One band's gimmick is another band's raison d'etre. You could say French DJ duo Teamtendo is type two. For one thing, their music is made entirely by manipulating vintage video game sounds. For another, Cute Groundhog and ATM Cougar man the decks and mixers dressed as their namesake animals. And they play adorable home movies during their performances. Plus, isn't being French kind of a gimmick, too? But delusions of a twee nostalgia trip dissipate once all the paranoid android beeping starts. The Teamtendo sound is aggressive and complicated, as on "Santana Sucks," which layers countless staccato blips and bleeps, adding drums sparingly and sporadically, until a melody arrives, like a guardian angel, to tell you yes, they were building up to something, that there's a purpose to all this. Then a bassline shows up late, but you're still glad. Trying to name the games is even more frustrating than playing them was. (There might be some Pong and Pitfall in there? Maybe?) In the tradition of Matmos' A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure and Matthew Herbert's Around the House -- which rearranged surgical and household noises, respectively -- Teamtendo lets all hints of the original source get lost in the relentless puree. Which is sort of an anti-gimmick.

You can find this and a bunch of other berserk MP3s at www.teamtendo.com, or hear it "live" when Teamtendo plays the Fire on Thursday.