You can find Aeuk's 'Selected raw sewage works' from streaming medias worldwide. Just checked for example Youtube Music and Spotify and yeah, it's there as supposed, freshly squeezed out.
Check out the cover artwork below.
I crafted another lyric video for one tune on that forthcoming 'Raw sewage works' release. Video has a tracker view rolling for the song. Check it out <here> in Youtube or check out the video embedded below. Enjoy! :)
You might wonder what's up with a topic like that? Don't worry, I'm not writing about anything recent in this post. ^_^
I learned this certain lesson (for how important backups are) the hardest possible way back in the day, 25+ years ago. Before this incident I was carefree computer hippie who thought backup is something only others need while I don't. D'oh. Well, I can only blame myself for the end result ... and the best thing in this brutal lesson was that ever since this incident I've had multiple backups for especially my creative works & hobbies crafted on or through computers of any kind.
This incident, a fatal hard drive crash, happened around May 14th 1999. I wouldn't have the exact date unless ... I didn't unleash my rage about the incident musically, by tracking an extreme metal mod which got finished just some days after the disaster. The music piece is rather average death/thrash metal mod, but its' name tells something about my feelings then; "Struck into ground". Yeah. Somethin more about this tracked metal mod bit later.
What made the eternal data loss so painful, was that I lost so much ... beginning from the things which were less painful but still certainly painful enough - I lost all my computer graphics, writings, early digital camera pictures from mid1990s to late 1990s and so on ... but especially painful was in this case music, because I lost about 90% of all my tracked metal music creations from 1989 into 1999. 90% of mods from 1989 to 1999 forever gone, ouch! This happened because back then I had my mod archive nowhere else but on the hard drive which crashed (I had two hard drives in my back then PC - yes two, and still I was so carefree that I didn't have copy of mods archive on second hard drive). The 10% I was able to retrieve back to me, well it happened and was possible because 1) I had some mods online (I had been part of "tracked metalscene" since late summer 1998 or so) so I just downloaded all that I could and 2) one really good local friend & classmate of mine had a kind of "best of" compilation of my tracks from 1989 into 1999.
Of course the tracked mods I lost forever weren't exactly "musical gems" but they were mainly rather primitive, Amiga style creations done when the amount of channels (four) limited severely tracking extreme metal anyway. But it was crushing disaster and it's still kind of a pity as you know, the passing of time, from years into tens of years only emphasizes this: Especially the very early years, 1989-1991, I was tracking rather extreme metal mods and personally I knew no one else doing that back then. What I did, was really primitive and rough, and for example the case of 1989 what I wrote about in earlier post - visiting a musician relative of back then Amiga friend who analysed some of my extreme metal mods (and shocked my friend by saying that it's not crap but it has some genuinely interesting musical patterns going on) ... it would be so neat to be able to revisit tracks from that tracking era tens of years later and analyse them, perhaps even do some sick compilation about them, but ... it will never happen of course, because I lost everything from the early years except some occasional tunes my friend happened to have. Like this only (!) remaining example from 1989 <here>.
It is also kind of weird, that back in 1989-1990 especially (when bands like Napalm Death were my ultimate favorite) I tracked literally extreme metal - and from 1991 onwards up until later 1990s (around 1998) I kind of felt that I simply can't track extreme enough metal in a believable or enjoyable way. Of course I could as years passed, but it was curious time from tracking point of view, 1989-1990, with only 4 channels in use - naively trying to track as extreme metal as I could. Then I kind of went towards Amiga style heavy rock / metal for years until like said, late 1990s I started to go towards the kind of extremity I enjoyed (and the rest is 'Aeuk' history). :)
Well, what can you say? Backups, never underestimate their value nor meaning. It can mean a world as my case very clearly tells. Ever since that 1999 May hard drive crash I've had multiple backups for anything computer based creative stuff I've done. As for ending of this post, I'll put a picture below - which is a screen capture from the forementioned song "Struck into ground" from 17th May 1999. As was common in tracking mods (no matter the genre) I used to write stories into the mods. Sometimes short comments, sometimes longer story - and it's a longer story in this case, because ... of that hard drive crash, how else. Check it out below (click it to see it bigger).
