TATICLINE April, 2000
// Monthly Music E-Zine 112 Subscribers
Table Of Contents
Opening:
Message From the Editor
Features:
The Meaning of Life
Ambience 2000 Pary Report
Columns:
Music:
The Listener -- Music from Darkhalo and Aisth
Retro Tunage -- Skyscraper remix by Necros / FM
Zen of Tracking -- End of Zen
Demo:
Screen Lit Vertigo -- Short Review of Some Ambience Releases
Line 774
Intro Watch -- Lost Vegas by 3State
General:
Call to Keyboards -- The Fall of Another Great SceneMag
Scene Dirt -- Rumors
Link List -- Get Somewhere in the Scene
Closing:
Credits
Message From the Editor
Big month for us all, but a very busy one for me. Its that time of
semester where everything is due. You wouldnt know it from looking at
this issue, however. We got five new columns, two new staff writers,
and 22 new subscribers. However, because Im behind in my schoolwork,
In Tune will not run this month. I will be back next month, hopefully.
Boy, is this issue huge.
First of all, the new stuff: We welcome aboard Tryhuk and Gecko.
Both come to us from previous work with Demojournal. For those of you
who dont know, DJ has changed its format. All its regular columns
have been shifted to Static Line so that the legacy may continue.
We also have new columns: Scene Dirt News and tidbits, Link List
Scene Related Links, Intro Watch Intro Review by Gecko, Retro
Tunage Classic Tune Exposure/Review by Tryhuk, an The Listener More
Current Song Review by Tryhuk.
This all has of course caused some minor issues with the format of
our magazine. For one, features are now printed before regular columns.
I have also separated the columns into categories: Music, Demo and
General. This just makes things easier to manage. To make navigation
easier, the Table of Contents above now has line numbers as well.
As always, I enjoy feedback. But with so many changes as of late, I
want to hear from you. Do you like that weve gotten larger? Is there
anything we could change, add, or remove? Let me know, please.
--Coplan
The Meaning of Life
By: Roz guest writer
I sit here in my bedroom on a cold Thursday night, with 3 empty coke
bottles sitting on my desk and a nice cigarette cough. My eyes are red
from IRCing for hours straight without blinking. But I am happy. I have
discovered the meaning of life within Oranges 1997 Assembly 2nd place
demo winner The Secret Life of Mr. Black. I discovered this fact quite
by accident one evening. After watching this demo over 25 times, I was
struck by an overwhelming sense that there was something deeply profound
hidden within this work. I decided to investigate. I watched the demo
another 3 times carefully noting everything that I could, the patterns
of the particles and the details in the pixel graphics. I still got no
closer to cracking the hidden message I knew was hidden in the demo. I
decided to take a brief break from this most pressing work. I took a
leak and headed to the kitchen to grab yet another coke.
Feeling refreshed, I turned all the lights out in my room, and sat
back down in my battered desk chair. Then it hit me. The demo was a
metaphor for the cycle of life. It starts out telling of a somewhat
dysfunctional family through images and sound, then goes on to display
the cycle of life in the effects and images: first, you are born then
you grow to be 12 years old then you go on to start your own family
eventually you become an old man sitting around drinking beer with your
friends and dreaming of young women frolicking in the water and finally
you die, which is so beautifully symbolized by the fading smoke Orange
logo.
Hidden in all this metaphorical bollocks is the actual meaning of
life: pi. Yes, pi.
What?, you say?
Pi i respond!
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510...! Life is
circular! PI! Now i challenge you to go forth and spread the word, but
more importantly keep watching demos!
NOTE: the author of this article was extremely stoned while writing this
work. please do not take it seriously. do not hire monkeys to take your
notes in class either. never trust a monkey. monkey bad. banana
good.
--Roz
Ambience 2000 Pary Report
By: Seven, with special guest star D-lee
-- Note --
This time Ive re-written this report at home, from the notes I
made at the party. This explains the random changes from present to past
perspective. I had hoped that it would be less chaotically this way :
As usual, times are in European notation 20:55 8 h 55 p.m.
Friday 10-3-00
Baxter/Green picked me up at home around 7 oclock, with the small van
from his parents instead of his usual red car. So there was more than
enough room for hardware and I decided to take my 17 screen along
instead of that crappy 14. We drove from Gent/Belgium to
Antwerp/Belgium to pick up Corona/Green, and went on our way to
Venlo/The Netherlands. Much to my surprise, we found the partyplace
without getting lost a single time :
20:55 : Unlike previous year, there was no queue waiting at the
entrance. We got a stamp on our hand, a paper with some info about the
LAN and more importantly: our voting key. In less then 10 minutes, we
had installed ourselves in hall A.
Let me describe the partyplace: Ambience is held at the Hogescholen
Fontys, a large school complex. Hall A and B are two rectangular
cafeteria-rooms, forming an L-shape. Hall B where smoking is allowed
lies higher then hall A, with a stairway between them. In the corner of
the L-shape, between A and B, there was a bar where you could order
fries, hamburgers and other junk food during most of the day. In
addition to hall A and B, there were a number of smaller classrooms at
the second floor area C, and of course the gym-hall which served as
competition room. The fact that this gym-room lies a few corridors away
from the scener-halls turned out to be a big problem, but more about
that later. Some other rooms in the building was reserved for gamers,
because Ambience was a Demo/LAN/Gamers-party, as stated on the website
Almost immediately we spotted Eggbird/Green, who was dressed very
original in a real kilt! you know, a Scottish skirt for men : Hes a
cool guy, but sometimes he speaks so fast Ive problems understanding
him. Hes making the music for my 4K intro, plus some tunes for the
music/MP3 compos. The tables were a bit small, especially for my
mega-monitor, but the network worked flawlessly. After checking the
deadlines for the compos, I continued working on my 4K.
22:01 : Bwiiizzzzz.... Speakers shut down, fans halt and monitors fade
to black: the first power failure is a fact. Actually its just a part
of the room, but our table is a victim too :. Just when I was typing
some notes for this report! But well, well forgive the organizers, its
just the start of the party, so its probably a misconnection or
something. And indeed, 10 minutes later everything went fine again.
Saturday 11-3-00
00:24 : During the second power failure :, I stopped programming
obviously and walked around at the partyplace a bit. In the relaxation
area at the second floor, someone had put an old 386 for a public
party-report: everyone was invited to write on it. I read the things
typed so far, mostly stupid comments in Dutch, till I noticed a message
from D-lee. Hes a Hungarian scener but lives in Germany at the moment,
and he has also written for DemoJournal like me. At the end of the
text, there was a large Hungarian message, and just then someone with
short black hair and glasses said Thats me who has written that, Im
D-lee. Wow, coincidence!
D-lee brought me to area C, to show some funny wild demos on
Magicboy/Liquid Motions PC he had only some harddisks with him. The
LTP 3 opening demo from Syndrome was really cool, you really should get
that one when you have the chance! He also showed some unreleased stuff
from Exceed, just crap, but it was much better than anything Ive ever
done although that is not so hard :. I just hope it will be released
someday. The Exceed joke-intro for Ambience didnt want to run on any
PC, not even on KBs where it had run before. It looked like some part
of the code had committed suicide :/ Now it was my turn to show D-lee
what I was working on my 4K, but yet another power failure made that
impossible :
Fed up with power failures, I reinstalled my stuff at the opposite
table, which had not had any problems so far. I was really anxious to
finish my intro, because I had learned from previous party-coding
sessions that no matter how much time you have, your production is NEVER
finished in time, and it looks never as good as you want it to be. In
the mean time I had a talk with Space/Inscene about Inscene 2000, intros
and the power failures that he was angry about, as he had lost already 2
writable CDs.
3:03 : Just found an extremely nasty bug in my 4K which I had decided
to name Turn It Back II, TIB2, for the reverse filter-effects in it.
I dont understand how the hell it could have run with it! Im so happy
now that Ive decided to ignore another, smaller bug : Baxter and
Corona have followed my example, and are also tapping power from this
table, after YAPF: Yet Another Power Failure. People start to get really
angry about it, which is perfectly understandable: how can you
code/compose/pixel/leech/game/listen to music without electricity ?
4:44 : Just walked around a bit through the halls, and I must say: there
are quite some active sceners, not just gamers. For example, Eggbird
tweaking his adlib-tune for TIB2 :. I missed some movies that I wanted
to see like American Beauty, but D-lee assured me that the quality
wasnt very good the screen was too small, and you could notice it was
an mpeg.
11:38 : Phew! The deadline for the 4Ks is over. I upped my entry, which
was only 3780k. Not enough time to add more effects, as usual :/.
D-lee and Eggbird helped a bit with the colors. Anyway, a lot of people
are sleeping now, probably in order to be fully awake when the compos
start. As the 4K-compo is only in a few hours, I will just stay awake
for it. In the meantime, Im gonna browse the net for wild-demos. BTW,
the power-failures are fixed. Good!
15:47: I was interrupted in my leeching-activities by D-lee, who wanted
to submit some 64K-intros and pictures. As he had only his harddisks
with him, and the entries had to be submitted via the website, he needed
a host-PC. After some try-outs, his HD finally worked more or less
together with my HW. According to D-lee, design is everything, so he
spent a lot of time writing beautiful FILEID.DIZs and such. I thought
that was quite ironical, because the 64Ks were joke-entries from a
Hungarian joke-group White Rainbow, and they consisted almost entirely
of bad porn :
After that it was time for the 4K-intro compo I had already skipped the
4-channel compo. We waited outside the compo-hall... 10 minutes ... 15
minutes ... 20 minutes ... Then the orgos came saying that the compo was
cancelled, cause they had not received any submission! Aargh! I had a
deja vu of Bizarre99, where my 4K was also lost on the network. D-lee
I went to the orgos, I brought my intro on disk, and they agreed to show
it before the 64K. Well, last year there were 6 4Ks, and as TIB2 is my
best 4K to date, I was really looking forward to see if I could beat
people like The Watcher/TUHB or Ritz/Revolution. But at least it will
get shown, so my efforts are not in vain. Now all Ive to do is stay
awake till the 64K compo at 23:30, cause if I go to the sleeping area
now, Ill probably stay there for the rest of the party :
21:27 D-lee came to say that the animation-compo was over. So I missed
it, damn : Its not a problem that compos are delayed happens
everywhere, every time, but it IS when the orgos do not announce when
they finally start! Either you wait for them in front of the compohall,
in a cold corridor, or you wait in the main hall, and you risk to miss
part of them! Im eating French fries now, while Baxter Corona are
making a fun-demo with the theme only for the money : They use only
their new OpenGL sprite-engine, so all effects are 2D. Too bad there is
no one to make graphics, so it doesnt look very spectacular.
The house music compo was delayed so long that I heard a part when I
went to watch the GFX-compo. In fact there were 4 GFX-compos after each
other: ANSI, hand-pixel, photo-based and raytrace. I thought it was a
good idea to split hand-pixeled and photo-based pics, but it wasnt what
I expected. Most of the entries of the hand-pixeled compos were still
based on photos redrawn, and maybe even Photoshopped, and the entries
in the photo-based compo looked more like website-GFX, with different
photos merged into each other via filters. There were some good
pictures, but most of them were only average.
The quality of the projector is good, but the switching is very annoying,
it went like this:
- Screen 1 Next entry: X by Y in compo Z
- Blue screen for some seconds
- Brand of projector that I cant even remember, for several seconds
- Screen 2 with the entry for a fraction of a second, spoiling the surprise
in the GFX-compo
- Blue screen again for some seconds
- Screen 2, now for real
Sunday 12-3-00
00:11: The delayed music-compo multichannel is still going on. I
really could use some sleep! Promise, after the 64 4K compo, which
should have started at 23.30 :- D-lee has found the TBL-people, which
he was searching for yesterday, but they arrived only now. I remember he
told something funny about them for this report, but I didnt wrote it
down so I forgot. Sorry, D-lee.
2:25: It was just announced that the 64K intro-compo, for which everyone
was already waiting half an hour outside compo-room, suffered from some
server- problems, which should be solved in about half an hour. Well,
not everyone is happy with that, but at least we now know the reason for
the delay. IMHO, they should have told this much sooner. Because, the
only thing that people talk about when waiting for a delayed compo, is
about the bad organizing :
And now a special guest appearance from D-lee! applause
X:XX: D-lee missed the 64kb competition... He was idling somewhere with
Jace. Now D-Lee typing... 1. thanks to the Aspirin pal. 2. That
Freestyle entitled trip-hop-dnb track by Bombfunk or who is played
in every 2 minutes somewhere at the party... A little boring.
Seven again: 9:53: The 64Kb compo was very good, although I missed the
first 2 entries one of them was the only non-disqualified intro of
White Rainbow : I expected that most of them would not be shown... The
ones from Aardbei 3State were very very good. People applauded two
times DURING the 3State intro, once when hundred little robot-men jumped
up and down, and again for a growing tree, made of TV-screens. Wow,
respect! Turn It Back 2 was not shown, but it will be shown before the
demos sigh.
I asked if I could test my 4K on the compo machine, and that was OK:
there were no compos till next morning. Alas, the compo-machine has a SB
PCI 128 not 100 adlib-compatible, although it claims to be, and all
the instruments in the tune sounded totally wrong : Other 4Ks with
adlib that I tested on the machine had the same problem. So, the largest
part of the time till now, Ive been coding again, trying to correct the
sound. Too bad this was impossible -. I proposed the orgos the swap
the soundcards, but they thought it would be easier to bring my PC to
the compo room. Which was OK for me : I got also permission to add
another effect to it way after the 4K-deadline :, because the
demo-compo would only start in 10 hours, and I had about 300 bytes
left...
