ATTN: NEW BACKERS!! A DIGITAL DOWNLOAD IS AVAILABLE IN BACKER UPDATE #5 :)

SO, THE FIRST THING WE DID WITH YOUR FUNDING WAS SEND A PIZZA INTO SPACE FOR OUR MUSIC VIDEO     ( n_n)b

We have a LOT more crazy ideas that will be possible with your funding!!!

GUEST SHIRT ANNOUNCED: by Bryan Lee O'Malley & Maré Odomo :D

Bryan Lee O'Malley is the author of kewl comix such as the Scott Pilgrim series as well as the upcoming 'SECONDS'. Maré Odomo makes gr8 emotional comics (like Pokémon from the perspective of Ash missing his totally absent father) - he's also designed various flyers for us over the years and has a really good twitter n_n 

Pick your size & color and we'll hook it up :)

UPDAAAATE: WEEK THREE OVER! $200,000. OMFG.

FIRSTLY - THANK YOU BACKERS!!! YEAAAAHHH (*n_n)*

It's a truly strange and wonderful feeling to wake up knowing that we're free to make the things we want to make. What an incredible system it is to be able to go directly to you guys... it blows my mind to see how much sense this makes.

ALBUM DOWNLOADS WILL BE SENT TO EVERYBODY ON MAY 14TH AT 12:00AM MIDNIGHT!!! Join us at our livestream listening party so yallz can party with us on a day we've been waiting on for 3 ENTIRE YEARS.

ALSO ANNOUNCING OUR FIRST STRETCH GOAL! AT 250,000 WE WILL ORGANIZE A GAME JAM!

We will have a 72-hour marathon where we will invite teams of independent developers to make games based on songs from ENDLESS FANTASY. This will also be open to the public online to develop, and FREE for everybody download to PLAY! We will have a tracklist with loose aesthetic suggestions for each song to pick from (ie: maybe Akira should be a racing game, maybe Prom Night should be a dating sim ;D). More details on this if we reach $250,000!!

More stretch goals on the way :)

WIT NEW GOALZ COME NEW REWARDS :)

#1 NES CARTRIDGE ALBUM OF UNRELEASED TRACKS

When I found out we could do this I lost my mind. We will be making a limited run of 250 NES CARTRIDGES featuring UNRELEASED ANAMANAGUCHI SONGS from the past 3 years. These will be PLAYABLE ON ANY NES. They will also be coated in IRIDESCENT PAINT (by us). You can put this cartridge in any working NES and you will be greeted by a bunch of songs no one has ever heard before. They will be accompanied by IN-CARTRIDGE visuals by the amazingly talented PARTY TIME HEXCELLENT!

^--This is the paint we're going to use :)

#2 SIGNED VINYL!

We're gonna go to the warehouse in North Carolina, find the vinyl, and sign it for you guys while we watch episodes of Seinfeld and try to keep each other entertained by making the signatures weirder and weirder as we go. This is the FIRST RUN of vinyl for Endless Fantasy - we are offering this reward only now because we didn't realize it was possible for us to do. We LOVE AND APPRECIATE YOUR SUPPORT <3

ALSO - I just listened to the test pressing for the first time with Gabe Liberti (album producer), and I can confidently say that this is THE BEST way to listen to this album. I always saw vinyl as something that people like for the rarity or big art or something, but I think I finally get it now. (@___@)

#3 SCHOOL OF CHIPTUNE: 2ND FUCKIN SUMESTAAAHHH

GIT RDY YALL. SCHOOL'S BACK IN SESSION. We are opening up 20 MORE SLOTS TO THE SCHOOL OF CHIPTUNE!!! This will take place during a different session to ensure that all students get THE ATTENTION THAT THEY DESERVE. You will get a report card and shit. We'll figure it out.

UPDATE: SONGS FROM ENDLESS FANTASY!

Hey everybody ( n_n)y 

We are Anamanaguchi! We make emotional punk, pop & dance music using hacked Nintendos, Game Boys, and 16-bit soundscapes along with a full band. 