PS: Checking out the short greetings list, there are two names "Violator" and "Shukri" (later Forhekset) which went further from just metal tracking since around these times (1999-2000) I joined Shukri's band Cauterized (which was located in South Africa back then) as drums programmer, back then Violator (Richard) was vocalist in the band. Cauterized was another twist to 'Aeuk' story for sure, and quite a long one too, but more about that in some other future post ...
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| Background story from 'Struck into ground' metalmod by Aeuk |
As 'Aeuk' was always about metal tracking, and usually went towards the more extreme metal, I tracked also lots of tunes that weren't metal at some point, mainly during the latter half of 1990s when it felt that extreme metal music was at its' all time low. And it went from low ... to dead, for some time. At least I experienced that era very much like this. Suddenly it was the exact opposite to early 1990s - no great death metal (not to mention grindcore) releases coming out ... hardly at all. And the bands which used to be great, went in most cases downhill. It felt that each band had to make their own flop(py disk) albums, no matter the metal genre.
I mean, I never lost my fire for extreme metal, but it felt that suddenly there is no good new extreme metal coming out anymore. Death metal felt like it was dead in the mid1990s, especially around year 1996 I'd say. Bands splitting and/or doing poor albums. Even that some very enjoyable albums did get released too, not many but I'd say for example Morbid Angel's "domination" and Malevolent Creation's "eternal" (even that Brett Hoffman wasn't in the band anymore) or of course Deicide's "once upon the cross". Funnily I had all these three as original cassettes (not LPs, nor CDs) ... Still, it was musically very frustrating era for many reasons I guess, and thinking afterwards it makes sense that it was exactly then when I tracked most of these early "non metal" tunes of mine. Frustration music, ehh? Perhaps it's not coincidence either that I started my polytechnic studies in Autumn 1996 and those studies took about 3,5 years altogether.
Around 1997-1998 I clearly remember how certain releases started to make me feel like awww yeah death metal and grindcore didn't die after all, hooray ... Releases like (not in any special order) Incantation's "diabolical conquest", Malevolent Creation's "the fine art of murder", Suffocation's "despise the sun", Mortician's "hacked up for the barbecue" or for example Nasum's "inhale/exhale" felt to me like this kind of music has been resurrected "back from the dead". Then even my all time favorite bands like Napalm Death started coming back towards their roots (I mean, I liked the mid1990s Napalm Death in some ways, sure, but even in those ND releases the "death of death/grind" was very much present, it was so different from where they came from). Not to mention that in the early 2000s even bands like Celtic Frost got reformed and I spent like 5 years following it all closely at CF official message board (anyone still remembers such things; message board!) how they crafted their final album "monotheist". But yeah ...
Back to the topic of me doing some music which was not metal to begin with: It was music that was more often hard to categorize, so I simply called it "non metal" during those tracking days. It was not metal, so it was ... "non metal". That side of my tracked music was inspired by bands like The Orb, Aphex Twin, Orbital ... electronic and experimental music in that vein. If I had to name just three big sources of inspiration & influence for my at times rather maniac "non metal" experiments, it would have to be exactly those three artists.
I started the so-called non metal experiments in Summer of 1995. I used the nickname Quetzalcoatl for the non metal tunes from 1995 into 1998. I took the name Quetzalcoatl from certain books I was reading back in those times, ancient civilizations etc. One local friend took name Viracocha the same way, for his tracked music stuff. Well, this nick which I used from late Summer 1995 into late Summer 1998 - it is just three years, but I created about 60 tunes with that nickname, quite crazy. Around these times the non metal experiments were at their craziest so to speak; I remember I had like closer to sixty channels in use in Impulse Tracker software. You have to remember the PC displays weren't like they are these days and the resolution was something totally different as well (1024 pixels at widest). Display was also physically small, from 14" into 17" ... I think I had 15" display back then. You could see four channels simultaneuously in tracking software, so being in control of closer to sixty channels was ... crazy. :)
It was mainly some local music / computer hobbyist friends of mine who heard that music back then (and I naturally heard their tracked compositions, musical interaction). It's crazy to think that I only made one or two non metal tunes in 1995, then perhaps few songs more in 1996, ... and a freakin' big mass of tunes in 1997 especially, tens of tunes. Then again I crafted notably smaller amount of non metal songs in 1998. In 1999 I changed the nickname for these experiments into Aztec Toll Qua (at the same time started using notably better samples) which used the exact same letters than "Quetzalcoatl" and did perhaps 20-30 tunes under that name from 1999 into late 2000 (some of which I released in online sites like Trax In Space back then). But in late 2000 it stopped, I simply didn't have any passion for continuing this side of my music experiments. One problem of it was that it felt quite ... directionless in a way. That I never set boundaries for it became the limitation ironically in itself, in a way. Not too surprising that at the same time I started believing I could craft "believable" extreme metal stuff so while these non metal creations stopped, it was exactly the opposite with 'Aeuk' extreme metal tracked releases.
