Dual Core

Brought together by the power of the internet (and perhaps a

touch of musical providence), Cincinnati-based computer

programmer int eighty and Manchester-area graphic

designer c64 have been rocking the more studious side of

the hip-hop underground since 2007. Their debut release

Zero One – featuring Counter-Strike anthem "Hostage

Down" and club banger "Give Me Wings" – was summarily

embraced by the tech set as a welcome shift in the

contemporary hip-hop paradigm.

It's somehow only fitting that it wasn't until after the success

of this musical social experiment that the members of Dual

Core finally met face-to-face, further cementing both their

unique friendship and the strength of their artistic collaboration. The group's follow-up, the

Super Powers mixtape, combined eighty's skillful storytelling and 64's frenetic beats with

additional contributions from nerdcore heavy-hitters YTCracker, ZeaLouS1, Beefy and MC

Wreckshin, and precipitated a veritable flurry of major concert opportunities.

In the aftermath of Super Powers, Dual Core became the first nerdcore group to play both the

main stages at Las Vegas's DEFCON, the world's largest hacker convention, and the CCC

Camp hacker conference in Germany. The crush of gigs and the rabid response of new fans led

to quick sell-outs of both albums. Thankfully, in 2008 Dual Core released their second full-length

Lost Reality – boasting hacker love song "My GF Is…" and blistering posse cut "Fantastic Four"

– at Notacon in Cleveland, Ohio.

The duo continued to support the artistic triumph that was Lost Reality by gigging coast-to-coast

at hacker conventions, technology conferences and even Orlando's Nerdapalooza, the world's

only festival dedicated solely to the music of geeks and technophiles. By the release of 2009's

epic follow-up Next Level, these venues, as well as media outlets like Wired.com and internet

television network Revision3, had become old haunts to the duo and their unique sound.

With this fourth release, a collection of musings about the joys of music, the banality of the daily

grind and the miracles of modern technology, Dual Core continue to exhibit the kind of artistic

growth that is the very bedrock of all quality music. With sharper production and more cleverly

calculated flows, it is a fitting soundtrack to the 21st century. In a world where the underground

cultures of hip-hop and computer tech have leapt stylistic and scholarly boundaries to become

the accepted parlance, their amalgamation is nothing short of expected. Yet somehow, Dual

Core is scarcely what one would call predictable.