Making any street corner a stage, solo chiptune artist Circles, brings happiness and bliss to any pedestrians passing by with his Nintendo Game Boy.

The chiptune genre is considered to be any music containing sounds from older game systems, most commonly the original Game Boy and Little Sound Disc Jockey program.

The LSDJ program is a homebrewed cartridge for the Game Boy that enables the user to sequence and program music on a Game Boy and is primarily used by chiptune artists, however it is also popular with many other musicians for writing songs featuring Game Boy sounds.

Behind Circles is 20-year-old Jack Waterman, a current student at Western Washington University and resident of Bellingham. "It sort of creeps up on you," said Waterman when asked about how far he has come as an artist.

"Going and playing the Kirkland teen center is normal for me [now], and it makes me completely lose sight of how two-and-a-half years ago when I saw a Portugal, The Man concert there I would have given anything to be playing there," said Waterman.

Motivated to give back to the music community, Waterman began with a keyboard and guitar, but not till
seeing Fighter-X at Lemonfest
in 2006 did he take to his Game Boy. Buying the last LSDJprogram available on eBay, Waterman now combines his hand-held music with the computer program "Fruity Loops XXL Studio 7."

Influenced by older chiptune artists such as Sascrotch and Sabrepulse, Circles combines the melodies of LSDJ with an energetic twist of dance-pop to keep everyone moving. "I'm just not a fan of things that have no energy behind them," said Waterman who used to love punk rock but currently enjoys more up-beat dance music.

Tracks "Thunder Carnival", "Falcon Punch" and a cover of The Unicorns' "Jelly Bones" make it hard for anyone in the audience to stand still. Waterman, who lets loose on stage recalls, "The crowds that don't really know us that well get active a lot faster when I'm playing cause I really go nuts."

"It's kind'a involuntary", said Waterman about his sporadic stage presence. "It's so hard to fill the stage with energy
when you're one person. You can easily get overwhelmed by the crowd's energy if you're not pushing back at all."

While trying to make his performances as big as possible, Waterman wants the audience to have a good time, but do it safely. "They move or like, do
fist pumping. Nobody gets hurt at these shows," said
Waterman.

Like one of his favorite bands, at the Drive-In, who would stop playing if the crowd got violent, he would definitely stop a mosh pit.

Although Waterman uses a Game Boy to make his music, he makes it his goal to make music that sounds as not Game Boy as possible. "I try not to let it be too heavily influenced by video games. That's like a huge taboo," said Waterman, who enjoys the Megaman and Resident Evil game series.

Originally wanting to be a singer, Waterman's voice can be heard on the cover "Jelly Bones". "I would never put vocals in my 100 percent chiptune songs," said Waterman, hoping to add more vocals to upcoming Circles tracks.

Seeing Circles as a way to help make people happy by creating catchy, energetic dance tunes, Waterman said he is "greedy about helping people."

For more information on Circles head to www.crunchyco.com or www.myspace.com/circlesarerad where you can listen to or download some tracks.