Years later on three separate sessions I returned to all these non metal tunes, first time around 2007, then around 2013 and final session in 2019, ... and during those three sessions I crafted three "best of" compilations simply under name ATQ. These three compilations of rather primitive and at times quite weird experiments can be found via streaming services and you can check it out for example at Youtube's ATQ topic page right <here>.
There is also a videoclip I made years ago for ATQ song from 1996 ... <here>.
While it's mostly "non metal" you can occasionally hear hints of 'Aeuk' metal elements pushing through ... be it aggressive beats or some guitarworks here and there (this is most evident on last compilation "Final toll of 1990s" which actually has also some last 'Aeuk' Amiga style heavy rock tunes mixed in, too, just because they fit more to this "non metal" style anyway).
While I never continued this 'Quetzalcoatl' music, it kind of lead into some projects in the future or if not that, but at least some kind of inheritance can be seen in some music projects of mine ... like for example <Focus Minus> (space / dark ambientish experimental music project where I only used guitar and bass to create the sounds) or perhaps <Chipfusion> (combination of chiptune tracked music and retro synth kind of electro music, with metal style drumworks).
I remember later stumbling across the guy who was in the music store as part time clerk when I was trying that bass, stumbled across him at high school and he asked me if I'd gotten into playing slap bass / funk style yet ... I was like "ummmm ... nope, I don't think that's my style" ... and at the same time some tune from Pungent Stench's "for god your soul, for me your flesh" was playing in my head ... :)
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| Around 1991 with Ibanez bass jammin' some deathy metal |
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| Around 1992 with Charvel guitar jammin' some death again I guess |
Unlike with Ibanez bass, I don't remember any special events happening after dad bought the guitar to me. But there is a special event related to it, and it only happened when I sold this guitar away. I sold it to a guy who was a pretty good instrument builder / fixer. He phoned me after he had started to purge the guitar into pieces (as he was going to rebuild it from scratch). He went like "you can never guess what happened!?" ... I was baffled and couldn't guess at all. He was like I don't know if I should laugh or cry, but can you believe that this guitar of yours isn't actually a Charvel genuinely, but it's a guitar which has its' all parts from different brands of guitars, it's like a gigantic, sick puzzle put together! Wait, what ... !? Yeah! Not a single part was from the same guitar, but everything in it was taken and pieced together from different instruments. Really a freakin' weird case. Headstock, neck, body, tremolo system, pickups, knobs and pots, tuning pegs ... what a weird thing. And the guy who bought it wasn't pissed off at all, but he was like "I should go and hang this on a wall as a frankenstein of all guitars!" ... how fitting considering the sewer metal stuff I used it for in 1999-2000 or so. :)
<Here> you find a teaser track for the forthcoming 'Selected raw sewage works' release and also a visual lyric video at the same time. The images were created with AI with each pic based on one lyric line. Some tweaking and tuning, video editing and the end result is very descriptive for both the lyrics and the music which sounds like coming from the very deepest pits of ... fictional underground itself. :)
Below is the same visual lyric video embedded, too.
