From the excellent music online mag Pitchforkmedia comes this interesting review of The Advantage, the self-titled debut of a California five-piece band which exclusively plays “heavy, dynamic” indie-rock covers of Nintendo game music like Castelvania III and Super Mario Brothers 2 “that go far beyond simple nostalgia, exploring and ofthen enhancing the brilliance of their source material.”

Continues Pitchfork’s Matt LeMay, “The music for the Nintendo Entertainment system was created under tremendously limiting circumstances– during the time that most of the songs covered here were written, composers had only three individual voices to work with at any given time, each consisting of little more than a modified sine wave. That being the case, melody was almost invariably given precedence over rhythm and texture. In this way, the songs covered here offer a perfect balance to the sprawling, rhythmically intense post-rock played by Hella and their contemporaries — the simplicity and melodic strength of the source material focuses the players, and the players flesh out the source material beyond its original technological limitations.”