As a result, Im now more than 2 days awake on a diet of French fries,
sugar and orange juice : Strange enough, I dont feel sleepy now. For
the ones that have never tried anything like that shame on you :, the
sleepiness comes in waves, up and down, and now Im just over a top.
D-lee is sleeping next to me, just sitting on a chair with his head and
arms on the table. Weird : I told him there was a comfortable
sleeping-area, but he didnt needed that 5 minutes later our neighbor
started to play house-tracks very loud, I think D-lee regretted his
decision. But he fell asleep anyway. Baxter asked if I could search
Corona, which was also sleeping somewhere. Baxter hadnt found him, and
neither could I, so he had to finish their demo without Coronas help.
15:00 : Big jump: all remaining compo have passed: all surprise compos,
the 4k compo, other system demos, and of course normal demos. The
surprise compos were cool: ANSIs for a BBS, tunes with AUTOEXEC.BAT and
other textfiles for samples some were pretty funky, pictures of the
ultimate gamer, effects with the names of all Ambience orgos etc...
Turn It Back 2 played on my own system, with the correct music, and the
audience liked it. One person I didnt see his face, so I dont know
him started to applaud when the reversed water-effect showed up, and I
really felt like At least one coder that understands how hard it is to
program that, with a big grin. For the non-coders: if you make a wave
on a water-surface, it moves along but dies out after a while. No matter
which form it has or in what direction it moves, you end up with a flat
surface after some time. So how can you show the reverse, starting with
a flat surface ? You dont know which wave you need to end with ...
think-think-think :
There were 3 other system demos: the first was Pavlov/Elitegroup, for
the Playstation. The Ambience rules forbid to re-submit entries that
were released before, but maybe the orgos didnt know it, or allowed it
anyway :-/ The next was a video-tape from a black/white LCD screen, with
waving clouds, Im not sure which machine it was made on ZX 80?. And
the last one was a Basic entry on a 386, that really annoyed the
audience. It showed lots of progress bars that increased and decreased,
some very simple effects, boring text... It was supposed to be funny
and it kind of was, at the start, but it was so way over the top, that
people would have attacked the control room, had it continued 30 seconds
longer : I found this hilarious, probably due to my lack of sleep :
Because I had no seat The room was full, and I came from the control
room to start TIB2, I was sitting at the ground, which is NOT a good
idea if you want to pay attention to over half an hour of demos. I
remember a blur of 3D rooms, spaceships flying over streets, blue
mushrooms, robots... Sorry for not remembering any names :/ Now I have
to vote, but I cant connect to the site. Maybe Ill have to kidnap
Coronas PC yes, Corona has returned from the unknown!
And heres D-lee again:
Y:YY: D-Lee last time scratching... So i gety some commercial videos i
like, A-Teens, Vengaboyz, BombFuck MC and will travel back 2 Germany
with the lovely Smash Designs people. Thanks for all people, especially
for the beer support much people, Aspirin 7 and G-Day free call on
his mobilephone. See ya soon dunno where.
Z:ZZ: Seven, back home because the power was cut after the prize
ceremony:
The prize ceremony followed less then an hour after the last compo, so
its a good thing I voted quickly. It started with that
Freestyler/Bomfunk MC music, which was without doubt the most-heard tune
at Ambi2000. Some people were so tired of it they started to boo.
The first half of the ceremony was pretty boring:
- And the 3th/2nd/1st place from compo X is Y! Give him an applause!
And he gets a linux release, some games, a Ambi2000 T-shirt and/or some
hardware! Do you want to say anything to the crowd?
- No/Thanks for voting
- OK, give him another applause!
After twenty or more times, this is not really exciting anymore :/ But
during the music compo, the guy that gave the prizes suddenly said Hmm,
Houston, we have a problem! It turned out they had by accident given
the prize for the 3rd place to place 4, for the 2nd place to place 3 and
for the 1st place to place 2. So the winners had to come back on stage
to switch prizes.
I had to go on stage once to collect the prize from someone in White
Rainbow for the 3rd place raytrace, because that entry was submitted by
D-lee which had already left after asking me to collect any prizes they
happened to win, and a bit later for the first prize in the 4K intro
compo of course :
Elitegroup won the other systems compo with their already submitted
Pavlov. They threw the games they had won in the audience which I
found sympathetic, but destroyed their Linux release right on stage by
jumping on it, which I found extremely rude. Im not a Linux user, but
Ive sold my version to a friend at university, which is way better then
pissing off the sponsors who are watching the prize ceremony too :
We had some more surprises: in the 64K compo, Lost Vegas/3State placed
only 3rd! 2nd place was for the Mekka/Symposium invitation intro, and
Please the cookie thin/Aardbei came first. I had voted 3State first and
Aardbei second, but the audience didnt think like me. Maybe its a
result of that eliteness-diagram that 3State showed in their intro,
with 3State being the most elite group and the other groups far below
them :
But the strangest thing happened in the demo compo: the orgos announced
that the first place was for Farb-rausch 02 by Farb-rausch.
Farb-rausch is one of the pseudonyms of Elitegroup, but before
Elitegroup could go on stage, people started to yell that this demo
wasnt even shown in the compos! The audience started to rumor, and the
organizers asked for the people who had voted for Elitegroup to raise
their hand. Only a few tens out of several hundred did so. The orgos
felt very uneasy, but said that according to the voting system, this
demo had 600 votes more then the 2nd Buckle 3 Arena/Liquid Motion. So
they gave the prizes to the Elitegroup guys, who werent looking very
happy either. No one did applaud when they came back, and after having
talked to each other, they got back on stage and gave their prizes to
the Liquid Motion guys, saying that next time, the audience should vote
for quality.
I left the compo-room with a strange feeling, and Im sure I was not the
only one. What happened? Cheating? Cracking the vote-system? Or too much
people voting tactically? Tactical voting means to vote your production
as nr 1, and to put very bad or disqualified entries on places 2 3.
That way, you dont give points to your direct competitors. If enough
people do this, results are totally worthless! .
Back in the main hall, we saw that the power was cut, so Ambience 2000
was definitely over. We gathered our stuff, said goodbye to our friends,
and drove back home. Needless to say, I was asleep in the car most of
the time :
The week after the party
Of course the demo-results provoked some emotional reactions on
comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos. People accused Elitegroup from stealing
votesheets from the gamers remember there were hundred of non-sceners
in the other rooms of the building. Elitegroup said they had 15
votesheets from them and their friends, and admitted that they had 9
votesheets from gamers. However, if 24 votesheets were enough to change
the results dramatically, then a the Dutch people hadnt voted enough
or b the vote-system was fucked up. Also the Liquid Motion demo, Buckle
3 Arena, started some controversy. The main part was a 3D fly-through of
a Quake 3 Arena level, to show off the 3D engine. As the creators
thought that everyone would recognize the Q3A level also from the
title, they did not mention this in the credits. Which caused other
guys, that noticed the similarity only after some time, to accuse them
from ripping.
My final opinion about Ambience 2000
Well, I still enjoyed it, regardless the things that went wrong. Its
been half a year since my last big party Bizarre99, and I had a great
time meeting old friends and making new ones. The network worked
immediately and was fast, the catering was open at reasonable hours,
there was a *real* bigscreen this year, and in fact the orgos were quite
helpful. Let me explain that last statement: Ive been in the control
room for testing TIB2, and Ive seen them working very hard, testing
productions, dealing with sceners whose entries did not work on the
compo machine I wasnt the only one who was allowed to use my own PC,
etc. But while preparing the next compo, they didnt pay attention to
the waiting sceners, which was a real problem.
So things I hope to see improve for Ambience 2001:
- no more power failures.
- better announcements, 5 minutes before the compo really starts.
- the soundsystem was low-quality, according to some musicians.
- prevent cheating maybe by giving votekeys only to sceners, the gamers
dont even watch the compos
- and more competitors in the 4K intro compos :
The Listener
Music from Darkhalo and Aisth
By: Tryhuk
-- Desert shades and Underwater voyage part 1 --
-- Music by Darkhalo --
Because traxinspace announced Darkhalo as artist of the month feb,
Ive decided to get two songs of his: A huge mp3 release called Desert
shades and a 2MB XM called underwater voyage.
Lets look at the first one. Genre of this track is Drum Bass
DNB, but from the first moment youll hear that it is more of an
ambient track with DNB sequences than simple DNB. To understand, you
have to skip to end of the first minute. Till this point it just floats
on ambient sounds, a little bit in the style of Fsol. Because it would
be too monotonous to keep only this kind of sound, Darkhalo puts in very
carefully chosen percussion. First come wooden beats at low volume and
set up the tempo. Only then comes the real DNB sequence, which gets full
sound right after a very short break. Because this wouldnt work for 2nd
time, he uses in the rest of the track almost direct breaks and,
thanks to the good use of the bassline, he keeps the beats on reasonable
level. Intensity of drumline is also reduced by higher volume and
activity of other sounds and again right after the percussion he uses
wooden instruments to make the break softer. He does it so good that I
had to rewind the track to hear how it was done.
Desert shades is almost 7 minutes -- a long track -- and it builds
chiefly on the changes of the moods which are very soft, but impressive.
If you like ambient music and DNB, you have no choice but to get it.
Todays second track, underwater voyage is a soft song with harp,
piano, nice bassline influenced by howie b, and a lot of underwater
ambience. From trackers point of view its nothing superb, darkhalo
uses a lot of sampled sequences here and that reflects in less variation
in lead instruments, but come on, its and ambient track. If you can
listen to music without watching how its done, you will enjoy it.
Song Information:
Title: Desert shades
Underwater voyage part 1
Author: Darkhalo
Filename: 12144-desertshades.mp3
4983-UnderwaterVoyage1.zip xm
File Size: 6514 kb
zip/xm 650 kb / 1888 kb
Source: http://www.traxinspace.com
-- Empty me by Aisth --
The intro of this tune kicks ass. Just imagine - organ-like sounds at
low frequencies with low volume and a voice of Alison with it. This
combination really provides a place for her voice to show what shes
able to sing up. But this is also weak point, because you need really
strong words that would get listeners attention especially when, for
most of the listeners, english isnt the native tongue. Also Alison
should have more faith in her voice and give to it more variation in
both frequency and volume. Because whole track as it is, it became more
an ambient song than ballad, but anyway it is good enough.
Song Information:
Title: Empty me
Author: Aisth
Filename : Aisth-Emptyme.mp3
File Size : 3034 kb
Source: http://www.aisth.com
-- Other Tracks Worth checking --
Willbe released new tlt mp3 track called Livedown. Chosen genre is
triphop and when somebody says this word, I think of portishead btw
roseland nyc live is in my opinion best live performance ever
recorded. But this one is different, it is more optimistic and it has a
lot of jazz and DNB. Nice song that wont excite you, but youll be
certainly pleased.
Two new tracks by Distance are out. Trax00 mp3 1st place 07/10/99
is a great Jarre-like pop song. The whole song sounds quite simple and
childish. But this sounds like a lot of his tunes, and trust me, you
will still hear it in your head while falling asleep. Other tune is
13/10/99 and its a monotonik release. Cant describe it, check it
out. Both tracks are mp3 releases.
As you may have noticed, theres a lot of hq dnb/triphop/other style
tunes at mp3.com/tokyodawn. Visit this tdr outpost if you havent yet
done so. I wont highlight any of the tracks because theyre all good
and there arent any that would be more exceptional than the rest.
My Weakness remix by Amino Acid is a remix of a tune by Moby. It
falls somewhere between mellow ambient and intelligent dance. Its
must have release from KFMF. 8:59/mp3/8340kb Another good track by
KFMF is Wayfinders trapped in a spiders web. http://www.kosmic.org
--Tryhuk
Retro Tunage
Skyscraper remix by Necros / FM
By: Tryhuk
Readers of Demojournal already know this column. Because there isnt
any space for old tracks in the current diskmags, Ive decided to give
it some space in demojournal. Unfortunately after few issues PS ended
his scene career and returned pretty fast and demojournal in the
original form with him. However PS and Coplan liked this column so
much, that theyve forced me to move it to Static Line and continue.
Every month you will find here a review of one of the old but good
tracks and if you want, you can write a review of your favourite track
yourself or just give me a link and Ill do it for you if it is good
enough of course.
Before I proceed to review, I have to react on a pained : letter by
George Marinov aka Stereoman of noise. I wrote a review of his old
musicdisks in demojournal82. I wrote that he is releasing songs in mp3
to protect his samples. George has been rightfully complaining. So I
need to make things clear. I remember that he said this then he started
releasing songs in mp3 format. no I wont search where it was However
with time these possible reasons lost their importance. As you apply
reverb and similar effects on your tunes, their size grows pretty fast,
and also with windows based trackers high end cpus start to be slooow. I
had a conversation with distance/lackluster about it and he was
complaining that two of his songs suck just because he ran out of cpu
power and he uses PIII at 500MHz !.
For those who still dont understand - this is my apology to esem,
because if he ever meant it seriously,the reasons for mp3 are different
today. If you musicians out there want to read reviews before being
published and avoid this kind of misunderstanding, let me/us know
please. Im quite curious on your opinion.