I've been working on the forthcoming 'Aeuk' release for about a month now, almost on a daily basis when I've had free time. It's been a really fun project, looking back at these ancient releases. The idea is not to "rework everything from the scratch" or anything, but more the opposite ... the songs (in this case dating to 1999-2000) remain musically speaking very much the same, respecting the very rough & dirty soundscapes. I haven't re'recorded any guitars nor bass, and I won't be doing anything like that. Instead I've emphasized the very lofi / garage soundscapes the way I like it - and as the idea was from the start to make this a very zombie & ghoul themed package. It will be totally that, 100%. :) What makes this even more ugly package (fitting to the theme of it all) is that around this time, back in 1999-2000, I was having a phase of trying to downtune guitars as low as humanly possible. It was bordering on something very ... zombie?
So, as it's about the so-called "sewer metal" (as I myself named it in the turn of the century already) and songs which led to Scumfusion - the zombie etc theme is more than natural here. The first sewer metal tracks I did were especially about stuff like this, tracks like "eternal souls below" or of course "zombies" (which ultimately led me to form Scumfusion). The thing is that only handful of these sewer metal tracks originally had vocals in them. Some had, I calculated that five of the songs originally had full vocals - and there will be 14 songs in this album. Some other songs had just some occasional growls and grunts but no lyrics, nor full vocals. What that means then?
Well, the biggest change in these songs is that now all of them have vocals. And I've re'recorded all the vocals for all of the songs. 3 songs out of the 14 songs have original lyrics (about ... zombies!) and as the original lyrics are very much over the top / tongue-in-cheek style, I wrote new lyrics for 11 songs in the very same style. :)
There is also one other change musically speaking: Originally these songs had nothing else but guitars, bass, drums (and in some cases vocals). Now I've worked and mixed in some horror / weird sound effects backing up the crazy little horror tales.
Some of the song titles have changed, too - mainly because
* The song titles go like "Title (short desciptive tale that progresses)" where the song title is the original song title and the rest is about the brief storyline inside parentheses. Actually the song titles are let's say about 85% in their original form. It's just I think 2-3 titles with slight alterations fitting better to the theme of zombies and stuff. For example one original title was just "stormed" - it's now "storm of the zombies (storyline blabla)".
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| One song title as turned into visuals with generative AI |
My first guitar in the 1980s was acoustic guitar. Even that was keen on expressing how it's not acoustic but half acoustic guitar. Well it was acoustic. :) But as child with growing passion for heavy metal stuff it was important that it wasn't "just" acoustic guitar which every family had lying around (my family, too) and which wasn't "metal". Well to my defence it wasn't your most typical Landola out there, but it was a nod more "exciting" model. Which was certainly enough for me as a kid at that point.
My dad bought the guitar from one older cousin of mine, who was back in the 1980s into playing all kinds of instruments from what I remember - this guitar was actually broken to some extent so dad bought it cheap. Really cheap. But the guitar wasn't broken as I got it, because dad had it repaired as good as it was possible (without breaking the bank with repairs) and I received the guitar as christmas present in 1985. There was one serious problem in the guitar though; I wasn't a tall kid, more the opposite - and the guitar was really large one for my size. It killed a lot of my interest for playing it after initial interest, but nevertheless I played that guitar quite some, after all. The playability wasn't good though, mainly because of one severe fault ... action was really high, partially because of that fault. And this was a fault which could not be repaired unfortunately - the guitar always had neck somewhat twisted / tilted (large crack in the root of the neck, put together with glue) so ... well, apart from that, it was ok and I was happy about it initially. Check out a picture below from the moment when I've just received the guitar for present.
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| Me in 1985 with my first guitar :) |
As a little sidenote to composing music: For me music is ... very much a feeling, energy, certainly not theory, nor really planned either. People are different of course; while some musicians might plan and then compose according to the plans - I am not like that, not at all. I don't and can't plan anything when it's about music, that's what I've learned about myself during the years. If I try going the planning way, my musical plans get trashed when inspiration hits me. The best music I've done is definitely music I've not planned at all, but simply let the inspiration flow ... and back in the past when I've sometimes genuinely planned some music and then strictly tried following the plan, I've ended up with music I really disliked myself. Funny but true. So yeah, people are different. Luckily so, would be a boring world indeed if everyone was the same.
