Editorial
RECOLLECTION issue 3
An Introduction
WOW, AMAZING, INCREDIBLE, BMX-NINJA... it is hard to believe, but you are actually holding a copy of the latest edition of Recollection! As the old saying goes, difficult things are done immediately; impossible things take a bit longer.
Hello party people! I am on location in Eindhoven, the Dutch city close to where the famous Venlo meetings used to take place (1987-1994). This time it is X2010, the tenth party in the series; a smashing reason to celebrate and to release issue three of Recollection to the folk gathered here. This is not the first time for me, having been in Holland back in 2004. In that time one would suspect the cobwebs to be thicker, the numbers to be less; death's grip finally starting to take hold. NO! This is not the case, not by far! The pulse of the scene has been steadfast, the energy around our binary underworld is now glowing very brightly ...and here we are; a meeting of friends past and present. I arrived together with Alih on Wednesday morning, this allowed us a couple of days to cure the jetlag over a cup of coffee or two in Amsterdam before the party. We were joined by Conjuror, Macx, ZZAP69 and Devia who shared the same hotel. Other outlanders arrived too such as SounDemon from Finland and Almighty God from Spain - this orgiastic multinational mixture of drunken scene soldiers decimated the capital city with merriment. A real shame I could not spend more time here, but a few days will surely give me memories that will last forever. Anyway, enough about my fleeting visit or the party - what about the magazine itself?
It is Friday and I have been wandering around the party hall handing out disks with this edition of Recollection. Around 40 copies were copied to virgin disks and transported in-person from my prison-colony-home located half way around the globe. These disks are also encompassed with a full-blown disk cover by my Norwegian pal Zapotek. As you would have noticed from the disk cover, the Buddha-intro by Hein and from the beautiful 8-bit canvas by Deev, the theme for this edition is that of ancient Asia. And like that archaic culture, the C64 scene has tales of mystery, of glory and of former times. Recollection issue three drags you back into scene town, where there is room for unmasking and entertaining stories that can now finally be told because the "old era" is over. Where did they really get their game-originals? Who had to skip school to crack a first release? What were their plans - and how well planned were they? How did they meet and get together in the first place? What triggered all the fighting? What split groups up? How were demos made and what inspired them? The list is just endless.
Some people appear to be lost about the past, confused, or even being totally ignorant about it. As in, how things worked back then, how it all came to be. In this magazine we will try capture people's recollections. The result will be informative, historic and entertaining! We strive to become the black book of the scene, capturing those golden moments that have kept us coming back to the blue screen time and time again.
I warmly welcome a whole new team of writers who have filled these pages with their experiences and moments of glory. Some tasty morsels of what is available this issue is: The legendary group FairLight is completely researched; it was easily the most arduous editing task I have ever performed, including interviews with key members, statements and more! Peacemaker takes us on a journey through the illegal world of hack/phreak. Jan Harries interviews two legends of C64 whilst I interrogate Falco Paul, Flex and Rockstar. As the reader you will of course stumble across much more, along the way your ears will be pleasured by the exclusive chip sound of Laxity, 6R6, Jan Harries and Hein Design. I have decided to include more oldschool beats as well and I trust you will find delight in the work of Mark Cooksey, JCH, Johannes Bjerregaard and Jeroen Tel.
After some months of dedication I can proudly present this issue live at X2010. I would like to say special thanks to all of those text-supporters who endured the whip that I wield. Extra special thanks to Hein, Krill, Deev and the others who helped produced this edition's oriental outfit. On that note I will end the magazine's introduction and let the rest speak for itself.
Regards,
Jazzcat.