I would also like to ask authors of windows based tracking programs if
they can optimize their code a bit - for example noisetrekker eats
almost 100 of my P200 by interface only! For those who are interested
on more tunes by esem: you can find the homepage at
http://techno.orbitel.bg/esem or just by browsing
noisemusic.org/stereoman.
And now finally to the review phew:
Skyscraper belongs amongs the classics, which should never be
forgot. Original song mmm skyscraper i love you has been done by
Underworld and it is 2nd song on the dub no bass with my head man
album. It is a very progressive track which mixes techniques of techno,
modern electronica and classical rock, with many original parts. Necros
takes the original 13 minutes long track and compresses it into 6 mins
of pure energy. He takes the best parts and uses them as a base for
his tune, which sets up a very high tempo from the beginning and keeps
it through the end. It has a very solid structure, less ambient than the
original and open-eared listener can hear that in some aspects, it is
similar to the legendary Mechanism eight, which came out in 1996.
Youll immediately register high volume and stereo separation of the
percussion, especially bass drum which will dance on your speakers
almost the whole track. This is the main reason why this track looks so
solid and it also creates an interesting effect, where other sounds
sound like they try to get through a barrier made of the wide panned
drumline and that makes a nice tension.
I wont describe it more detailed, because there are only two
possibilities - you know it or you havent heard it and it would be
stupid to destroy the feeling of the track by detailed description. So
Id rather let you go and play this awesome track.
Song Information:
Title: Skyscraper remix
Author: Necros / Five Musicians
Release date: 09/15/1995
Filename zipped/unzipped: fm-scrap.zip / fm-scrap.s3m
File Size zipped/unzipped: 390 kb / 712 kb
Source: ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/groups/fm
--Tryhuk
The Zen of Tracking
The End of Zen
By: Dilvish
Well folks, after a considerable break from the music scene about
two years, Im tickling the ivories again, working on a new album, and
preparing myself to study music in school. The last couple of years
have been a major change for me. Ive been married, moved all over the
country, and finally come home. The marriage is over, Im done
pretending that Im anything but me. Im an artist a musician to the
core. My work in computers has proven to be good to me financially - at
a huge cost to my soul. My marriage prompted me to concern myself with
the practical issues of building a good income to support a family with,
but I tried to take shortcuts. I attempted to pass myself off as a
software engineer rather than a composer - and while Im quite good at
it, I did not like the person that I pretended to be.
Zen was my free space - a place that I could go mentally to remember
who I really am, and what Im really after. The things I discussed in
the column are the things that I explore in my music. I think they work
much better set to a wicked beat than being glared at on a computer
screen, so the last article will remain the last. I may hint at deeper
meanings, and spirituality in future articles, but the focus will be on
the tools and techniques for creating quality music.
I think I should explain a little bit about my music philosophy
before I go on. To me, good music always improves life in one way or
another - whether its does it by pointing out serious political and
social perils, or by making you laugh doesnt matter all that much in
the long run. If it has a lasting effect on improving life and society
in general, or even your mood after a hard day at work, its a good
song.
Its hard to write a song that does that without knowing yourself
well - knowing the things you need not necessarily the things you want
to hear and say. Whatever the case, there are certain qualities that a
really good musician must have. The first is honesty. You must be
honest with yourself. If things arent going your way, its easy to
blame everything and everybody around you, and forget about yourself -
and it might be a lot of fun to rant about them in your lyrics, but in
the end, youre hiding behind scapegoats, rather than arriving at
solutions. Songs like that may entertain - but it gets really old
listening to heroes whine about their rough lives on the radio day in
and day out. People need real heroes who arent afraid to take some
responsibility.
The next is charity. You will never understand the human condition
well enough to actually touch a persons soul unless you get an intimate
knowledge of the struggles other people face. When I say charity, I
dont mean that you should make a 2 per month contribution to the
Christian Childrens fund - I mean that you should be charitable with
your time. Go out and help somebody. Whether its the old lady across
the hall whos too frail to pick up her mail downstairs, or a friend who
needs a place to crash for the night, and somebody to lend an ear...
youll learn a lot about your own problems, and gain a fresh perspective
that might really boost your own creativity. And it just feels good to
be needed.
Heres one that I think just about every musician on the planet has
had trouble with at one point or another: humility. Humility is
understanding that you are human. You are not a musical God to
everybody around you - even if you are a legend. The world does not
revolve around you, I dont care how rich and famous you get. You are
still a human being and all that it entails. You still have to urinate,
just like the rest of us. When you start to consider yourself superior
- whether or not youre smarter, or tougher, or you can solo like Carlos
Santana on steroids - you put yourself on a pedestal. Great for the
ego. You just love that, Im sure, but when youre up there, the air is
thin. It starts to effect your brain cells - and it takes you out of
the loop. You begin to forget what its like to live the human
condition. You forget what touches a mortal soul since youre
obviously unaffected by those silly things... and your power fades
drastically. You also loose a lot of your grasp on the second virtue -
Charity. What do other people matter to a musical God like you, anyway,
right? If only...
In future articles, I might address anything from music theory to
mixing technique, to great prices on some fabulous audio gear. Whatever
I discuss, keep in mind that technical issues are just that - technical
issues. Music without soul is nothing. Cultivate your soul. Thats
where all the music starts.
Thats it for now,
--Dilvish
Screen Lit Vertigo
Short Review of Some Ambience Releases
By: Seven
Look, Im having a hard time with the Ambience releases. Several of
them do not run, like Farb-rausch 02 not enough memory, although Ive
589KB free or the Mekka/Symposium intro DirectDraw error, because my
card prefers 24-bit colors over 32-bit. Buckle 3 Arena/Liquid Motion
and Phlubby Gnome/Trepaan are both over 10 MB, so I havent downloaded
them yet because my account at University has a 20 MB limit, and its
almost full. The demos intros that DO run require DirectX 7.0, and a
3D card to run at full speed. Since I still havent got one, I cant
really judge the productions fairly 3 frames/second, hence the short
review. BTW, you can find all the stuff at http://www.scene.org, as
usual.
-- Please the cookie thing/Aardbei: 1st place 64K-intro --
This one takes a LONG time to generate textures, music, models...
Progress is indicated by a circle of 3D blocks instead of the usual
progress-bar. We start with a landscape in red mist, double-textured
with rock-textures and sliding lightbeam-textures. Particle-credits pop
up, and we dive in a nice free-direction tunnel with another
particle-cloud. Some abstract 3D objects are shown, like a virus with
long hair : and a complex blob-form. The best part is during the
greetings, where we can see several tens of little machines marching
over a landscape. They look like springs, always toppling over. We end
with some more weird tunnels, some intertwined spirals and a morphing
Escher-knot. The music starts very softly, very ambient, and goes into
normal house/DNB mode after a while. Theres a break during the
greetings, with only bells playing, which sounds really great, but the
main theme takes over too quickly.
Overall:
Technically very impressive, good design, nice music. Must-have for
3D-card owners
-- Lost Vegas/3State: 3rd place 64K-intro --
In software rendering, all textures have disappeared : This is
really bad, because Lost Vegas uses a lot of texts, which are shown as
textures. So Ill have to use my memory. It starts almost immediately,
no long precalcing delays. It features a lot of complex objects build
from very simple ones: a string of transparent cubes inside spirals, a
tunnel filled with of transparent polys, a growing tree that consists
of TV-screens. It is very original, also because 3State has a very elite
attitude, which they show in the texts. There is a part with hundreds of
identical little robots jumping up and down, and one big robot: IIRC.
The text with it was something like we dont follow the mainstream, we
are different etc. Another funny part was a diagram with 3D columns,
the height of which showed the eliteness of groups like Aardbei,
Elitegroup, and the largest column of course : 3State. The music is
in the intelligent dance music genre, very repetitive, strange beats
etc.
Overall:
Technically less good than the Aardbei intro, but very original,
tons of attitude, and some Danish design with according music.
-- Editors Note: --
Also make sure to read Geckos Column, because he reviews the same
intro.
-- Adelanto/Nostalgia: 4th place demo --
I had to fiddle with the settings in energy3d.cfg file for some time
to get this 6MB demo running. Its best to change only the bit depth and
the frequency: when you lower the resolution, the 3D parts go faster,
but the 2D pictures and logos are not scaled down, so youll see them
only partly. Adelanto features a mix of 3D scenes, with fuzzy grayscale
images between them as transitions. The first scene is a futuristic
elevator that goes up in a high-tech surrounding, with adverts for
TakeOver2000 a big party in the Netherlands. The credits are shown
with a horizontal blur, in a nice font. The other scenes are a landscape
with lensflares flying over it, a cafeteria and a cellar with some
crates. As they are static scenes, with just the camera moving, they are
rather boring. Also the lighting is not very good, but maybe thats due
to the software rendering. I prefer the 2D transitions to the 3D parts:
the images look like old photos, and are the perfect background for the
poetic lyrics that are written on them. The music is in an oldskool
style, which is no surprise as you know that The Rew made it. Ambient
flutes and bells waving a dreamy melody, with a good drumline: this is
music I like :
Overall:
The music and the poems are the best parts IMHO, to appreciate the
3D you really need an accelerator.
--Seven
Intro Watch
Lost Vegas by 3State
By: Gecko
With Psychic Symphony suddenly quitting the scene sort of, Demojournal
came to an end. I was asked to continue its intro review corner here. I
would like to know if you the readers are interested in reading about
intros at all. Besides, if you have found an intro which you think
should be reviewed, just mail me.
Lost Vegas by 3State
64k intro
3rd place at Ambience 2000
Credits:
Sagacity - programming
Sarix - programming
Stevie - graphics
Distance - music
Requirements:
Windows 95, DirectX 7
Download:
http://connect.to/3state
Lost Vegas is an intro made in the minimalist style, similar to
that of Blasphemy demos plus it has the special flavour of
3State-egoism added.
The music is a kind of mixture of noises, with a strong bass rhythm
and a small melody. It fits into the intro quite well.
High resolution is used, usually with a yellow-blue color scheme.
There are no still pictures, only some logos, and a weird font. The
intro consists of many parts, each has its title or a short comment
displayed. There is no story whatsoever, the parts are only loosely
connected by their style. Most of the effects are rather original and
look fine. Ill describe a few of them to illustrate the mood of the intro.
In the mass media part, small human figures are crowded up in infinite
rows, and they are jumping up and down. There is the effect which is
humbly announced as the effect of the year. It is a distorted tunnel,
with holes on its surface, and particles flying inside it. In the next
part they prove with a 3d statistics chart that 3State is the best
demogroup. As for me, the last part is the best: there is some foggy
terrain, and a fractal-tree of monitors grows up on it.
Lost Vegas is a fine intro with original effects although probably
some people will dislike it for its style.
-- Editors Note: --
Also make sure to read Sevens Column, because he reviews the same
intro.
--Gecko
Call to Keyboards
Wrapup: CDs in the Underground
New Topic: The Fall of Another Great SceneMag
By: Coplan
-- Wrap Up: CDs in the Underground --
Keskitalos Reply:
Right, the tracking scene is underground music scene, and as we dig
through to the surface were probably first going to break into another
underground scene, which is independent record companies. It would be
nice to hear from the tracking labels, such as Mono, Tokyo Dawn Records
and others about how theyve done in selling, marketing, promoting
real records. I dont wonder although I worry why Necros isnt
available in stores in a greater scale, mainstream isnt really all
about talent.
And heck, Id rather see a scene-born rising quality record company
than Five Musicians signed to Sony.
--Keskitalo / tempo.pkbrp
eino.keskitalo@purkki.mbnet.fi
-- New Topic: The Fall of Another Great SceneMag --
-- Editors Note --
About a week after this article was written, Psychic Symphony
announced that Demojournal will remain in existance, just a different
format than the standard. Well...so not to loose an article simply
cause it mentions DJ as being closed, I didnt pull the article. But,
Demojournel is still in existance, but more of a true news post.
Many people may believe that the Diskmags I prefer the term
SceneMags are all plotted in competition against each other. Well, as
I can very well speak for Static Line, and Demojournel, this isnt true.
Many also believe that these SceneMags are useless and, to be blatent,
dated. I guess you can see where Im going with this, eh?
Granted, I may have a bit of a biased view, but I feel that the whole
concept of SceneMags okay, Ill let you call them Diskmags if you wish
is essential to the development of a tracker. News, technique,
examples, resources -- all parts of a typical SceneMag. There is no one
out there that can convince me that any one of these magazines doesnt
have at least one of those elements. They exist, so use them to grow.
Now, a few weeks ago, Psychic Symphony aka PS announced that he was
folding up shop for Demojournel at least as we know it anyhow.
Frankly, im sad to see it go. Now Im not going to say anything stupid
like this is the end of an era, because it isnt. No one is going to
die because DJ has changed so much, and there isnt going to be a
decrease in Demo, GFX or Music creation. Its not a hole in the scene,
and this isnt the end of a world. The average scener will move on and
maybe occasionally make a comment along the lines of I miss
Demojournal. But, it is a lost resource. Lets face it, SceneMags
bring all of us sceners quite a bit of information that we wouldnt be
able to find any other way.