.. and there it was, nothing but collecting dust until I returned to the summer cottage in 2010 summer and "rescued" the guitar from there. I cleaned it myself completely, restringed it, and played it during the early summer just for nostalgy trip itself. But I had decided that I'll get rid of it - just not in the shape it was. So then I did lots of surface work for it, removed the components, got rid of the tens of years old lacquer, grinding ... garage stuff you know ... and then I repainted it myself into mat black. Restringed it again and so on ... the problem with neck remained. I played the thing some weeks more and was like oh yeah, what if this was like this when I got it as a child, feels so much better now (I don't mean just the black color but all in all, I guess I made it more "mine" than it ever was) ... and then I sold the guitar. I am not pro at all in reworking guitars like this, just a hobbyist, but I think I did pretty good job. My dad still lived back in those days, and so I asked how the price I got compared to price he paid and the repairs - I got some more money from selling the guitar if compared to how much dad paid for it plus the repairs about 25 years earlier. Not bad. :) And the guitar got a new life, which felt really good, too. Below pair of pictures from summer 2010; taken soon after I rescued the guitar and then soon after I had reworked the guitar into its' final condition with me.
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| Me with the very first guitar in 2010 Summer |
Few words (or a bit more) about the demogroups I was part of during my Amiga years.
I was forming the finnish / local group I first belong and as with some other things (like childhood band experiments) it was again my idea which ended up being the group's name. The group was called Starline and it was formed in sometimes during 1989 I think. I even remember that in the end the final battle between name for the group was phenomena vs. starline. Both of them were pretty good, but in the end my idea won because of it's straighforwardness mainly - and perhaps because there was connection with space / scifi stuff (which interested me since elementary school years already). But yeah, the group was formed by me who became at first musician, later simply swapper as my mod music was "too extreme" for demo usage (which I was as narrowmindedness, it would had been completely different vibe within all the usual Amiga demos with the usual - good though - Amiga style music) and my Amiga friend who ended up being the team leader. Even that I think he wasn't labelled as team leader in the demos, but something about writing as he wrote the greetings list and "what's going on in the group" texts into the demos that were created around 1989-1991.
If you guessed my nickname in this group was 'Aeuk' you guessed wrong. :) Nope. Though it was something taken directly from my music taste ... as it was Ventor. Yeah, if you know your metal, you know where I took it from. Of course from Kreator's drummer. My friend's nick was Shade. At very first our "group" was just us two, but it soon started growing. The way how we got first coder (who knew his codes too), graphic artist (good enough) etc joining our group surprised us, that's something I remember from those times. And suddenly friend Shade had to actually lead the group, too. He did pretty good job, and soon we had Starline's first demo at our hands. I remember how I was at Shade's place around late 1989 probably and we both were looking at "our" first demo, stunned, and occasionally taking look at each others' eyes - and as we talked, we had the same feeling: How did we even achieve this, this demo is actually quite good, can you believe it? It gave us both a boost of confidence in a way, that we CAN achieve things we begin to dream about. It felt good, sure. And of course, you know, as we had our demo out, our "reputation" started to grow automatically.
We had contact details there, usual post address and stuff - as I was swapper, I started getting letters from people wanting to ... swap, of course. Swapping meant (in case if you don't know / didn't guess) "exchanging Amiga games and software" = there were lists of games and software, you wrote what you wanted, the other end sent you 3,5" disks via snail mail, and requested some games and software from you, and you copied some 3,5" disks and snail mailed the package to other side. Sometimes if hunting for something special, it was written into group's demo. You can bet my amount of 3,5" disks started to grow rapidly - and suddenly I wasn't asking parents to buy me C-tapes for taping music anymore but ... I was asking them to buy 3,5" floppy disks. Piles of disks. At first buying them in package of 10 disks, at some point even buying bulk of 100 disks (mainly for swapping usage). Actually I remember buying bulk of 100 disks quite often - it was cheaper and we did it as group, each paid for his share of disks. In the end of my rather short but intensive Amiga days I had at least 300-400 disks overall (rough estimate based on how many big 3,5" boxes I had filled with disks) and I can only guess the amount of disks I snail mailed here and there. I think we did several demos and the group did some demos after I left it in 1991 - but for some reason or another (which I don't know), my connection with Shade guy gradually ceased to exist around 1992-1993 and by the time I went to army (and came out from there) I had no connection with him anymore. Though I've chatted with the guy in last few years on some occasions and we've funnily both ended up living in the capital area of Finland. Even more funnily as he was team leader in that Starline group - he's high level leader in his adult career life, too. I was kind of "multitalented expert" in the group - and that's what I've been in my adult career life too. Kind of funny to think about that.
