'Lion Hat' in East Kilbride at Popmorphic Studios. It was filmed using
polymorphic technology, a groundbreaking new method of filming. It allows the user to edit variables such as the angle you view the video at, which band member you look at, and the graphics shown. You can see examples of this at www.popmorphic.com" Unfortunately, Oli can't tell me any more about the actual video so make sure to keep your eyes peeled for it in January.

Dance music seems to get a bad reputation sometimes, but Unicorn Kid might just be able to change your mind.


You can check out Unicorn Kid at www.myspace.com/unicornkid