You might know us from our tours across the US, maybe from PAX, or Lollapalooza, or maybe you heard our soundtrack to the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World video game, or you might know our music as the theme song to the Nerdist podcast-- or more likely you have no idea who we are! We're Anamanaguchi, sup :)

*~*~*THE STORY OF THE ALBUM~*~*~

Since the Scott Pilgrim soundtrack, we've been trying to figure out exactly what we wanted to do next. The next few years saw us going in 100 different directions of what we wanted our next album to sound like. Pete saw his influences jumping all over from j-pop producers like Yasutaka Nakata to 80's post-punk groups like Orange Juice. As months went by it shifted even more to a desire to romantically conjure settings from video game universes by sampling sounds from the Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask. Pete's capriciousness then sent him thinking back to the roots of the project, wanting to create an ode to the basement the band began in where he'd cover Weezer songs and played NES with his brother. Meanwhile Ary was off casually writing emotional songs about his cat, drum and bass tracks about Tokyo drifting, cute euro-beat fantasy snowboarding jams and a song about girls hiccuping.

For two years Pete lived in the same bedroom as the producer Gabe Liberti (two beds!) and would talk every night about what they loved about music - trying to help make sense of these various directions we felt the band being pulled towards. After many backyard discussions with Ary over Haribo gummies and Aranciata, gradually an idea began to form. All of these tangents we've been on for the past few years would fit perfectly together as one crystallized piece - each hyperbole balanced by an equal and opposite experiment. We couldn't sacrifice any of it or else that balance would be shattered, it had to be all 22 songs or nothing at all.

Everyone working with us (and also some friends!) said this was a stupid idea, but we wanted to stand by it no matter how arduous the process might be. It also turns out that most record labels aren't interested in helping out four weird dudes put out 22 songs of mostly-instrumental music made using sound chips from old video game consoles without making any compromises. So we refused some deals, weren't offered others to begin with, and decided to release the album on our own label, dream.hax.

So with passion as our driving force, we recorded, mixed, & mastered our new album Endless Fantasy over the course of 3 years without any help from a label. Trying to do this on our own and still holding it to a high standard is intimidating, but you can change that. We've gotten this far, but our ambitions for what this album needs to be don't end here. People keep on telling us our vision is wrong - we want to take the power out of their hands and put it in yours. This where we need your help!

Now that the music is finished, we want to do everything we can to make this album as long lasting as possible. We want to tour this album everywhere we can, we want to create as much media around it as possible-- we want it to be more than just mp3s with cover art!

~*~*~GOALS 4 THE MOTHA-EFFIN' FUTURE~*~*~

We want to make a stronger connection with Endless Fantasy than just the music alone. We want to make media to surround the album to give it the context we think it needs to make the strongest impact possible. Among this includes making new music videos - creating our own tour lighting rig - collaborating with singers for vocal editions of certain songs - making some specific interactive web projects - designing and manufacturing new & interesting merch (and then giving it to you here!) - essentially, we'd rather have our fans be our record label than record labels be our record label at this point.

*~*~*~*~#1 MUSIC VIDZZZ~*~*~*~

We were able to make one music video on our own means and we're pretty hyped with how it came out. We worked with Tim & Eric editors/ultra-buddies Daniel Gray Longino and Eric Notarnicola on a video for the song "MEOW" that managed to be as ridiculous as the track itself.

We have ideas for MANY more videos for songs off this record and we want to make as many of them as we can!! In order to do that we need to reach out to talented animators & directors which can get pretty expensive! Pixel artists, Hollywood directors, you know wassup.

GOAL AT 50K: Music videos for "Japan Air", "U n Me", "Akira", and improved budget for "Endless Fantasy".

MEGALONG STRETCH GOAL: Music videos are our top priority here, if we raise more funding, we will make MANY more videos!! The album has 22 songs and we have limitless ambitions for this. We'd probably even release a DVD for all of 'em, though by the time we do this it'll probably be cooler to just give out downloads and stuff :)

*~*~*~*~*#2 BORING SHIT~*~*~*~*

We want Endless Fantasy to have the perks of being released on a big label - good distribution so that your friends can see it at stores, proper PR to let the videos we make be seen, and marketing to let people who've never heard of us know who we are :)

We know how important it is for music to be out there - some of us were lucky to grow up in towns with amazing weird record stores and their very existence shaped who we are today. It's hard for a weird band to get in a normal record store, and that's exactly what we want to accomplish!

GOAL AT 50K: Pay for base-level marketing, PR & distribution for Endless Fantasy.

MEGALONG STRETCH GOAL: idk maybe we'd rent a video billboard in Times Square and just put a cute kitty cat on it with no words.

~*~*~*~*#3 TOUR LIGHTING~*~*~*~*

James is not only a mega-talented bass player, he's also a mega-talented electronics genius. He is the Donatello to our Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He made the modifications to our tour Nintendos, and joined the band at the very beginning drawn by the idea of taking electronics apart and making them do what you want them to. 