Actually one classmate of mine moved from Rovaniemi into Kuopio around 1989/90 or so, we shared extreme metal taste as well as Amiga hobby - and for following years (up until I sold away my Amiga) I swapped a lot with this guy too. Via snail mail, but not just that, ... this is funny memoir; his dad used to come to Rovaniemi at times, work trips and always when this happened, we made arrangements that I went to "fetch a package" from his dad at the office where he visited at Rovaniemi. Sometimes it felt like the office people were thinking that "what packages is this guy fetching from here, this sounds suspicious?" ... and it added to humor that we used to wrap the packages with thick layers of cardboard box and tape, draw some skulls and add "handle with care", "dangerous" etc texts into the packages. Heading to his dad's office place, "do you have a package for me?" ... "yeah, here you go, son sends greetings that it's good stuff inside!" ... his dad of course knew our jokes but the other people's looks at times in that office were sight to see. :)
Well, still something else about swapping - as snail mail letters started pouring and later 3,5" disks (and putting invisible tape into packages containing disks, over the postage stamps - receiver erased post markings and used same package for sending new contents ahead - for free) I came up with few extra connections so to speak. One such case was a guy from capital area of Finland, notably older dude than me, but he had ridiculously long list of software printed on paper (it was tens of pages long and the letter was bulging out because of it!). Shade guy was like "old software! old games! booo! you swap with him if you want, I don't want old shit!" and so I connected with this dude. Little did I know how special connection it was ... this happened in the early days of Starline and it meant more than few things for me, because we had good connection with this guy.
He ended up joining Starline too (yeah!) as simply swapper I think, but more importantly and this tells how trustworthy he was - I sent my Amiga 500 for him in early 1990 (big and expensive package) and he installed extra memory for me, for free. Yeah! Considering that I was teenager with no cash really, it was quite special case. He did it mainly as thanks for swapping so much with him and because we connected so good. And he really did what he promised, suddenly I had "super Amiga" ... then as I got second disk drive for my Amiga, the swapping game really rose to new level. :) But our connection went even further; not only did we swap Amiga software, but I ended up swapping also massive amounts of horror films with him.
When I say massive amounts of horror films, I mean that literally. And especially things which weren't available in Finland (or were forbidden) back in those days. I ended up doing finnish language presentation show at high school about horror/splatter films and I even showed the class short clips of films like Reanimator, Bad Taste, Texas Chainsaw Massacre etc ... ha! Class were watching my "show" in silence and some of them paled noticeably when I showed the selected short clips ... and I thought it was crossing the teacher's borders of what is accepted and what not, but actually I got a good grade for that presentation (and boy was I nervous about it too, holy cow I was ... having to not just speak in front of class but handle VHS equipment, my own edited tape, along with the presentation) ... I don't know if I had necessarily done this kind of presentation if I didn't have connection with this one guy who served me endlessly horror films as I requested.
