ObjectiveD
Member
Great list <nostalgic sigh>
+ The Shamen, and of course Altern8
Happy days!
+ The Shamen, and of course Altern8
Happy days!
How many old ravers on here?
- Thread starter edd_jedi
- Start date
- Replies 87
- Views 2570
His album sales would indicate otherwise
(and I like a few of his songs)
yep no accounting for taste 
nearly ever1 knows bat outa hell
nearly ever1 knows bat outa hell
for me to lists Good Music is too many to lists on here
Meat Loaf?
Bat out of the hell
2 out of 3 arent Bad
I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
There you go
Meat Loaf?
Bat out of the hell
2 out of 3 arent Bad
I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
There you go
Used to enjoy raving down at Labyrinth and the Dream All Nighters. Oldskool still being produced, I've had a few releases on vinyl and cd. Can't beat the oldskool sound
Links for the tunes?
New Old Music - Merlin 'll love that
How many old ravers on here?
They used to have the Slammin Vinyl and Dream All Nighters at Bagleys, good days
---------- Post added at 23:00 ---------- Previous post was at 22:54 ----------
Just a few if my releases
I go by the names of dj fuzzbuzz and digital breaks:
http://www.beatport.com/track/gotta-believe-original-mix/4780593
http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Original-Oldskoolers-EP-Vol-1/release/3570095
http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Original-Oldskoolers-EP-Vol-2/release/3849312
http://m.soundcloud.com/paranoidrecordings/dj-fuzzbuzz-tokyo-mp3-1
http://m.soundcloud.com/paranoidrecordings/dj-fuzzbuzz-wonka-old-piano
http://m.soundcloud.com/paranoidrecordings/dj-fuzzbuzz-back-with-a-new-1
http://www.paranoidrecordings.com/cd.html
Have two new releases coming out later this year.
They used to have the Slammin Vinyl and Dream All Nighters at Bagleys, good days
---------- Post added at 23:00 ---------- Previous post was at 22:54 ----------
Used to enjoy raving down at Labyrinth and the Dream All Nighters. Oldskool still being produced, I've had a few releases on vinyl and cd. Can't beat the oldskool sound
Links for the tunes?
New Old Music - Merlin 'll love that
Just a few if my releases
I go by the names of dj fuzzbuzz and digital breaks:http://www.beatport.com/track/gotta-believe-original-mix/4780593
http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Original-Oldskoolers-EP-Vol-1/release/3570095
http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Original-Oldskoolers-EP-Vol-2/release/3849312
http://m.soundcloud.com/paranoidrecordings/dj-fuzzbuzz-tokyo-mp3-1
http://m.soundcloud.com/paranoidrecordings/dj-fuzzbuzz-wonka-old-piano
http://m.soundcloud.com/paranoidrecordings/dj-fuzzbuzz-back-with-a-new-1
http://www.paranoidrecordings.com/cd.html
Have two new releases coming out later this year.
Another early 90's classic euro-beat
[m]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PUHbRqJ8hE[/m]
and another
[m]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW4YfSxBeAw[/m]
and another
[m]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7MAD76eFc0[/m]
So it seems that this thread has turned out to be an all music things 90's thread.
[m]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PUHbRqJ8hE[/m]
and another
[m]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW4YfSxBeAw[/m]
and another
[m]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7MAD76eFc0[/m]
So it seems that this thread has turned out to be an all music things 90's thread.
As much a I like a lot of the tunes posted above, a lot of them are a bit too commercial for what I used to listen too, not to mention there's no Happy Hardcore amongst them 
Please see below for a few favourites of mine
Happy Hardcore (aka Happycore, 4-Beat, Bouncy Techno, European Techno etc.)