Its like comparing the year 1000 to the year 2000. News? Well, its
very easy to find out whats going on in our world these days. Hell,
all we have to do is jump on the net and we can figure it out. If
were not that advanced, theres still the television I dont know
about other countries, but just about every single home in the US has a
television. If you want a break from the news, thats damn near
impossible, because theres always someone out there that has it. Now,
in the year 1000, people didnt even know what time of day it was, let
alone what is happening halfway across the globe. But, if you put
things in perspective: WHO CARED about what was happening halfway
across the globe. But we live in the modern age, where it is very easy
to get across the globe, so perhaps we might want to know what is out
there. So, how does this all apply to the demoscene? Take away the
SceneMags, and you take away quite a bit of communication. Sure, we can
jump on trax, and figure it out, but wouldnt it take much longer to go
by word-of-mouth or text-of-hand as the case may be? Sure we can jump
on a so-called-news base like United Trackers, but guess what folks?
They dont know either, because no one sent them a SceneMag.
Someone asked me the other day when was the last time I released a
tune. So I jumped on my FTP server and checked: October 1999. In
fact, I only released four songs in 1999. That is way below average,
im sure. So, then the person in-turn asked why I dont make any effort
to promote the scene. So, I explained that I publish Static Line, and
he responded: Since when was a magazine contribution?
Am I missing something here? Because I feel insulted.
Youre opinions here, please.
--Coplan
Scene Dirt
Rumors
By: Coplan
Well, I guess I should explain this a bit. Its not quite a gossip
column, but it is a good resource for tiny bits of information on scene
happenings. Essentially, the stuff that isnt big enough to have its
own article will show up here. If you have any submissions, send them
to coplan.ic@rcn.com thats me.
-- Hornet Archive Domain Expiration --
Many of you may have jumped on the legendary Demoscene Archive
lately, or at least tried to, and found that you cant reach the site.
Its official, the Hornet Archive Domain Name has expired. This isnt
to say that the website is completely offline, but unless you know the
IP address, the site is unavailable. For those of you who arent aware
of the details behind the Hornet Archive, the songs will still be
available online through ftp://ftp.cdrom.com and various cdrom.com
mirrors. That does mean, however, that you most likely need to know
the directory structure, and a the filenames of the songs your looking
for.
-- Demojournal Changes Format --
For those of you who arent subscribed to Demojournal, Psychic
Symphony had a brief very breif leave from the scene. The original
plans were to drop DJ all-together. But, PS is back and kicking again.
DJ still continues on, but in a different format. Its pure news now,
and one can find out all the latest from Demojournal.
As for the regular columns, they have been shifted to Static Line so
that they can continue in their legacy.
To subscribe to Demojournal, you can visit their site:
http://demojournal.planet-d.net
-- New Group: Azure --
If you visit SceneNet IRC irc.scene.org often enough, and jump in
trax on occasion, you may have seen a topic one day advertising a new
group to the scene: Azure http://azure.zerion.com. Azure is focusing
on the music style popularly known as trance. Theyve already got a few
new tunes out there, so jump on there and grab them.
The group is organized by Wayfinder and Phace.
-- Immortal Coil Closing its Doors --
Okay, this one is sentimental for me. Immortal Coil aka iC -- the
group I have belonged to for almost 5 years now, and have organized for
a little over 3 -- the group that brought you Static Line has announced
that it will close its doors after a loyal 6 years in the demoscene.
iC will now only exist in the memory of the many tunes out there, and
within the website that will soon become a shrine to the group weve
got to keep our songs available somehow.
Having iC tacked onto the end of my name has always been an honor to
me, and a few others who ever passed through the group. But now, we
must all go our seperate ways. Worry not, Static Line will exist for
many more years to come.
--Coplan
Scene Dirt is a semi-regular column offering the latest tidbits of
information to its readers. If you have any bits of information that
you think should be here, contact coplan coplan.ic@rcn.com and offer
as much information as possible.
Link List
-- Editors Note --
For those of you who were readers of Demojournal, this will look very
familiar to you. It should be. With the change of Demojournel, Static
Line has made an effort to pick up Demojournals invariable resources.
This is among the first. From now on, Static Line will mantain this
vast link collection with one minor and temporary change: Personal
Links will not be shown within this magazine. Fear not, they have not
been lost, but they can encumber the magazine. Presently, we are
working on a web based database for these links, and at that point you
may witness the return of personal links.
If you think were missing a link, please contact me and provide any
information that I will need: coplan.ic@rcn.com.
--Coplan
Groups:
3g Design..............................http://3gdesign.cjb.net
Aardbei.....................................http://aardbei.com
Acid Rain..............................http://surf.to/acidrain
Agravedict........................http://www.agravedict.art.pl
Anakata..............................http://www.anakata.art.pl
ANDESA Soft International..................http://andesa.da.ru
Astral..............................http://astral.scene-hu.com
Astroidea........................http://astroidea.scene-hu.com
AtomiK....................................http://atomik.ini.hu
* Azure..................................http://azure.zerion.com
Bomb..................................http://bomb.planet-d.net
BlaBla..............................http://blabla.planet-d.net
Blasphemy..............................http://www.blasphemy.dk
Byterapers.....................http://www.byterapers.scene.org
Calodox.................................http://www.calodox.org
Chrome..............................http://chrome.scene-hu.com
CoPro.....................................http://www.copro.org
Damage...................................http://come.to/damage
Dance...................................http://dance.flipp.net
Defacto 2..............................http://www.defacto2.net
Dolops......................... ........http://dolOps.scene.hu
Exceed...........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/exceed
Fobia Design...........................http://www.fd.scene.org
GODS...................................http://www.idf.net/gods
Green.....................................http://green.dyns.cx
Grif........................http://arrabonet.gyor.hu/rattgrif
Haujobb......................................http://haujobb.de
Hellcore............................http://www.hellcore.art.pl
IJSKAST.............................http://www.ijskast.cjb.net
Immortals..............................http://imrt.home.ml.org
* Immortal Coil.............................http://www.ic.L7.net
Infuse...................................http://www.infuse.org
Just For Fun...........................http://jff.planet-d.net
Kilobite...............................http://kilobite.cjb.net
Kolor................................http://www.kaoz.org/kolor
* Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org
Kooma.....................................http://www.kooma.com
Label zero.........................http://labelzero.pganet.com
Mandula.........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/mandula
Monar................ftp://amber.bti.pl/pub/scene/distro/monar
Nextempire..................http://members.xoom.com/NEXTEMPIRE
Ninja Gefilus.........http://www.angelfire.com/or/ninjagefilus
Noice.....................................http://www.noice.org
Orion..............................http://orion.arfstudios.org
Quad........................................http://www.quad.nl
Rage........................................http://www.rage.nu
Replay.......................http://www.shine.scene.org/replay
Retro A.C...........................http://www.retroac.cjb.net
Rhyme................................http://rhyme.scene-hu.com
Skytech team............................http://www.skytech.org
Sunflower.......................http://sunflower.opengl.org.pl
Suspend......................http://www.optimus.wroc.pl/rappid
Tehdas...................................http://come.to/tehdas
Tesko..........................http://www.scentral.demon.co.uk
The Black Lotus.............................http://www.tbl.org
The Digital Artists Wired Nation.http://digitalartists.cjb.net
The Lost Souls...............................http://www.tls.no
TPOLM.....................................http://www.tpolm.com
Trauma.................................http://sauna.net/trauma
T-Rex.....................................http://www.t-rex.org
Unik.....................................http://www.unik.ca.tc
Universe..........................http://universe.planet-d.net
Vantage..................................http://www.vantage.ch
Music:
Aisth.....................................http://www.aisth.com
Aural planet........................http://www.auralplanet.com
Blacktron Music Production...........http://www.d-zign.com/bmp
Chill..........................http://www.bentdesign.com/chill
Chippendales......................http://www.sunpoint.net/cnd
Chiptune...............................http://www.chiptune.com
Da Jormas................................http://www.jormas.com
Five Musicians.........................http://www.fm.scene.org
Fridge...........................http://www.ssmedion.de/fridge
Goodstuff..........................http://artloop.de/goodstuff
Ignorance.............................http://www.ignorance.org
Intense...........................http://intense.ignorance.org
Jecoute.................................http://jecoute.cjb.net
Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org
Level-d.................................http://www.level-d.com
Miasmah.............................http://www.miasmah.cjb.net
Milk.......................................http://milk.sgic.fi
Mah Music.............................http://come.to/mah.music
Maniacs of noise...............http://home.worldonline.nl/mon
MAZs Sound homepage.............http://www.th-zwickau.de/maz
Moplayaz..........................http://ssmedion.de/moplayaz
Mono211.................................http://www.mono211.com
Morbid Minds..............http://www.raveordie.com/morbidminds
Noise................................http://www.noisemusic.org
One Touch Records......................http://otr.planet-d.net
Park..................................http://park.planet-d.net
Radical Rhythms.....http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/merrelli/rr
RBi Music.............................htpp://www.rbi-music.com
Ruff Engine................http://members.xoom.com/ruffengine
SHR8M......................................http://1st.to/shr8m
Sound Devotion................http://sugarbomb.x2o.net/soundev
Soundstate.........................http://listen.to/soundstate
Sunlikamelo-D...........http://www.error-404.com/sunlikamelo-d
Suspect Records........................http://www.tande.com/sr
Tequila........................http://www.defacto2.net/tequila
Tempo................................http://tempomusic.cjb.net
Theralite...........................http://theralite.avalon.hr
Tokyo Dawn Records........................http://tdr.scene.org
UltraBeat.........................http://www.innerverse.com/ub
Vibrants................................http://www.vibrants.dk
Wiremaniacs.........................http://www.wiremaniacs.com
Others:
Arf!Studios..........................http://www.arfstudios.org
Calodox demolinks exchange.....http://calodox.planet-d.net/cde
coders..................................http://coderz.cjb.net
Comic Pirates.........................http://scene-central.com
Demo fanclub........................http://jerware.org/fanclub
Demoscene.org news forum..............http://www.demoscene.org
Digital Undergrounds.....................http://dug.iscool.net
Doose charts...............................http://www.doose.dk
Dreams2 CD.........................http://nl.scene.org/dreams2
Freax...................http://freax.scene-hu.com/mainmenu.htm
GfxZone............................http://gfxzone.planet-d.net
Hugi size-compo...............http://home.pages.de/hugi-compo
Orange Juice.........................http://ojuice.citeweb.net
PC-demos explained.....http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained
Pixel...................................http://pixel.scene.org
Scenet....................................http://www.scenet.de
Sunray..............................http://sunray.planet-d.net
Swiss List.................http://www.profzone.ch/vantage/list
Swiss Scene Server.......................http://www.chscene.ch
TakeOver................................http://www.takeover.nl
Textmode Demo Archive.................http://tmda.planet-d.net
Hungarian scene page...................http://www.scene-hu.com
Trebel...................................http://www.trebel.org
Zen of Tracking.........................http://surf.to/the-imm
DiskMags / SceneMags:
Amber...............................http://amber.bti.pl/dimag
Amnesia...............http://amnesia-dist.future.easyspace.com
Demojournal....................http://demojournal.planet-d.net
Dragon......................http://www.wasp.w3.pl/pages/dragon
Fleur................................http://fleur.scene-hu.com
Heroin...................................http://www.heroin.net
Hugi........................http://home.pages.de/hugidownload
Pain..................................http://pain.planet-d.net
Scenial...........................http://www.scenial.scene.org
Static Line......................http://www.ic.l7.net/statline
Total Disaster...................http://www.totaldisaster.w.pl
TUHB.......................................http://www.tuhb.org
WildMag...........................http://www.wildmag.notrix.de
FTPs:
Amber.......................................ftp://amber.bti.pl
Cyberbox.....................................ftp://cyberbox.de
Flerp.....................................ftp://flerp.scene.hu
Scene.org..................................ftp://ftp.scene.org
Skynet archive.................ftp://acid2.stack.nl/pub/skynet
ACiD2 Archive.............................ftp://acid2.stack.nl
Editor: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan.ic@rcn.com
Columnists: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan.ic@rcn.com
Dilvish / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@yahoo.com
Gecko / Gergely Kutenich / gk@scene.hu
Louis Gorenfeld / gorenfeld@vrone.net
Setec / Jesper Pederson / jesped@post.tele.dk
Seven / Stefaan / Stefaan.VanNieuwenhuyze@rug.ac.be
SiN / Ian Haskin / sin@netcom.ca
Subliminal / Matt Friedly / sub@plazma.net
Tryhuk / Tryhuk Vojtech / xtryhu00@stud.fee.vutbr.cz
Virt / virt@bellsouth.net
Technical Consult: Draggy / Nicolas St. Pierre / draggy@kosmic.org
Jim / Jim Nicholson / jim@kosmic.org
Static Line on the Web: http://www.ic.l7.net/statline
ftp://flerp.scene.hu/scene/DiskMag/StaticLine
To subscribe to the Static Line mailing list, send an e-mail message
to majordomo@kosmic.org with subscribe staticline your e-mail in
the message text. You will then be asked to confirm your addition to the
mailing list. Expect a new issue during the first weekend of each
month.
To unsubscribe from the mailing list, send an e-mail message to
majordomo@kosmic.org with unsubscribe staticline your e-mail in
the message text. Your subscription will then be removed.
If you would like to contribute an article to Static Line, be aware
that we will format your article with two spaces at the beginning and one
space at the end of each line. Please avoid foul language and high ascii
characters. Contributions should be mailed to Coplan
coplan.ic@rcn.com.
See you next month!