RECOLLECTION ISSUE #3 CREDITS:
THE STAFF
Main editor - Jazzcat
Co-editor - Deadbeat
Guest editor - Jan Harries
Guest editor - Weasel
Guest editor - Pol Pot
Guest editor - TBB
Guest editor - SLC
Guest editor - Punk Executioner
Guest editor - Ziggy
Guest editor - The Shadow
Guest editor - Peacemaker
Guest editor - Ian
Guest editor - Anthony McSweeney
INTRO
Programming, design and exclusive music: Hein Design
OUTFIT
Programming: Stryyker & Krill
Graphics: Deev
Font: Breeze
Design: Jazzcat & Deev
Loader: Krill
EXCLUSIVE MUSIC
01. Chimerang - JCH - 6581 (bonus)
02. Laxity - Ausfahrt Asia - 6581
03. 6R6 - L-Forza (long edit) - 8580
04. Hein Design - The Crying Lady - 8580
05. Overlander - Mark Cooksey - 6581 (bonus)
06. Jan Harries - Deep Space Exploration - 6581
07. Johannes Bjerregaard - Nightdawn - 6581 (bonus)
08. Jammer - Galaxy Bounce - Tomb Raider Mix - 8580 (bonus)
09. Jeroen Tel - Cybernoid - 6581 (bonus)
10. Jeroen Tel - Rubicon - 6581 (bonus)
Jens-Christian Huus about "Chimerang" (6581)
"As far as I remember it was a whopper to make - took a while and I wanted to make it long and fat. In hindsight, however, the multi-voice drum is probably much too strong and dominating - I really should have driven it down a bit. I can't remember how I found the name, but I probably just made it up."
Laxity about "Ausfahrt Asia" (6581)
"Ausfahrt Asia was composed by request from Jazzcat for this issue of Recolletion. I was told that the graphic style of the issue would be asian, so I dove right into doing something with an asian flavour. The tune is greatly inspired by the work for The Way of the Exploding Fist and sequel by Niel Brennan, but going places that are more, eh.. contemporary maybe, and obviously less fitting for a game than the sources of my inspiration. I chose the title "Ausfahrt Asia" due to a strange fascination of how the word "Ausfahrt" looks visually and the fact that the tune is supposed to be Asian flavoured."
GRG about "L-Forza (long edit)" (8580)
Back in 2004/2005 Ninja/Dreams wanted a song for a demo part he was working on. He wanted something that took less rasterlines than the normal music player I am using. So I had this short jingle with Lightforce as a work tune. I included it to the music player, unrolled the code and removed any code I didn't need and added new and faster routines where possible. At the same time I also composed on the song. I think it ended up with it being a 5 minutes 'L-Forza short edit' when there was no memory left and nothing else to optimize. Then the project stopped - I don't remember exactly what happened but it was not me stopping it. Anyway, I continued on adding new stuff to the song in the editor. And this Long edit was finished in the middle of 2007. And thats what you can listen to in this edition of Recollection. Later on I did the L-forza remix for Byterapers. Which is a little shorter, but is probably better.
Hein Design about "The Crying Lady" (8580)
"Obviously, this tune is filled with cliches and pentatonic jokes that are so typical for Chinese music. At first I wanted to try to recreate the melodramatic singing ladies seen in Chinese theatre. Once that was settled and the lady stopped crying, I fell back to the usual black-key-is-all-I-got scales and the tune got quite boring. Hence the endless repetition of the same theme and the fade out. Oh well, we all love those so-called spiritual eastern vibes, so let's pretend we're enlightened to the bone and enjoy this enchanting magazine, shall we."
Mark Cooksey about "Overlander" (6581)
"It seems a lifetime ago when I was doing the Overlander music back in 1988 (22 Years!). I seem to remember at the time I wanted to do a more rock themed track for the main game tune. I decided to use the C64 filters to get a sound that resembled an electric guitar. Of course that worked fine on some C64s but others had a different version of SID where the filters had different settings. That meant on some machines the guitar sound is over filtered and sounded very muffled. Looking back at the game on youtube it looks so lo-tech and simple compared to today's computer games. Still gameplay was the main focus rather than stunning graphics."
Jan Harries about "Deep Space Exploration" (6581)
"Jazzcat asked for a tune in multispeed, to fully use the mag outfit, so I switched into 8 speed and because it's for a diskmag, I know I would create a longer tune, so I started slowly, so that the tune can build up over time and hit some main theme after a few minutes. On the way, I created sounds on the fly and shaped all aspects of the tune. the melody came out in real time from my inner visions and the name of the tune came out from the fact of the spacy 8x sounds and the cycling space-ping sound that the whole thing starts with. It took around 10 hours to make the tune."
Johannes Bjerregaard about "Nightdawn" (6581)
"If I remember correctly, Nightdawn was a commercial gig. neither I or Charles Deenen liked how it turned out, but I guess the customer liked it. I didn't feel inspired when I wrote it. I think it was one of my last gigs with Maniacs of Noise. The length was most likely a requirement from the customer. It probably took a few weekday evenings."
"It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows."Epictetus