Sound Assasins - Like A Prayer '98 (where would Happy Hardcore be without a Madonna rip-off)
Brisk & Fade - Say Here Forever (this was sampled from an earlier N-Trance tack)
Happy Tunes - I Want You Baby (this is quite old Happy Hardcore - from 1994 when the HH scene was just beginning)
Jimmy J & Cru-L-T - Runaway '97
Jimmy J & Cru-L-T - 99 Red Balloons (another old 80s rip-off)
Ramos, Supreme & The Sunset Regime - Got to Believe
DJ DNA - Go Insane
Kaos & Huxley - Electric Dreams
DJ Magical - Rush Hour (Kaos & Huxley Remix) (another 80s rip-off)
Vinylgroover & Trixxy - John Gotti's Revenge
Tiny Tot - Discoland
Vampire - Cyclone
Nookie - Give A Little Love '94 (more early Happy Hardcore stuff)
Seduction - In The Mix (DJ Brisk Remix)
Orca - 4AM (this is probably the earliest example of Happy Hardcore I have heard, it's one of my all time favourites, but emphasises more on the 'Happy' than the 'Hardcore')
Dune - I Can't Stop Raving
Trance-core (or Trancecore)
This was a 'spin-off' genre from Happy Hardcore that was less cheesy and more trancey, often played by DJs Billy Bunter, Ramos, Druid and Sharkey but other DJs did sometimes drop these tunes - it never experienced the popularity of Happy Hardcore but I thought it was awesome!
Bang! The Future remixed a lot of Happy Hardcore tracks in this new Trancecore style during late '96 through '97 into '98 when it sort of disappeared and turned into that god awful 'Freeform' Hardcore (now renamed to just Happy Harodcore, just to confuse) that existed from '99 onwards.
This Trancecore stuff was often confused with and played alongside Happy Hardcore at events like Helter Skelter and Dreamscape.
Eruption - Let The Music (Bang! The Future Remix)
Eruption - Let The Music (Bang! The Future '97 Remix)
GBT - Better Day (Bang! The Future Remix)
Helix - Testament
Helix - The Fresh Air Of Liberty And Union
Ramos, Supreme & UFO - Terminator (RSR Remix)
Tekno Dred Alliance - Zonked
Sharkey - Product Of Society (Hardcore Society Remix)
DJ Choci & Powder Front - Just Feel It (Full On Cuban Bolder Mix)
Jungle / Drum N Bass
Although I was less in to this at the time, I still love this stuff and often listen to Jungle when driving around in my car.
Johnny L - Piper (Grooverider Mix) (quite 'dark' and love that 'buzzing bee-hive' noise in the background)
Roni Size & Reprazent - Brown Paper Bag
808 State - Pacific State (Grooverider Remix)
Origin Unknown - Valley Of The Shadows (everybody shout "31 seconds" LOL)
DJ SS - The Lighter
Doc Scott - Ghostface Killa
Aphrodite - Ready Or Not
Shy FX - Funkindemup ("I'm funkindemup, come on to the left, I'm funkindemup, come on to the right")
Leviticus - Burial
Now for some newer DNB favourites
DJ Zinc - Creeper
Ebony Dubster - Power of Ra (Original Sin Remix)
Taxman - The Rebate (Original Mix)
DJ Hazard - Machete
Ed Rush & Optical - Pacman (Ram Trilogy Remix)
That's probably enough for tonight, let me know what you guys think and I'll post some more.
---------- Post added at 18:44 ---------- Previous post was at 18:41 ----------
Please see below for a few favourites of mine
Happy Hardcore (aka Happycore, 4-Beat, Bouncy Techno, European Techno etc.)
Sound Assasins - Like A Prayer '98 (where would Happy Hardcore be without a Madonna rip-off)
Brisk & Fade - Say Here Forever (this was sampled from an earlier N-Trance tack)
Happy Tunes - I Want You Baby (this is quite old Happy Hardcore - from 1994 when the HH scene was just beginning)
Jimmy J & Cru-L-T - Runaway '97
Jimmy J & Cru-L-T - 99 Red Balloons (another old 80s rip-off)
Ramos, Supreme & The Sunset Regime - Got to Believe
DJ DNA - Go Insane
Kaos & Huxley - Electric Dreams
DJ Magical - Rush Hour (Kaos & Huxley Remix) (another 80s rip-off)
Vinylgroover & Trixxy - John Gotti's Revenge
Tiny Tot - Discoland
Vampire - Cyclone
Nookie - Give A Little Love '94 (more early Happy Hardcore stuff)
Seduction - In The Mix (DJ Brisk Remix)
Orca - 4AM (this is probably the earliest example of Happy Hardcore I have heard, it's one of my all time favourites, but emphasises more on the 'Happy' than the 'Hardcore')
Dune - I Can't Stop Raving
Trance-core (or Trancecore)
This was a 'spin-off' genre from Happy Hardcore that was less cheesy and more trancey, often played by DJs Billy Bunter, Ramos, Druid and Sharkey but other DJs did sometimes drop these tunes - it never experienced the popularity of Happy Hardcore but I thought it was awesome!