-eof---------------------
// Monthly Music E-Zine 112 Subscribers
Table Of Contents
Opening:
Message From the Editor
Features:
The Meaning of Life
Ambience 2000 Pary Report
Columns:
Music:
The Listener -- Music from Darkhalo and Aisth
Retro Tunage -- Skyscraper remix by Necros / FM
Zen of Tracking -- End of Zen
Demo:
Screen Lit Vertigo -- Short Review of Some Ambience Releases
Line 774
Intro Watch -- Lost Vegas by 3State
General:
Call to Keyboards -- The Fall of Another Great SceneMag
Scene Dirt -- Rumors
Link List -- Get Somewhere in the Scene
Closing:
Credits
Message From the Editor
Big month for us all, but a very busy one for me. Its that time of
semester where everything is due. You wouldnt know it from looking at
this issue, however. We got five new columns, two new staff writers,
and 22 new subscribers. However, because Im behind in my schoolwork,
In Tune will not run this month. I will be back next month, hopefully.
Boy, is this issue huge.
First of all, the new stuff: We welcome aboard Tryhuk and Gecko.
Both come to us from previous work with Demojournal. For those of you
who dont know, DJ has changed its format. All its regular columns
have been shifted to Static Line so that the legacy may continue.
We also have new columns: Scene Dirt News and tidbits, Link List
Scene Related Links, Intro Watch Intro Review by Gecko, Retro
Tunage Classic Tune Exposure/Review by Tryhuk, an The Listener More
Current Song Review by Tryhuk.
This all has of course caused some minor issues with the format of
our magazine. For one, features are now printed before regular columns.
I have also separated the columns into categories: Music, Demo and
General. This just makes things easier to manage. To make navigation
easier, the Table of Contents above now has line numbers as well.
As always, I enjoy feedback. But with so many changes as of late, I
want to hear from you. Do you like that weve gotten larger? Is there
anything we could change, add, or remove? Let me know, please.
--Coplan
The Meaning of Life
By: Roz guest writer
I sit here in my bedroom on a cold Thursday night, with 3 empty coke
bottles sitting on my desk and a nice cigarette cough. My eyes are red
from IRCing for hours straight without blinking. But I am happy. I have
discovered the meaning of life within Oranges 1997 Assembly 2nd place
demo winner The Secret Life of Mr. Black. I discovered this fact quite
by accident one evening. After watching this demo over 25 times, I was
struck by an overwhelming sense that there was something deeply profound
hidden within this work. I decided to investigate. I watched the demo
another 3 times carefully noting everything that I could, the patterns
of the particles and the details in the pixel graphics. I still got no
closer to cracking the hidden message I knew was hidden in the demo. I
decided to take a brief break from this most pressing work. I took a
leak and headed to the kitchen to grab yet another coke.
Feeling refreshed, I turned all the lights out in my room, and sat
back down in my battered desk chair. Then it hit me. The demo was a
metaphor for the cycle of life. It starts out telling of a somewhat
dysfunctional family through images and sound, then goes on to display
the cycle of life in the effects and images: first, you are born then
you grow to be 12 years old then you go on to start your own family
eventually you become an old man sitting around drinking beer with your
friends and dreaming of young women frolicking in the water and finally
you die, which is so beautifully symbolized by the fading smoke Orange
logo.
Hidden in all this metaphorical bollocks is the actual meaning of
life: pi. Yes, pi.
What?, you say?
Pi i respond!
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510...! Life is
circular! PI! Now i challenge you to go forth and spread the word, but
more importantly keep watching demos!
NOTE: the author of this article was extremely stoned while writing this
work. please do not take it seriously. do not hire monkeys to take your
notes in class either. never trust a monkey. monkey bad. banana
good.
--Roz
Ambience 2000 Pary Report
By: Seven, with special guest star D-lee
-- Note --
This time Ive re-written this report at home, from the notes I
made at the party. This explains the random changes from present to past
perspective. I had hoped that it would be less chaotically this way :
As usual, times are in European notation 20:55 8 h 55 p.m.
Friday 10-3-00
Baxter/Green picked me up at home around 7 oclock, with the small van
from his parents instead of his usual red car. So there was more than
enough room for hardware and I decided to take my 17 screen along
instead of that crappy 14. We drove from Gent/Belgium to
Antwerp/Belgium to pick up Corona/Green, and went on our way to
Venlo/The Netherlands. Much to my surprise, we found the partyplace
without getting lost a single time :
20:55 : Unlike previous year, there was no queue waiting at the
entrance. We got a stamp on our hand, a paper with some info about the
LAN and more importantly: our voting key. In less then 10 minutes, we
had installed ourselves in hall A.
Let me describe the partyplace: Ambience is held at the Hogescholen
Fontys, a large school complex. Hall A and B are two rectangular
cafeteria-rooms, forming an L-shape. Hall B where smoking is allowed
lies higher then hall A, with a stairway between them. In the corner of
the L-shape, between A and B, there was a bar where you could order
fries, hamburgers and other junk food during most of the day. In
addition to hall A and B, there were a number of smaller classrooms at
the second floor area C, and of course the gym-hall which served as
competition room. The fact that this gym-room lies a few corridors away
from the scener-halls turned out to be a big problem, but more about
that later. Some other rooms in the building was reserved for gamers,
because Ambience was a Demo/LAN/Gamers-party, as stated on the website
Almost immediately we spotted Eggbird/Green, who was dressed very
original in a real kilt! you know, a Scottish skirt for men : Hes a
cool guy, but sometimes he speaks so fast Ive problems understanding
him. Hes making the music for my 4K intro, plus some tunes for the
music/MP3 compos. The tables were a bit small, especially for my
mega-monitor, but the network worked flawlessly. After checking the
deadlines for the compos, I continued working on my 4K.
22:01 : Bwiiizzzzz.... Speakers shut down, fans halt and monitors fade
to black: the first power failure is a fact. Actually its just a part
of the room, but our table is a victim too :. Just when I was typing
some notes for this report! But well, well forgive the organizers, its
just the start of the party, so its probably a misconnection or
something. And indeed, 10 minutes later everything went fine again.
Saturday 11-3-00
00:24 : During the second power failure :, I stopped programming
obviously and walked around at the partyplace a bit. In the relaxation
area at the second floor, someone had put an old 386 for a public
party-report: everyone was invited to write on it. I read the things
typed so far, mostly stupid comments in Dutch, till I noticed a message
from D-lee. Hes a Hungarian scener but lives in Germany at the moment,
and he has also written for DemoJournal like me. At the end of the
text, there was a large Hungarian message, and just then someone with
short black hair and glasses said Thats me who has written that, Im
D-lee. Wow, coincidence!
D-lee brought me to area C, to show some funny wild demos on
Magicboy/Liquid Motions PC he had only some harddisks with him. The
LTP 3 opening demo from Syndrome was really cool, you really should get
that one when you have the chance! He also showed some unreleased stuff
from Exceed, just crap, but it was much better than anything Ive ever
done although that is not so hard :. I just hope it will be released
someday. The Exceed joke-intro for Ambience didnt want to run on any
PC, not even on KBs where it had run before. It looked like some part
of the code had committed suicide :/ Now it was my turn to show D-lee
what I was working on my 4K, but yet another power failure made that
impossible :
Fed up with power failures, I reinstalled my stuff at the opposite
table, which had not had any problems so far. I was really anxious to
finish my intro, because I had learned from previous party-coding
sessions that no matter how much time you have, your production is NEVER
finished in time, and it looks never as good as you want it to be. In
the mean time I had a talk with Space/Inscene about Inscene 2000, intros
and the power failures that he was angry about, as he had lost already 2
writable CDs.
3:03 : Just found an extremely nasty bug in my 4K which I had decided
to name Turn It Back II, TIB2, for the reverse filter-effects in it.
I dont understand how the hell it could have run with it! Im so happy
now that Ive decided to ignore another, smaller bug : Baxter and
Corona have followed my example, and are also tapping power from this
table, after YAPF: Yet Another Power Failure. People start to get really
angry about it, which is perfectly understandable: how can you
code/compose/pixel/leech/game/listen to music without electricity ?
4:44 : Just walked around a bit through the halls, and I must say: there
are quite some active sceners, not just gamers. For example, Eggbird
tweaking his adlib-tune for TIB2 :. I missed some movies that I wanted
to see like American Beauty, but D-lee assured me that the quality
wasnt very good the screen was too small, and you could notice it was
an mpeg.
11:38 : Phew! The deadline for the 4Ks is over. I upped my entry, which
was only 3780k. Not enough time to add more effects, as usual :/.
D-lee and Eggbird helped a bit with the colors. Anyway, a lot of people
are sleeping now, probably in order to be fully awake when the compos
start. As the 4K-compo is only in a few hours, I will just stay awake
for it. In the meantime, Im gonna browse the net for wild-demos. BTW,
the power-failures are fixed. Good!
15:47: I was interrupted in my leeching-activities by D-lee, who wanted
to submit some 64K-intros and pictures. As he had only his harddisks
with him, and the entries had to be submitted via the website, he needed
a host-PC. After some try-outs, his HD finally worked more or less
together with my HW. According to D-lee, design is everything, so he
spent a lot of time writing beautiful FILEID.DIZs and such. I thought
that was quite ironical, because the 64Ks were joke-entries from a
Hungarian joke-group White Rainbow, and they consisted almost entirely
of bad porn :
After that it was time for the 4K-intro compo I had already skipped the
4-channel compo. We waited outside the compo-hall... 10 minutes ... 15
minutes ... 20 minutes ... Then the orgos came saying that the compo was
cancelled, cause they had not received any submission! Aargh! I had a
deja vu of Bizarre99, where my 4K was also lost on the network. D-lee
I went to the orgos, I brought my intro on disk, and they agreed to show
it before the 64K. Well, last year there were 6 4Ks, and as TIB2 is my
best 4K to date, I was really looking forward to see if I could beat
people like The Watcher/TUHB or Ritz/Revolution. But at least it will
get shown, so my efforts are not in vain. Now all Ive to do is stay
awake till the 64K compo at 23:30, cause if I go to the sleeping area
now, Ill probably stay there for the rest of the party :
21:27 D-lee came to say that the animation-compo was over. So I missed
it, damn : Its not a problem that compos are delayed happens
everywhere, every time, but it IS when the orgos do not announce when
they finally start! Either you wait for them in front of the compohall,
in a cold corridor, or you wait in the main hall, and you risk to miss
part of them! Im eating French fries now, while Baxter Corona are
making a fun-demo with the theme only for the money : They use only
their new OpenGL sprite-engine, so all effects are 2D. Too bad there is
no one to make graphics, so it doesnt look very spectacular.
The house music compo was delayed so long that I heard a part when I
went to watch the GFX-compo. In fact there were 4 GFX-compos after each
other: ANSI, hand-pixel, photo-based and raytrace. I thought it was a
good idea to split hand-pixeled and photo-based pics, but it wasnt what
I expected. Most of the entries of the hand-pixeled compos were still
based on photos redrawn, and maybe even Photoshopped, and the entries
in the photo-based compo looked more like website-GFX, with different
photos merged into each other via filters. There were some good
pictures, but most of them were only average.
The quality of the projector is good, but the switching is very annoying,
it went like this:
- Screen 1 Next entry: X by Y in compo Z
- Blue screen for some seconds
- Brand of projector that I cant even remember, for several seconds
- Screen 2 with the entry for a fraction of a second, spoiling the surprise
in the GFX-compo
- Blue screen again for some seconds
- Screen 2, now for real
Sunday 12-3-00
00:11: The delayed music-compo multichannel is still going on. I
really could use some sleep! Promise, after the 64 4K compo, which
should have started at 23.30 :- D-lee has found the TBL-people, which
he was searching for yesterday, but they arrived only now. I remember he
told something funny about them for this report, but I didnt wrote it
down so I forgot. Sorry, D-lee.
2:25: It was just announced that the 64K intro-compo, for which everyone
was already waiting half an hour outside compo-room, suffered from some
server- problems, which should be solved in about half an hour. Well,
not everyone is happy with that, but at least we now know the reason for
the delay. IMHO, they should have told this much sooner. Because, the
only thing that people talk about when waiting for a delayed compo, is
about the bad organizing :
And now a special guest appearance from D-lee! applause
X:XX: D-lee missed the 64kb competition... He was idling somewhere with
Jace. Now D-Lee typing... 1. thanks to the Aspirin pal. 2. That
Freestyle entitled trip-hop-dnb track by Bombfunk or who is played
in every 2 minutes somewhere at the party... A little boring.
Seven again: 9:53: The 64Kb compo was very good, although I missed the
first 2 entries one of them was the only non-disqualified intro of
White Rainbow : I expected that most of them would not be shown... The
ones from Aardbei 3State were very very good. People applauded two
times DURING the 3State intro, once when hundred little robot-men jumped
up and down, and again for a growing tree, made of TV-screens. Wow,
respect! Turn It Back 2 was not shown, but it will be shown before the
demos sigh.
I asked if I could test my 4K on the compo machine, and that was OK:
there were no compos till next morning. Alas, the compo-machine has a SB
PCI 128 not 100 adlib-compatible, although it claims to be, and all
the instruments in the tune sounded totally wrong : Other 4Ks with
adlib that I tested on the machine had the same problem. So, the largest
part of the time till now, Ive been coding again, trying to correct the
sound. Too bad this was impossible -. I proposed the orgos the swap
the soundcards, but they thought it would be easier to bring my PC to
the compo room. Which was OK for me : I got also permission to add
another effect to it way after the 4K-deadline :, because the
demo-compo would only start in 10 hours, and I had about 300 bytes
left...