And the story with this one guy does not end even there, our shared interest for "splatter and gore horror films" but as I went into PC (in Autumn 1991) you can guess who was the one guiding me patiently through the early weeks and months, via landline phone ... yeah, this same guy. As I got into PC world, we continued swapping software - all my other "Amiga contacts" died out, but this one connection remained. And it was a sweet connection too. There were certain thing in our swapping which I hold dear after all these years - our mutual love for Sierra adventure games. Back in the Amiga years I naturally had the latest Sierra's quest games through swapping, but this guy had them all, the very first Sierra adventures and I got all of them from him - and I pretty much played through all the Sierra adventures back then, from late 1980s into mid 1990s or so. You know; Space Quest, King's Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Police Quest, Codename Iceman, Quest For Glory, Gold Rush ... and if you know these Sierra classics, you know that some of these series had like close to ten games under the name. The amount of these adventures was massive and it took time and patience to play them through. Don't forget that there was no internet and you couldn't just head into Youtube and search for "game title playthrough" and that's it. Finishing a Sierra game felt like winning some trophy, it meant hard brainwork at times. :)
Words don't tell enough what kind of connection this one dude was to me, I actually met him few times (while he was on work trips to North Finland in 1990-1991) and he was as great dude live as he was before I hadn't met him. There is one perfect example what describes my connection with this guy, I mean all the "swapping" etc we did together within some 5 years period or so. Can you imagine that even that our active connection stopped quite exactly 30 years ago, I still remember this guy's postal address like my own name, from early 1990s. It's ridiculous but it is true! And I've even went pass his postal address / house from tens of years ago (he no longer lives there) just thinking that this is the place this guy lived during those golden software swapping years ... it's crazy. It's not love, dont get me wrong (I'm 100% straight guy) but funnily I could quote Kraftwerk describing what our shared connection was with 2 words: Computer love.
About this Amiga demo group Starline I was forming and part of ... actually I managed to find some infobits about it from the deepest pits of interwebs. :) Kind of funny, but yeah, there it is. Some evidence that I'm not just talkin' shit here but it was real. Click <here> so see some details. I am listed there (as Ventor), team leader too (Shade) and even that special connection I had, the guy who helped me with much more than just swapping some oldschool software - he's there too (Ss-data). You can also witness that I did't make music for any of those demos listed, even that I am listed as member in the demos' details. :) Too extreme ... :D
EDIT: Did some more research and awww shit! I even found at least one Starline demo from youtube. <Here> you go. :) Though I think that's from the time when I had already left the group, but anyway. At least you get the idea listening to that usual Amiga tune playing in that demo, why my extreme metal experiments never ended into the demos by Starline. :) If I find some other clips from youtube, I'll edit this part and throw in more links.
Well, enough about Starline, there is something else about demogroups I can tell:
The swapping in Amiga years didn't just mean exchanging games and software, but it also meant as you can guess from above; getting connected. In one case I got connected with german swapper guy (who was into extreme metal too) so well, that ... as he learned that I track extreme metal, he lured me into joining their team. I was supposed to track some extreme metal mods for their demos. It all seemed good, and I actually even started to track something for those guys in Spring 1991, and I was mentioned (as Ventor) in their few smaller demos and promise of "some different Amiga music coming" into their future demos - but what unfortunately happened was bad timing for this whole thing. I was dropping out of Amiga world when I was supposed to work for this thing. How can you work when you no longer have Amiga? When you no longer have no machine at all ... yeah. Of course I expressed how sorry I was about the situation and that there's nothing I can do about it - so that story ended there. This germanese Amiga demo group was called Trace. Unlike Starline, I haven't managed to track down any info about this Trace group. I think they didn't have good enough coders, the demo or two I saw back in 1991 was very small intro like thing with big promises. Perhaps they never got into crafting proper, bigger demos? Did it have something to do with me dropping out after a good start? I don't know. It was a pity in any case.
But yeah, my Amiga years had these two demogroup experiences. Out of these two, Starline of course was "the big thing" because I was forming the group and the name idea came from me, some of the graphics (like logo in the first demo, which I drew on paper - even that I was not mentioned as graphics guy) and because it was simply a great experience all in all. Even that my music was "too extreme". On the other hand, what sucked in Starline (I couldn't get music into demos) could have been different, all the opposite in Trace - unfortunately it was bad timing and Trace disappeared literally without a trace. So, there. :)
Finally something visual in the end - I don't have much at all pictures about me from the Amiga years really, I guess it was the teenager years and me not wanting to be pictured that much ... but I found this one picture (and hey I didn't even swap the face this time! only dull background ha!) which is from around 1990 so from the time when Starline had really taken off. Probably 1990 was my best Amiga year if I think about it. :) I remember this jacket in picture; shame that no one ever captured it from backside, because I had hand painted massive band logos there; Napalm Death, Deicide and Death if my memory serves me right.
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| Me in 1990 or so |
Few weeks ago the idea was born in Discord's "tracked metalscene graveyard" group (group containing about 20 former tracked m...