Bang! The Future remixed a lot of Happy Hardcore tracks in this new Trancecore style during late '96 through '97 into '98 when it sort of disappeared and turned into that god awful 'Freeform' Hardcore (now renamed to just Happy Harodcore, just to confuse) that existed from '99 onwards.
This Trancecore stuff was often confused with and played alongside Happy Hardcore at events like Helter Skelter and Dreamscape.
Eruption - Let The Music (Bang! The Future Remix)
Eruption - Let The Music (Bang! The Future '97 Remix)
GBT - Better Day (Bang! The Future Remix)
Helix - Testament
Helix - The Fresh Air Of Liberty And Union
Ramos, Supreme & UFO - Terminator (RSR Remix)
Tekno Dred Alliance - Zonked
Sharkey - Product Of Society (Hardcore Society Remix)
DJ Choci & Powder Front - Just Feel It (Full On Cuban Bolder Mix)
Jungle / Drum N Bass
Although I was less in to this at the time, I still love this stuff and often listen to Jungle when driving around in my car.
Johnny L - Piper (Grooverider Mix) (quite 'dark' and love that 'buzzing bee-hive' noise in the background)
Roni Size & Reprazent - Brown Paper Bag
808 State - Pacific State (Grooverider Remix)
Origin Unknown - Valley Of The Shadows (everybody shout "31 seconds" LOL)
DJ SS - The Lighter
Doc Scott - Ghostface Killa
Aphrodite - Ready Or Not
Shy FX - Funkindemup ("I'm funkindemup, come on to the left, I'm funkindemup, come on to the right")
Leviticus - Burial
Now for some newer DNB favourites
DJ Zinc - Creeper
Ebony Dubster - Power of Ra (Original Sin Remix)
Taxman - The Rebate (Original Mix)
DJ Hazard - Machete
Ed Rush & Optical - Pacman (Ram Trilogy Remix)
That's probably enough for tonight, let me know what you guys think and I'll post some more.
---------- Post added at 18:44 ---------- Previous post was at 18:41 ----------
LOL, but you have to admit, Happy Hardcore, Jungle and DNB all kicked ass back in the day! I grey up listening to nothing else during the 90s.Happy Hardcore', 'Drum N Bass \o/ " head down ass up thats the way we like to ****
I bloody love the rave. I was probably just a little bit too young to be attending raves and around that time I was more interested in my C64 & Amiga than anything else. I eventually took a retrospective look back into the 90's after a visit to ibiza in 2003 where I happened upon ratpack performing a set at a random pool party I fell upon. Of course during the 90's I did enjoy listening to the commercialy stuff already posted but after that chance meet in Ibiza I ventured into the more hardcore rave and acid house which I love to this day, although no longer get as much chance to listen to. It also ultimately led to the purchase of a Roland TB303, Roland Alpha Juno 2, Roland SH101 & a Roland J3XP which I had great fun with for a few years.
Someone mentioned Jesus on E's earlier... Back in 2010 I found "echo" from LSD the man responsible for the music and asked him some questions which you can find below. This is now 3 years oldicard cant believe its taken till now to post...
Where did it all start, how did you get into the demo scene and how did you become a member of LSD.
Before I had my own Amiga I’d seen the Puggs In Space demo at some computer shop at the time and a friend had an Amiga and a stack of demos. Coupled with the allure of its audio capabilities that’s really where my interest started with the Amiga.