As a result, Im now more than 2 days awake on a diet of French fries,
sugar and orange juice : Strange enough, I dont feel sleepy now. For
the ones that have never tried anything like that shame on you :, the
sleepiness comes in waves, up and down, and now Im just over a top.
D-lee is sleeping next to me, just sitting on a chair with his head and
arms on the table. Weird : I told him there was a comfortable
sleeping-area, but he didnt needed that 5 minutes later our neighbor
started to play house-tracks very loud, I think D-lee regretted his
decision. But he fell asleep anyway. Baxter asked if I could search
Corona, which was also sleeping somewhere. Baxter hadnt found him, and
neither could I, so he had to finish their demo without Coronas help.
15:00 : Big jump: all remaining compo have passed: all surprise compos,
the 4k compo, other system demos, and of course normal demos. The
surprise compos were cool: ANSIs for a BBS, tunes with AUTOEXEC.BAT and
other textfiles for samples some were pretty funky, pictures of the
ultimate gamer, effects with the names of all Ambience orgos etc...
Turn It Back 2 played on my own system, with the correct music, and the
audience liked it. One person I didnt see his face, so I dont know
him started to applaud when the reversed water-effect showed up, and I
really felt like At least one coder that understands how hard it is to
program that, with a big grin. For the non-coders: if you make a wave
on a water-surface, it moves along but dies out after a while. No matter
which form it has or in what direction it moves, you end up with a flat
surface after some time. So how can you show the reverse, starting with
a flat surface ? You dont know which wave you need to end with ...
think-think-think :
There were 3 other system demos: the first was Pavlov/Elitegroup, for
the Playstation. The Ambience rules forbid to re-submit entries that
were released before, but maybe the orgos didnt know it, or allowed it
anyway :-/ The next was a video-tape from a black/white LCD screen, with
waving clouds, Im not sure which machine it was made on ZX 80?. And
the last one was a Basic entry on a 386, that really annoyed the
audience. It showed lots of progress bars that increased and decreased,
some very simple effects, boring text... It was supposed to be funny
and it kind of was, at the start, but it was so way over the top, that
people would have attacked the control room, had it continued 30 seconds
longer : I found this hilarious, probably due to my lack of sleep :
Because I had no seat The room was full, and I came from the control
room to start TIB2, I was sitting at the ground, which is NOT a good
idea if you want to pay attention to over half an hour of demos. I
remember a blur of 3D rooms, spaceships flying over streets, blue
mushrooms, robots... Sorry for not remembering any names :/ Now I have
to vote, but I cant connect to the site. Maybe Ill have to kidnap
Coronas PC yes, Corona has returned from the unknown!
And heres D-lee again:
Y:YY: D-Lee last time scratching... So i gety some commercial videos i
like, A-Teens, Vengaboyz, BombFuck MC and will travel back 2 Germany
with the lovely Smash Designs people. Thanks for all people, especially
for the beer support much people, Aspirin 7 and G-Day free call on
his mobilephone. See ya soon dunno where.
Z:ZZ: Seven, back home because the power was cut after the prize
ceremony:
The prize ceremony followed less then an hour after the last compo, so
its a good thing I voted quickly. It started with that
Freestyler/Bomfunk MC music, which was without doubt the most-heard tune
at Ambi2000. Some people were so tired of it they started to boo.
The first half of the ceremony was pretty boring:
- And the 3th/2nd/1st place from compo X is Y! Give him an applause!
And he gets a linux release, some games, a Ambi2000 T-shirt and/or some
hardware! Do you want to say anything to the crowd?
- No/Thanks for voting
- OK, give him another applause!
After twenty or more times, this is not really exciting anymore :/ But
during the music compo, the guy that gave the prizes suddenly said Hmm,
Houston, we have a problem! It turned out they had by accident given
the prize for the 3rd place to place 4, for the 2nd place to place 3 and
for the 1st place to place 2. So the winners had to come back on stage
to switch prizes.
I had to go on stage once to collect the prize from someone in White
Rainbow for the 3rd place raytrace, because that entry was submitted by
D-lee which had already left after asking me to collect any prizes they
happened to win, and a bit later for the first prize in the 4K intro
compo of course :
Elitegroup won the other systems compo with their already submitted
Pavlov. They threw the games they had won in the audience which I
found sympathetic, but destroyed their Linux release right on stage by
jumping on it, which I found extremely rude. Im not a Linux user, but
Ive sold my version to a friend at university, which is way better then
pissing off the sponsors who are watching the prize ceremony too :
We had some more surprises: in the 64K compo, Lost Vegas/3State placed
only 3rd! 2nd place was for the Mekka/Symposium invitation intro, and
Please the cookie thin/Aardbei came first. I had voted 3State first and
Aardbei second, but the audience didnt think like me. Maybe its a
result of that eliteness-diagram that 3State showed in their intro,
with 3State being the most elite group and the other groups far below
them :
But the strangest thing happened in the demo compo: the orgos announced
that the first place was for Farb-rausch 02 by Farb-rausch.
Farb-rausch is one of the pseudonyms of Elitegroup, but before
Elitegroup could go on stage, people started to yell that this demo
wasnt even shown in the compos! The audience started to rumor, and the
organizers asked for the people who had voted for Elitegroup to raise
their hand. Only a few tens out of several hundred did so. The orgos
felt very uneasy, but said that according to the voting system, this
demo had 600 votes more then the 2nd Buckle 3 Arena/Liquid Motion. So
they gave the prizes to the Elitegroup guys, who werent looking very
happy either. No one did applaud when they came back, and after having
talked to each other, they got back on stage and gave their prizes to
the Liquid Motion guys, saying that next time, the audience should vote
for quality.
I left the compo-room with a strange feeling, and Im sure I was not the
only one. What happened? Cheating? Cracking the vote-system? Or too much
people voting tactically? Tactical voting means to vote your production
as nr 1, and to put very bad or disqualified entries on places 2 3.
That way, you dont give points to your direct competitors. If enough
people do this, results are totally worthless! .
Back in the main hall, we saw that the power was cut, so Ambience 2000
was definitely over. We gathered our stuff, said goodbye to our friends,
and drove back home. Needless to say, I was asleep in the car most of
the time :
The week after the party
Of course the demo-results provoked some emotional reactions on
comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos. People accused Elitegroup from stealing
votesheets from the gamers remember there were hundred of non-sceners
in the other rooms of the building. Elitegroup said they had 15
votesheets from them and their friends, and admitted that they had 9
votesheets from gamers. However, if 24 votesheets were enough to change
the results dramatically, then a the Dutch people hadnt voted enough
or b the vote-system was fucked up. Also the Liquid Motion demo, Buckle
3 Arena, started some controversy. The main part was a 3D fly-through of
a Quake 3 Arena level, to show off the 3D engine. As the creators
thought that everyone would recognize the Q3A level also from the
title, they did not mention this in the credits. Which caused other
guys, that noticed the similarity only after some time, to accuse them
from ripping.
My final opinion about Ambience 2000
Well, I still enjoyed it, regardless the things that went wrong. Its
been half a year since my last big party Bizarre99, and I had a great
time meeting old friends and making new ones. The network worked
immediately and was fast, the catering was open at reasonable hours,
there was a *real* bigscreen this year, and in fact the orgos were quite
helpful. Let me explain that last statement: Ive been in the control
room for testing TIB2, and Ive seen them working very hard, testing
productions, dealing with sceners whose entries did not work on the
compo machine I wasnt the only one who was allowed to use my own PC,
etc. But while preparing the next compo, they didnt pay attention to
the waiting sceners, which was a real problem.
So things I hope to see improve for Ambience 2001:
- no more power failures.
- better announcements, 5 minutes before the compo really starts.
- the soundsystem was low-quality, according to some musicians.
- prevent cheating maybe by giving votekeys only to sceners, the gamers
dont even watch the compos
- and more competitors in the 4K intro compos :
The Listener
Music from Darkhalo and Aisth
By: Tryhuk
-- Desert shades and Underwater voyage part 1 --
-- Music by Darkhalo --
Because traxinspace announced Darkhalo as artist of the month feb,
Ive decided to get two songs of his: A huge mp3 release called Desert
shades and a 2MB XM called underwater voyage.
Lets look at the first one. Genre of this track is Drum Bass
DNB, but from the first moment youll hear that it is more of an
ambient track with DNB sequences than simple DNB. To understand, you
have to skip to end of the first minute. Till this point it just floats
on ambient sounds, a little bit in the style of Fsol. Because it would
be too monotonous to keep only this kind of sound, Darkhalo puts in very
carefully chosen percussion. First come wooden beats at low volume and
set up the tempo. Only then comes the real DNB sequence, which gets full
sound right after a very short break. Because this wouldnt work for 2nd
time, he uses in the rest of the track almost direct breaks and,
thanks to the good use of the bassline, he keeps the beats on reasonable
level. Intensity of drumline is also reduced by higher volume and
activity of other sounds and again right after the percussion he uses
wooden instruments to make the break softer. He does it so good that I
had to rewind the track to hear how it was done.
Desert shades is almost 7 minutes -- a long track -- and it builds
chiefly on the changes of the moods which are very soft, but impressive.
If you like ambient music and DNB, you have no choice but to get it.
Todays second track, underwater voyage is a soft song with harp,
piano, nice bassline influenced by howie b, and a lot of underwater
ambience. From trackers point of view its nothing superb, darkhalo
uses a lot of sampled sequences here and that reflects in less variation
in lead instruments, but come on, its and ambient track. If you can
listen to music without watching how its done, you will enjoy it.
Song Information:
Title: Desert shades
Underwater voyage part 1
Author: Darkhalo
Filename: 12144-desertshades.mp3
4983-UnderwaterVoyage1.zip xm
File Size: 6514 kb
zip/xm 650 kb / 1888 kb
Source: http://www.traxinspace.com
-- Empty me by Aisth --
The intro of this tune kicks ass. Just imagine - organ-like sounds at
low frequencies with low volume and a voice of Alison with it. This
combination really provides a place for her voice to show what shes
able to sing up. But this is also weak point, because you need really
strong words that would get listeners attention especially when, for
most of the listeners, english isnt the native tongue. Also Alison
should have more faith in her voice and give to it more variation in
both frequency and volume. Because whole track as it is, it became more
an ambient song than ballad, but anyway it is good enough.
Song Information:
Title: Empty me
Author: Aisth
Filename : Aisth-Emptyme.mp3
File Size : 3034 kb
Source: http://www.aisth.com
-- Other Tracks Worth checking --
Willbe released new tlt mp3 track called Livedown. Chosen genre is
triphop and when somebody says this word, I think of portishead btw
roseland nyc live is in my opinion best live performance ever
recorded. But this one is different, it is more optimistic and it has a
lot of jazz and DNB. Nice song that wont excite you, but youll be
certainly pleased.
Two new tracks by Distance are out. Trax00 mp3 1st place 07/10/99
is a great Jarre-like pop song. The whole song sounds quite simple and
childish. But this sounds like a lot of his tunes, and trust me, you
will still hear it in your head while falling asleep. Other tune is
13/10/99 and its a monotonik release. Cant describe it, check it
out. Both tracks are mp3 releases.
As you may have noticed, theres a lot of hq dnb/triphop/other style
tunes at mp3.com/tokyodawn. Visit this tdr outpost if you havent yet
done so. I wont highlight any of the tracks because theyre all good
and there arent any that would be more exceptional than the rest.
My Weakness remix by Amino Acid is a remix of a tune by Moby. It
falls somewhere between mellow ambient and intelligent dance. Its
must have release from KFMF. 8:59/mp3/8340kb Another good track by
KFMF is Wayfinders trapped in a spiders web. http://www.kosmic.org
--Tryhuk
Retro Tunage
Skyscraper remix by Necros / FM
By: Tryhuk
Readers of Demojournal already know this column. Because there isnt
any space for old tracks in the current diskmags, Ive decided to give
it some space in demojournal. Unfortunately after few issues PS ended
his scene career and returned pretty fast and demojournal in the
original form with him. However PS and Coplan liked this column so
much, that theyve forced me to move it to Static Line and continue.
Every month you will find here a review of one of the old but good
tracks and if you want, you can write a review of your favourite track
yourself or just give me a link and Ill do it for you if it is good
enough of course.
Before I proceed to review, I have to react on a pained : letter by
George Marinov aka Stereoman of noise. I wrote a review of his old
musicdisks in demojournal82. I wrote that he is releasing songs in mp3
to protect his samples. George has been rightfully complaining. So I
need to make things clear. I remember that he said this then he started
releasing songs in mp3 format. no I wont search where it was However
with time these possible reasons lost their importance. As you apply
reverb and similar effects on your tunes, their size grows pretty fast,
and also with windows based trackers high end cpus start to be slooow. I
had a conversation with distance/lackluster about it and he was
complaining that two of his songs suck just because he ran out of cpu
power and he uses PIII at 500MHz !.
For those who still dont understand - this is my apology to esem,
because if he ever meant it seriously,the reasons for mp3 are different
today. If you musicians out there want to read reviews before being
published and avoid this kind of misunderstanding, let me/us know
please. Im quite curious on your opinion.
