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).
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