Laromlab

The story of Laromlab is one of chiptunes, writers' block, and deception. It began in 2001 when Brandon Harrod, an aspiring electronic musician based out of Bowling Green, KY, assumed the pseudonym Laromlab; previous to this, Harrod had made his own recordings under the name Kid 8-Bit. There was one problem, though. "I hit a dry spell," he wrote in a public apology published to his MySpace blog in 2008. But rather than take a break from music, Harrod instead concocted an elaborate hoax that would go on to fool fans and the mainstream music media alike. "There is no explanation for it," he wrote. "[S]omewhere deep inside of my brain it told me that I should just grab [the YM Rockerz's] music and pawn it off as my own." In 2004, Harrod created a profile for Laromlab on Discogs.com claiming, among other things, that the project's debut album, That Blood Is for Real, had been released on Sweden's Komplott Records, an allegation that was later denied by the label. Harrod would later go on to claim that Laromlab's discography included the albums Gameboy Chronicles, Hate the Player, Not the Gameboy, and Combat School; the latter was later found to be comprised entirely of songs by the Finnish artist Aleksi Eeben. He quickly went on to create a website, a profile on Sonicbids, and a MySpace profile, where he posted a handful of bit-pop tunes. According to Harrod, some of the tunes were original; however, the majority (if not all) were actually composed by a hodgepodge of little-known European artists, including Eeben and the YM Rockerz (a collective that included Crazy Q, Dubmood, and Lotek Style, among others). Harrod allegedly didn't think anything would come of his hoax; things quickly got out of hand, however, when Laromlab started to generate some buzz in the indie...