I would also like to ask authors of windows based tracking programs if
they can optimize their code a bit - for example noisetrekker eats
almost 100 of my P200 by interface only! For those who are interested
on more tunes by esem: you can find the homepage at
http://techno.orbitel.bg/esem or just by browsing
noisemusic.org/stereoman.
And now finally to the review phew:
Skyscraper belongs amongs the classics, which should never be
forgot. Original song mmm skyscraper i love you has been done by
Underworld and it is 2nd song on the dub no bass with my head man
album. It is a very progressive track which mixes techniques of techno,
modern electronica and classical rock, with many original parts. Necros
takes the original 13 minutes long track and compresses it into 6 mins
of pure energy. He takes the best parts and uses them as a base for
his tune, which sets up a very high tempo from the beginning and keeps
it through the end. It has a very solid structure, less ambient than the
original and open-eared listener can hear that in some aspects, it is
similar to the legendary Mechanism eight, which came out in 1996.
Youll immediately register high volume and stereo separation of the
percussion, especially bass drum which will dance on your speakers
almost the whole track. This is the main reason why this track looks so
solid and it also creates an interesting effect, where other sounds
sound like they try to get through a barrier made of the wide panned
drumline and that makes a nice tension.
I wont describe it more detailed, because there are only two
possibilities - you know it or you havent heard it and it would be
stupid to destroy the feeling of the track by detailed description. So
Id rather let you go and play this awesome track.
Song Information:
Title: Skyscraper remix
Author: Necros / Five Musicians
Release date: 09/15/1995
Filename zipped/unzipped: fm-scrap.zip / fm-scrap.s3m
File Size zipped/unzipped: 390 kb / 712 kb
Source: ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/groups/fm
--Tryhuk
The Zen of Tracking
The End of Zen
By: Dilvish
Well folks, after a considerable break from the music scene about
two years, Im tickling the ivories again, working on a new album, and
preparing myself to study music in school. The last couple of years
have been a major change for me. Ive been married, moved all over the
country, and finally come home. The marriage is over, Im done
pretending that Im anything but me. Im an artist a musician to the
core. My work in computers has proven to be good to me financially - at
a huge cost to my soul. My marriage prompted me to concern myself with
the practical issues of building a good income to support a family with,
but I tried to take shortcuts. I attempted to pass myself off as a
software engineer rather than a composer - and while Im quite good at
it, I did not like the person that I pretended to be.
Zen was my free space - a place that I could go mentally to remember
who I really am, and what Im really after. The things I discussed in
the column are the things that I explore in my music. I think they work
much better set to a wicked beat than being glared at on a computer
screen, so the last article will remain the last. I may hint at deeper
meanings, and spirituality in future articles, but the focus will be on
the tools and techniques for creating quality music.
I think I should explain a little bit about my music philosophy
before I go on. To me, good music always improves life in one way or
another - whether its does it by pointing out serious political and
social perils, or by making you laugh doesnt matter all that much in
the long run. If it has a lasting effect on improving life and society
in general, or even your mood after a hard day at work, its a good
song.
Its hard to write a song that does that without knowing yourself
well - knowing the things you need not necessarily the things you want
to hear and say. Whatever the case, there are certain qualities that a
really good musician must have. The first is honesty. You must be
honest with yourself. If things arent going your way, its easy to
blame everything and everybody around you, and forget about yourself -
and it might be a lot of fun to rant about them in your lyrics, but in
the end, youre hiding behind scapegoats, rather than arriving at
solutions. Songs like that may entertain - but it gets really old
listening to heroes whine about their rough lives on the radio day in
and day out. People need real heroes who arent afraid to take some
responsibility.
The next is charity. You will never understand the human condition
well enough to actually touch a persons soul unless you get an intimate
knowledge of the struggles other people face. When I say charity, I
dont mean that you should make a 2 per month contribution to the
Christian Childrens fund - I mean that you should be charitable with
your time. Go out and help somebody. Whether its the old lady across
the hall whos too frail to pick up her mail downstairs, or a friend who
needs a place to crash for the night, and somebody to lend an ear...
youll learn a lot about your own problems, and gain a fresh perspective
that might really boost your own creativity. And it just feels good to
be needed.
Heres one that I think just about every musician on the planet has
had trouble with at one point or another: humility. Humility is
understanding that you are human. You are not a musical God to
everybody around you - even if you are a legend. The world does not
revolve around you, I dont care how rich and famous you get. You are
still a human being and all that it entails. You still have to urinate,
just like the rest of us. When you start to consider yourself superior
- whether or not youre smarter, or tougher, or you can solo like Carlos
Santana on steroids - you put yourself on a pedestal. Great for the
ego. You just love that, Im sure, but when youre up there, the air is
thin. It starts to effect your brain cells - and it takes you out of
the loop. You begin to forget what its like to live the human
condition. You forget what touches a mortal soul since youre
obviously unaffected by those silly things... and your power fades
drastically. You also loose a lot of your grasp on the second virtue -
Charity. What do other people matter to a musical God like you, anyway,
right? If only...
In future articles, I might address anything from music theory to
mixing technique, to great prices on some fabulous audio gear. Whatever
I discuss, keep in mind that technical issues are just that - technical
issues. Music without soul is nothing. Cultivate your soul. Thats
where all the music starts.
Thats it for now,
--Dilvish
Screen Lit Vertigo
Short Review of Some Ambience Releases
By: Seven
Look, Im having a hard time with the Ambience releases. Several of
them do not run, like Farb-rausch 02 not enough memory, although Ive
589KB free or the Mekka/Symposium intro DirectDraw error, because my
card prefers 24-bit colors over 32-bit. Buckle 3 Arena/Liquid Motion
and Phlubby Gnome/Trepaan are both over 10 MB, so I havent downloaded
them yet because my account at University has a 20 MB limit, and its
almost full. The demos intros that DO run require DirectX 7.0, and a
3D card to run at full speed. Since I still havent got one, I cant
really judge the productions fairly 3 frames/second, hence the short
review. BTW, you can find all the stuff at http://www.scene.org, as
usual.
-- Please the cookie thing/Aardbei: 1st place 64K-intro --
This one takes a LONG time to generate textures, music, models...
Progress is indicated by a circle of 3D blocks instead of the usual
progress-bar. We start with a landscape in red mist, double-textured
with rock-textures and sliding lightbeam-textures. Particle-credits pop
up, and we dive in a nice free-direction tunnel with another
particle-cloud. Some abstract 3D objects are shown, like a virus with
long hair : and a complex blob-form. The best part is during the
greetings, where we can see several tens of little machines marching
over a landscape. They look like springs, always toppling over. We end
with some more weird tunnels, some intertwined spirals and a morphing
Escher-knot. The music starts very softly, very ambient, and goes into
normal house/DNB mode after a while. Theres a break during the
greetings, with only bells playing, which sounds really great, but the
main theme takes over too quickly.
Overall:
Technically very impressive, good design, nice music. Must-have for
3D-card owners
-- Lost Vegas/3State: 3rd place 64K-intro --
In software rendering, all textures have disappeared : This is
really bad, because Lost Vegas uses a lot of texts, which are shown as
textures. So Ill have to use my memory. It starts almost immediately,
no long precalcing delays. It features a lot of complex objects build
from very simple ones: a string of transparent cubes inside spirals, a
tunnel filled with of transparent polys, a growing tree that consists
of TV-screens. It is very original, also because 3State has a very elite
attitude, which they show in the texts. There is a part with hundreds of
identical little robots jumping up and down, and one big robot: IIRC.
The text with it was something like we dont follow the mainstream, we
are different etc. Another funny part was a diagram with 3D columns,
the height of which showed the eliteness of groups like Aardbei,
Elitegroup, and the largest column of course : 3State. The music is
in the intelligent dance music genre, very repetitive, strange beats
etc.
Overall:
Technically less good than the Aardbei intro, but very original,
tons of attitude, and some Danish design with according music.
-- Editors Note: --
Also make sure to read Geckos Column, because he reviews the same
intro.
-- Adelanto/Nostalgia: 4th place demo --
I had to fiddle with the settings in energy3d.cfg file for some time
to get this 6MB demo running. Its best to change only the bit depth and
the frequency: when you lower the resolution, the 3D parts go faster,
but the 2D pictures and logos are not scaled down, so youll see them
only partly. Adelanto features a mix of 3D scenes, with fuzzy grayscale
images between them as transitions. The first scene is a futuristic
elevator that goes up in a high-tech surrounding, with adverts for
TakeOver2000 a big party in the Netherlands. The credits are shown
with a horizontal blur, in a nice font. The other scenes are a landscape
with lensflares flying over it, a cafeteria and a cellar with some
crates. As they are static scenes, with just the camera moving, they are
rather boring. Also the lighting is not very good, but maybe thats due
to the software rendering. I prefer the 2D transitions to the 3D parts:
the images look like old photos, and are the perfect background for the
poetic lyrics that are written on them. The music is in an oldskool
style, which is no surprise as you know that The Rew made it. Ambient
flutes and bells waving a dreamy melody, with a good drumline: this is
music I like :
Overall:
The music and the poems are the best parts IMHO, to appreciate the
3D you really need an accelerator.
--Seven
Intro Watch
Lost Vegas by 3State
By: Gecko
With Psychic Symphony suddenly quitting the scene sort of, Demojournal
came to an end. I was asked to continue its intro review corner here. I
would like to know if you the readers are interested in reading about
intros at all. Besides, if you have found an intro which you think
should be reviewed, just mail me.
Lost Vegas by 3State
64k intro
3rd place at Ambience 2000
Credits:
Sagacity - programming
Sarix - programming
Stevie - graphics
Distance - music
Requirements:
Windows 95, DirectX 7
Download:
http://connect.to/3state
Lost Vegas is an intro made in the minimalist style, similar to
that of Blasphemy demos plus it has the special flavour of
3State-egoism added.
The music is a kind of mixture of noises, with a strong bass rhythm
and a small melody. It fits into the intro quite well.
High resolution is used, usually with a yellow-blue color scheme.
There are no still pictures, only some logos, and a weird font. The
intro consists of many parts, each has its title or a short comment
displayed. There is no story whatsoever, the parts are only loosely
connected by their style. Most of the effects are rather original and
look fine. Ill describe a few of them to illustrate the mood of the intro.
In the mass media part, small human figures are crowded up in infinite
rows, and they are jumping up and down. There is the effect which is
humbly announced as the effect of the year. It is a distorted tunnel,
with holes on its surface, and particles flying inside it. In the next
part they prove with a 3d statistics chart that 3State is the best
demogroup. As for me, the last part is the best: there is some foggy
terrain, and a fractal-tree of monitors grows up on it.
Lost Vegas is a fine intro with original effects although probably
some people will dislike it for its style.
-- Editors Note: --
Also make sure to read Sevens Column, because he reviews the same
intro.
--Gecko
Call to Keyboards
Wrapup: CDs in the Underground
New Topic: The Fall of Another Great SceneMag
By: Coplan
-- Wrap Up: CDs in the Underground --
Keskitalos Reply:
Right, the tracking scene is underground music scene, and as we dig
through to the surface were probably first going to break into another
underground scene, which is independent record companies. It would be
nice to hear from the tracking labels, such as Mono, Tokyo Dawn Records
and others about how theyve done in selling, marketing, promoting
real records. I dont wonder although I worry why Necros isnt
available in stores in a greater scale, mainstream isnt really all
about talent.
And heck, Id rather see a scene-born rising quality record company
than Five Musicians signed to Sony.
--Keskitalo / tempo.pkbrp
eino.keskitalo@purkki.mbnet.fi
-- New Topic: The Fall of Another Great SceneMag --
-- Editors Note --
About a week after this article was written, Psychic Symphony
announced that Demojournal will remain in existance, just a different
format than the standard. Well...so not to loose an article simply
cause it mentions DJ as being closed, I didnt pull the article. But,
Demojournel is still in existance, but more of a true news post.
Many people may believe that the Diskmags I prefer the term
SceneMags are all plotted in competition against each other. Well, as
I can very well speak for Static Line, and Demojournel, this isnt true.
Many also believe that these SceneMags are useless and, to be blatent,
dated. I guess you can see where Im going with this, eh?
Granted, I may have a bit of a biased view, but I feel that the whole
concept of SceneMags okay, Ill let you call them Diskmags if you wish
is essential to the development of a tracker. News, technique,
examples, resources -- all parts of a typical SceneMag. There is no one
out there that can convince me that any one of these magazines doesnt
have at least one of those elements. They exist, so use them to grow.
Now, a few weeks ago, Psychic Symphony aka PS announced that he was
folding up shop for Demojournel at least as we know it anyhow.
Frankly, im sad to see it go. Now Im not going to say anything stupid
like this is the end of an era, because it isnt. No one is going to
die because DJ has changed so much, and there isnt going to be a
decrease in Demo, GFX or Music creation. Its not a hole in the scene,
and this isnt the end of a world. The average scener will move on and
maybe occasionally make a comment along the lines of I miss
Demojournal. But, it is a lost resource. Lets face it, SceneMags
bring all of us sceners quite a bit of information that we wouldnt be
able to find any other way.