It was 1989/1990 and it wasn’t long before I had my own Amiga, a copy of Sound Tracker and a stack of floppies stuffed with samples. I spent a few years with the platform making tunes and was getting into the Public Domain scene of disk swapping and acquiring friends via the process.
Through these contacts I got in touch with Pazza and Shagratt of LSD. A lot of the LSD guys were from Gainsborough/Lincoln/Scunthorpe and they got together once a week at Pazzas house. I’m not quite sure how I got there or who introduced me, but I attended one of these evenings and played them some of my tunes. On hearing my tunes they invited me into LSD and it all started from there.
As a musician, did you ever consider the Atari ST over the Amiga?
I actually owned an Atari 520STFM (upgraded to 1MB by soldering in the RAM and decoupling capacitors myself) before I had an Amiga. I never used the MIDI functions (MIDI equipment was way out of a 15 year old’s league) but worked in Quartet to produce sample based tunes. It was primitive, it was score notation, it sounded bad - but it was better than nothing.
Even on the ST I was into the demo scene, not producing anything myself, but still gaping in awe at the Big Demo, Cuddly Demos, The Union Demo and all those old classics. Yes, I even listened to a ST tunes as I cycled around Grantham on my early morning paper round with my Sony Walkman cassette player attached to my belt! Good times.
I played the ‘My ST is better than your Amiga’ game like we all did at the time, but I eventually succumbed to the Amiga’s superior audio capabilities.
Were you in any other groups before/after LSD?
LSD was the first real group I was ever in and I remained in LSD for many years until it all eventually fizzled out and people grew apart. I never went on to be part of any other demo group.
How old were you when you wrote the music for JOE?
I wrote the music for JOEs in 1992, so that would make me around 17.
Where did the idea for Jesus on E’s come from?
Back in the early nineties after I left school I got a job at a laser display company. As well as assembling laser display systems for use in night clubs, my Friday and Saturday nights often involved lugging massive water cooled laser display systems up on the top of scaffold towers and doing the laser effects at raves. It wasn’t long before rave music began to interest me, and naturally the music I was writing followed suit.
I seem to recall being into a few of the ‘Hit the Decks’ megamix style releases of the time and wanted to do my own. LSD’s first attempt was a production called Total Kaos (which I actually think is better musically than JOEs) but it consisted of nothing more than a scroller and a rotating equaliser – not very exciting stuff.
We wanted to produce a rave-style demo with flashing images and patterns typical of the projections of the time, but there were technical challenges to overcome – the sheer size of the Total Kaos mods meant that there wasn’t much room left on the two floppies for much else, and memory was tight back then too, with most machines not having more than a 512k chip ram upgrade installed.
Taking an idea from Mahoney & Kaktus’ Sounds of Gnome music disk, I proposed that all the mods were made from a pool of sounds instead of being individually stored in their separate entities (previous experience making Total Kaos revealed that I repeated a lot of the same samples throughout the mods). The JOEs coder – Shagratt – defined the size of my sample pool, imposed an individual mod limit of 175Kb (as two of these would have to be loaded into RAM simultaneously so that they flowed seamlessly into each other) and got to work on coding the effects.
Another problem was how to sync the demo’s effects to the music. As ProTracker (the mod making tool I was using at the time) was a tool in a fairly early stage of its development, many of the effects commands (entered as hexadecimal entries into the tracker’s channel steps) were unused, so I devised a method where we would use these unused commands to trigger effects in the demo.
The name was my own invention.
What were your main goals/objectives for the demo?
Musically I wanted to create a long seamless megamix of rave tunes, taking some of my favourite tunes and sounds from the era, adding my own spin and mashing them altogether.
Visually I expected something different to how it turned out – I actually had coded the majority of effect commands into the modules before I’d even seen a single effect, having no more than a few words from Shagratt to loosely define each one. Time constraints of getting it ready for release at the Digital Symposium party (1992) meant we had little time for polish. Still it worked, even it if didn’t match my imagination!
How many members of LSD worked on JOEs?
A fairly small team worked on the demo itself, but there was a lot of input from other members. I did all the music and Shagratt did all the code, but Pazza contributed a lot by making some of the other graphics and organising things. Watchman did the bitmap graphics for the splash and loading screens. It was a community effort.