James has since worked independently on many tour lighting setups for bands like RA RA RIOT and !!! (chk, chk, chk). Although we've been a band for nearly 8 years now, he's never had the opportunity to create anything just for ourselves.

We've performed with Ra Ra Riot's tour poles on loan before, but we can't do that forever. James has budgeted out a specific tour lighting rig JUST FOR ANAMANAGUCHI! 

He'll be using principles of Pepper's Ghost (the effect used to make the 2Pac hologram) to project onto edgelit acrylic cubes reminiscent of our album cover.

Here's James' basement lab.

GOAL AT 50K: Cool light poles, projection cubes, LED displays, stuff like that!

MEGALONG STRETCH GOAL: I asked James what he would do if the Kickstarter made double what we asked for, and he looked at his computer then back at me, made a wide-eyed face and then looked back at his computer again.

~*~*~*#4 COLLABS~*~*~*

Part of whats really cool about making art is about seeing what other artists do with the things you make! We want to reach out to producers for remixes, singers for collaborations on tracks, and all that kinda stuff. We have ideas for vocal versions of many of the songs on Endless Fantasy - we just need the resources to get the right singers.

We want to make a vocal collab album of a few songs from Endless Fantasy, and we wanna to give it to you for helping make it.

(this one time we did a das racist remix)

GOAL AT 50K: Make an album of vocal collaborations from ENDLESS FANTASY, plus get a few remixes done!

MEGALONG STRETCH GOAL: Make a vocal collab album, way more remixes.

~*~*~*#5 MERCH STUFF~*~*~*

We've always been into the idea of making merch specifically cooler than it has to be. When Paul Robertson made an animated gif for a single we made, we decided to print it as a lenticular to make it animate in real life.

For Endless Fantasy we want to make radiant acrylic USB drives for the album to make it feel like the same material as the cube on the cover.

Also we really wanna release our 2xLP on some translucent colored vinyl!

GOAL AT 50K: Make USB flash drives, colored vinyl with hologram sticker, other exciting ideas that are in the works!

MEGALONG STRETCH GOAL: Skies the limit on this one really!

~*~*~*~#6 INTERACTIVE WEB PROJECTS~*~*~*~

In the same way that we want to make music videos, we also want to experiment with the next level. We want to reach out to certain programmers and designers to develop some immersive projects - it's something we feel like an album made for the internet absolutely has to do nowadays

We've tried in the past - but think with our experience since 2009 and your help, we can make something even better :)

GOAL AT 50K: Develop a few sites/games/projects with talented programmers & artists.

MEGALONG STRETCH GOAL: Doesn't really exist!

#####OHHHHHHH MAN REWARDS#####

WE GOT A LOTTA STUFF THAT WE WANT TO GIVE YOU FOR BACKING THIS PROJECT!!!

()()()()() THE ALBUM ITSELF ()()()()()

You can get the album as a reward for donating to this Kickstarter! In bundles it will come along with cool stuff like this

()()()()() SCHOOL OF CHIPTUNE ()()()()()

You will come to our studio New York City where you and 19 other students will be divided into groups of 5. The groups will spend a few hours with different members of the band learning a bunch of cool stuff LIKEEEE

• Pete - Teaching NES music using programs like Nerdtracker 2 & Famitracker
• Luke - Teaching how to make a song in LSDJ for Game Boy
• Ary - Teaching you how to make a tiny 16-bit chiptune file using Milkytracker
• James - Teaching you how to do electronic hardware mods on a Nintendo to make everything sound great in at a live show!

There will also be private lessons at a higher level! See the rewards section.

()()()()() STUFF FROM THE MEOW VIDEO ()()()()()

()()()()()VIP GUESTLIST FOR ENDLESS FANTASY TOUR ()()()()()

[TOUR PARTY] ALL OF THE VIP GUESTLIST SPOTS ARE TAKEN. THANK YOU SO MUCH! WE CAN'T WAIT TO MEET YOU GUYS. FOR ALL TOUR DATES, CLICK HERE.

~*~*~*~IN CLOSING~*~*~*~

THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH FOR TAKING THE TIME TO READ ALL THIS~! Please share this with your friends, remind people who you think know about us, and help us make this album all that it needs to be, together.

We would not exist without you guys. We do this for you. Love to you all.

<3

-Anamanaguchi
Pete ( /◕‿◕)b
Luke v(^_~)-☆
Ary //(>‿◠)\\✌
James ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