Its like comparing the year 1000 to the year 2000. News? Well, its
very easy to find out whats going on in our world these days. Hell,
all we have to do is jump on the net and we can figure it out. If
were not that advanced, theres still the television I dont know
about other countries, but just about every single home in the US has a
television. If you want a break from the news, thats damn near
impossible, because theres always someone out there that has it. Now,
in the year 1000, people didnt even know what time of day it was, let
alone what is happening halfway across the globe. But, if you put
things in perspective: WHO CARED about what was happening halfway
across the globe. But we live in the modern age, where it is very easy
to get across the globe, so perhaps we might want to know what is out
there. So, how does this all apply to the demoscene? Take away the
SceneMags, and you take away quite a bit of communication. Sure, we can
jump on trax, and figure it out, but wouldnt it take much longer to go
by word-of-mouth or text-of-hand as the case may be? Sure we can jump
on a so-called-news base like United Trackers, but guess what folks?
They dont know either, because no one sent them a SceneMag.
Someone asked me the other day when was the last time I released a
tune. So I jumped on my FTP server and checked: October 1999. In
fact, I only released four songs in 1999. That is way below average,
im sure. So, then the person in-turn asked why I dont make any effort
to promote the scene. So, I explained that I publish Static Line, and
he responded: Since when was a magazine contribution?
Am I missing something here? Because I feel insulted.
Youre opinions here, please.
--Coplan
Scene Dirt
Rumors
By: Coplan
Well, I guess I should explain this a bit. Its not quite a gossip
column, but it is a good resource for tiny bits of information on scene
happenings. Essentially, the stuff that isnt big enough to have its
own article will show up here. If you have any submissions, send them
to coplan.ic@rcn.com thats me.
-- Hornet Archive Domain Expiration --
Many of you may have jumped on the legendary Demoscene Archive
lately, or at least tried to, and found that you cant reach the site.
Its official, the Hornet Archive Domain Name has expired. This isnt
to say that the website is completely offline, but unless you know the
IP address, the site is unavailable. For those of you who arent aware
of the details behind the Hornet Archive, the songs will still be
available online through ftp://ftp.cdrom.com and various cdrom.com
mirrors. That does mean, however, that you most likely need to know
the directory structure, and a the filenames of the songs your looking
for.
-- Demojournal Changes Format --
For those of you who arent subscribed to Demojournal, Psychic
Symphony had a brief very breif leave from the scene. The original
plans were to drop DJ all-together. But, PS is back and kicking again.
DJ still continues on, but in a different format. Its pure news now,
and one can find out all the latest from Demojournal.
As for the regular columns, they have been shifted to Static Line so
that they can continue in their legacy.
To subscribe to Demojournal, you can visit their site:
http://demojournal.planet-d.net
-- New Group: Azure --
If you visit SceneNet IRC irc.scene.org often enough, and jump in
trax on occasion, you may have seen a topic one day advertising a new
group to the scene: Azure http://azure.zerion.com. Azure is focusing
on the music style popularly known as trance. Theyve already got a few
new tunes out there, so jump on there and grab them.
The group is organized by Wayfinder and Phace.
-- Immortal Coil Closing its Doors --
Okay, this one is sentimental for me. Immortal Coil aka iC -- the
group I have belonged to for almost 5 years now, and have organized for
a little over 3 -- the group that brought you Static Line has announced
that it will close its doors after a loyal 6 years in the demoscene.
iC will now only exist in the memory of the many tunes out there, and
within the website that will soon become a shrine to the group weve
got to keep our songs available somehow.
Having iC tacked onto the end of my name has always been an honor to
me, and a few others who ever passed through the group. But now, we
must all go our seperate ways. Worry not, Static Line will exist for
many more years to come.
--Coplan
Scene Dirt is a semi-regular column offering the latest tidbits of
information to its readers. If you have any bits of information that
you think should be here, contact coplan coplan.ic@rcn.com and offer
as much information as possible.
Link List
-- Editors Note --
For those of you who were readers of Demojournal, this will look very
familiar to you. It should be. With the change of Demojournel, Static
Line has made an effort to pick up Demojournals invariable resources.
This is among the first. From now on, Static Line will mantain this
vast link collection with one minor and temporary change: Personal
Links will not be shown within this magazine. Fear not, they have not
been lost, but they can encumber the magazine. Presently, we are
working on a web based database for these links, and at that point you
may witness the return of personal links.
If you think were missing a link, please contact me and provide any
information that I will need: coplan.ic@rcn.com.
--Coplan
Groups:
3g Design..............................http://3gdesign.cjb.net
Aardbei.....................................http://aardbei.com
Acid Rain..............................http://surf.to/acidrain
Agravedict........................http://www.agravedict.art.pl
Anakata..............................http://www.anakata.art.pl
ANDESA Soft International..................http://andesa.da.ru
Astral..............................http://astral.scene-hu.com
Astroidea........................http://astroidea.scene-hu.com
AtomiK....................................http://atomik.ini.hu
* Azure..................................http://azure.zerion.com
Bomb..................................http://bomb.planet-d.net
BlaBla..............................http://blabla.planet-d.net
Blasphemy..............................http://www.blasphemy.dk
Byterapers.....................http://www.byterapers.scene.org
Calodox.................................http://www.calodox.org
Chrome..............................http://chrome.scene-hu.com
CoPro.....................................http://www.copro.org
Damage...................................http://come.to/damage
Dance...................................http://dance.flipp.net
Defacto 2..............................http://www.defacto2.net
Dolops......................... ........http://dolOps.scene.hu
Exceed...........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/exceed
Fobia Design...........................http://www.fd.scene.org
GODS...................................http://www.idf.net/gods
Green.....................................http://green.dyns.cx
Grif........................http://arrabonet.gyor.hu/rattgrif
Haujobb......................................http://haujobb.de
Hellcore............................http://www.hellcore.art.pl
IJSKAST.............................http://www.ijskast.cjb.net
Immortals..............................http://imrt.home.ml.org
* Immortal Coil.............................http://www.ic.L7.net
Infuse...................................http://www.infuse.org
Just For Fun...........................http://jff.planet-d.net
Kilobite...............................http://kilobite.cjb.net
Kolor................................http://www.kaoz.org/kolor
* Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org
Kooma.....................................http://www.kooma.com
Label zero.........................http://labelzero.pganet.com
Mandula.........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/mandula
Monar................ftp://amber.bti.pl/pub/scene/distro/monar
Nextempire..................http://members.xoom.com/NEXTEMPIRE
Ninja Gefilus.........http://www.angelfire.com/or/ninjagefilus
Noice.....................................http://www.noice.org
Orion..............................http://orion.arfstudios.org
Quad........................................http://www.quad.nl
Rage........................................http://www.rage.nu
Replay.......................http://www.shine.scene.org/replay
Retro A.C...........................http://www.retroac.cjb.net
Rhyme................................http://rhyme.scene-hu.com
Skytech team............................http://www.skytech.org
Sunflower.......................http://sunflower.opengl.org.pl
Suspend......................http://www.optimus.wroc.pl/rappid
Tehdas...................................http://come.to/tehdas
Tesko..........................http://www.scentral.demon.co.uk
The Black Lotus.............................http://www.tbl.org
The Digital Artists Wired Nation.http://digitalartists.cjb.net
The Lost Souls...............................http://www.tls.no
TPOLM.....................................http://www.tpolm.com
Trauma.................................http://sauna.net/trauma
T-Rex.....................................http://www.t-rex.org
Unik.....................................http://www.unik.ca.tc
Universe..........................http://universe.planet-d.net
Vantage..................................http://www.vantage.ch
Music:
Aisth.....................................http://www.aisth.com
Aural planet........................http://www.auralplanet.com
Blacktron Music Production...........http://www.d-zign.com/bmp
Chill..........................http://www.bentdesign.com/chill
Chippendales......................http://www.sunpoint.net/cnd
Chiptune...............................http://www.chiptune.com
Da Jormas................................http://www.jormas.com
Five Musicians.........................http://www.fm.scene.org
Fridge...........................http://www.ssmedion.de/fridge
Goodstuff..........................http://artloop.de/goodstuff
Ignorance.............................http://www.ignorance.org
Intense...........................http://intense.ignorance.org
Jecoute.................................http://jecoute.cjb.net
Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org
Level-d.................................http://www.level-d.com
Miasmah.............................http://www.miasmah.cjb.net
Milk.......................................http://milk.sgic.fi
Mah Music.............................http://come.to/mah.music
Maniacs of noise...............http://home.worldonline.nl/mon
MAZs Sound homepage.............http://www.th-zwickau.de/maz
Moplayaz..........................http://ssmedion.de/moplayaz
Mono211.................................http://www.mono211.com
Morbid Minds..............http://www.raveordie.com/morbidminds
Noise................................http://www.noisemusic.org
One Touch Records......................http://otr.planet-d.net
Park..................................http://park.planet-d.net
Radical Rhythms.....http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/merrelli/rr
RBi Music.............................htpp://www.rbi-music.com
Ruff Engine................http://members.xoom.com/ruffengine
SHR8M......................................http://1st.to/shr8m
Sound Devotion................http://sugarbomb.x2o.net/soundev
Soundstate.........................http://listen.to/soundstate
Sunlikamelo-D...........http://www.error-404.com/sunlikamelo-d
Suspect Records........................http://www.tande.com/sr
Tequila........................http://www.defacto2.net/tequila
Tempo................................http://tempomusic.cjb.net
Theralite...........................http://theralite.avalon.hr
Tokyo Dawn Records........................http://tdr.scene.org
UltraBeat.........................http://www.innerverse.com/ub
Vibrants................................http://www.vibrants.dk
Wiremaniacs.........................http://www.wiremaniacs.com
Others:
Arf!Studios..........................http://www.arfstudios.org
Calodox demolinks exchange.....http://calodox.planet-d.net/cde
coders..................................http://coderz.cjb.net
Comic Pirates.........................http://scene-central.com
Demo fanclub........................http://jerware.org/fanclub
Demoscene.org news forum..............http://www.demoscene.org
Digital Undergrounds.....................http://dug.iscool.net
Doose charts...............................http://www.doose.dk
Dreams2 CD.........................http://nl.scene.org/dreams2
Freax...................http://freax.scene-hu.com/mainmenu.htm
GfxZone............................http://gfxzone.planet-d.net
Hugi size-compo...............http://home.pages.de/hugi-compo
Orange Juice.........................http://ojuice.citeweb.net
PC-demos explained.....http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained
Pixel...................................http://pixel.scene.org
Scenet....................................http://www.scenet.de
Sunray..............................http://sunray.planet-d.net
Swiss List.................http://www.profzone.ch/vantage/list
Swiss Scene Server.......................http://www.chscene.ch
TakeOver................................http://www.takeover.nl
Textmode Demo Archive.................http://tmda.planet-d.net
Hungarian scene page...................http://www.scene-hu.com
Trebel...................................http://www.trebel.org
Zen of Tracking.........................http://surf.to/the-imm
DiskMags / SceneMags:
Amber...............................http://amber.bti.pl/dimag
Amnesia...............http://amnesia-dist.future.easyspace.com
Demojournal....................http://demojournal.planet-d.net
Dragon......................http://www.wasp.w3.pl/pages/dragon
Fleur................................http://fleur.scene-hu.com
Heroin...................................http://www.heroin.net
Hugi........................http://home.pages.de/hugidownload
Pain..................................http://pain.planet-d.net
Scenial...........................http://www.scenial.scene.org
Static Line......................http://www.ic.l7.net/statline
Total Disaster...................http://www.totaldisaster.w.pl
TUHB.......................................http://www.tuhb.org
WildMag...........................http://www.wildmag.notrix.de
FTPs:
Amber.......................................ftp://amber.bti.pl
Cyberbox.....................................ftp://cyberbox.de
Flerp.....................................ftp://flerp.scene.hu
Scene.org..................................ftp://ftp.scene.org
Skynet archive.................ftp://acid2.stack.nl/pub/skynet
ACiD2 Archive.............................ftp://acid2.stack.nl
Editor: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan.ic@rcn.com
Columnists: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan.ic@rcn.com
Dilvish / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@yahoo.com
Gecko / Gergely Kutenich / gk@scene.hu
Louis Gorenfeld / gorenfeld@vrone.net
Setec / Jesper Pederson / jesped@post.tele.dk
Seven / Stefaan / Stefaan.VanNieuwenhuyze@rug.ac.be
SiN / Ian Haskin / sin@netcom.ca
Subliminal / Matt Friedly / sub@plazma.net
Tryhuk / Tryhuk Vojtech / xtryhu00@stud.fee.vutbr.cz
Virt / virt@bellsouth.net
Technical Consult: Draggy / Nicolas St. Pierre / draggy@kosmic.org
Jim / Jim Nicholson / jim@kosmic.org
Static Line on the Web: http://www.ic.l7.net/statline
ftp://flerp.scene.hu/scene/DiskMag/StaticLine
To subscribe to the Static Line mailing list, send an e-mail message
to majordomo@kosmic.org with subscribe staticline your e-mail in
the message text. You will then be asked to confirm your addition to the
mailing list. Expect a new issue during the first weekend of each
month.
To unsubscribe from the mailing list, send an e-mail message to
majordomo@kosmic.org with unsubscribe staticline your e-mail in
the message text. Your subscription will then be removed.
If you would like to contribute an article to Static Line, be aware
that we will format your article with two spaces at the beginning and one
space at the end of each line. Please avoid foul language and high ascii
characters. Contributions should be mailed to Coplan
coplan.ic@rcn.com.
See you next month!
-eof---------------------
log in to add a comment.