How did you work together on the demo?
We worked like many groups of the day, mainly working in isolation but meeting up at Pazza’s flat every week or so. Geographically everyone that worked on the demo was pretty close to one another, so this didn’t present too much of a challenge. Once the initial design concept was done it was just a case of each person working on their contributions and getting them to Pazza so he could get them to his brother (Shagratt) so they could be incorporated into the demo.
How long did it take to complete?
Concept to completion took around 6-8 weeks.
What other demos were around at the time that you drew influence from?
I reckon the Afrika demo part of Budbrain Megademo 2 had a fair part to play, and I definitely ripped the breakbeat from Anarchy’s 3D Demo but those are the only specifics I can think of. There wasn’t really any existing rave type demos at the time (although Spaceball’s State of the Art wasn’t far behind JOEs) so I think that’s probably about it.
Do you still have contact with any members of LSD?
I’m still in touch with a few LSD members like mUb, Fish, SGTruck and Maximan. Maximan was best man at my wedding in 2006!
Was there anything planned/written that didn’t make it to the final demo?
The music was complete (well, as much as I could be bothered!). I would like to have changed some of the effects and the way they appeared in the demo, but time constraints meant that wasn’t possible. As far as I am aware it was content complete.
What were your musical influences at the time/what were you listening to?
By 1992 I was quite heavily into rave and not just in touch with my dark side but groping and dry-humping it too. There are too many tunes to mention, but I know I spent a hideous amount of time listening to the Hit The Decks megamixes volumes 1-3 and a tape of N-Joi’s Live in Manchester set, so it’s no coincidence that these were also the source of many samples used in JOEs.
How did you go about writing the music, where did you source you samples, did you compose directly on the Amiga etc.
Samples were pulled from tape cassette and other mods. I credited a lot of the sources in the JOEs End Part, but that scroller was put together in a hurry and is nowhere near complete. I do wish I’d kept an accurate record of the sources!
Everything was done on the Amiga in ProTracker.
What hardware did you use in the process? Amiga and Musical
By 1992 my Amiga setup consisted of an A500 equipped with a partially populated A590 equipped with a 20Mb IBM XT hard drive. The only other device I used was an 8-bit sampler which plugged into the parallel port – I had no synths or anything, everything was done using samples in ProTracker.
The use of the Rolf Harris and the Muppets samples are legendary, were you playing around with these before the demo?
The Rolf Harris voice came from one of the Hit The Decks tapes, but it was my idea to mix his own style of beat-box with a drum loop.
About 4 weeks into the project I was at Pazza’s flat explaining how I was beginning to struggle for ideas. There were a few rave tunes around that had started to remix some classic kids themes (Sesamie Street, Magic Roundabout, etc) and I wanted to do something similar but wasn’t sure what. On hearing this Pazza pulled out a Muppets vinyl LP. 20 minutes later “Mah-Na Mah-Na” was sampled and had an accompanying breakbeat.
In retrospect, it would have been better do put that tune earlier in the mix, but it also served well as an amusing treat for those who managed to get that far in
Did you attend the Digital Symposium 1992 party, what was it like? What was the reception was the reception to JOE
Yeah I was there. I took my Amiga and a mountain of speakers as I recall! JOEs wasn’t received well – they only managed 10 mins before moving on to another demo, partly because the music was an acquired taste but also because many of the routines were not particularly ground breaking.
What happened to Shagratt and Pazza, what was the last you heard?
I’m not sure about Shagratt but if memory serves Pazza got together with some Woman and moved out of his flat. I’ve not heard from or seen him since..
Where was Digital Symposium held?
At Rawmarsh Leisure Centre in Rotherham, nr Sheffield.
Do you have any photos from the event?
Nah. These days were pre-digital photography days and I had no camera to speak of.
If you were to re-do the demo again on the Amiga what would you do differently?
Well, the music would need an overhaul for starters with better production quality. Other than that I guess more effects and variation would be key, but given the two floppy limit it might not turn out much different than it did!
