Demostyle

Demostyle is the traditional musical idiom of the demoscene, the computer-art subculture centred on real-time demos for machines such as the Commodore 64 and Amiga. Written in tracker software as module files, it combines chiptune arpeggios, sampled instruments and borrowings from synth-pop, techno, metal and film music within strict channel and memory limits. Composers such as *Purple Motion*, *Skaven*, *Necros* and *Lizardking* treated those limits as an aesthetic, and the style is judged, like the demos it scores, in party competitions where craft under constraint is the point.