Post JOE where was the focus, was there ever to be a follow up?
I started on a sequel called ‘Satan on Speed’ but only got 4 mods into it before losing interest. Great name though! If you’re interested the Satan on Speed mods can be found on my mods page archive.
What are your thoughts on the current “demo” scene?
I know little about the scene these days, but still try and find the time to catch up on modern releases in the PC demo scene. It’s all changed of course – no longer are demos about showing off what the coders can do with limited hardware as it’s all handled by the graphics API’s. There’s still innovation in the effects but I feel much of what made demos of the Amiga era so great no longer apply.
What are your top 10 ECS demos of all time?
Tough call. There were so many great demos, but for a demo to be good for me it had to be more than just fancy routines – the music had to be good too and if the demo effects were timed with the music then all the better. If I had to name my favourites, then it would have to go something like:
1. Spaceballs – 9 Fingers
2. Spaceballs – State of the Art
3. Budbrain – Megademo 2
4. Virtual Dreams & Fairlight – Full Moon
5. Kefrens – Guardian Dragon II
6. Kefrens – Desert Dreams
7. Virtual Dreams & Fairlight - Love
8. Pygmy Projects - Extension
9. Phenomena - Enigma
10. Sanity – World of Commodore
So many awesome productions, 10 just isn’t enough! The ‘Amiga Rules’ part of the World of Commodore demo where the lead synth kicks in still gives me goose bumps. Beautiful tune. Perhaps I’ll do a remake at some point!
JOE’s made a lasting impression on people, what is it do you think that that makes JOE one of the most talked about demos.
I honestly don’t have a clue! The demo was pretty rough and fairly niche musically and I expected it to be received in much the same way on the scene as it was at Digital Symposium ‘92. It wasn’t though – Shagratt and I both received a £75 cheque out of the blue from some PD library as thanks as they’d sold so many disks containing the demo!
I still get emails and kudos from people 18 years after the event thanking me for playing a pleasurable role in their teenage years. It’s pretty amazing and also humbling if I’m honest.
Are you still involved in the scene?
No, not at all. The closest I get is watching modern PC demos and uploading Amiga demos to my YouTube channel.
When was the last time you composed on the Amiga
According to my archives, the last Amiga made tune was created in OctaMed sometime in 1996.
How did you initially find the move from the Amiga to the PC?
While I’d had an Intel DX2-66 machine, it was mainly for playing Doom. Eventually I upgraded to a Pentium machine with Windows 95 and had 16-bit sound capabilities courtesy of a Creative SoundBlaster 16 ISA card. FastTracker filled the gap for a while, but it wasn’t too long before I moved to using Cubase, got myself some MIDI equipment and started to take music a bit more seriously.
What are you up to these days?
Musically, I do very little these days due to a mild lack of interest, other interests, work and family commitments. I did drop music entirely for a good 5 years and sold my entire studio as it all became more chore than pleasure and took up photography which was much easier to pick up and drop on a whim. Recently I’ve started on a few tunes again, but purely for pleasure. I’m really into a lot of the tunes found at AmigaRemix.com and have even created a few remixes myself, so I hope to continue to keep a foot firmly near my Amiga roots.
---------- Post added at 00:50 ---------- Previous post was at 00:36 ----------
I bloody love the rave. I was probably just a little bit too young to be attending raves and around that time I was more interested in my C64 & Amiga than anything else. I eventually took a retrospective look back into the 90's after a visit to ibiza in 2003 where I happened upon ratpack performing a set at a random pool party I fell upon. Of course during the 90's I did enjoy listening to the commercialy stuff already posted but after that chance meet in Ibiza I ventured into the more hardcore rave and acid house which I love to this day, although no longer get as much chance to listen to. It also ultimately led to the purchase of a Roland TB303, Roland Alpha Juno 2, Roland SH101 & a Roland J3XP which I had great fun with for a few years.
Someone mentioned Jesus on E's earlier... Back in 2010 I found "echo" from LSD the man responsible for the music and asked him some questions which you can find below. This is now 3 years oldicard cant believe its taken till now to post...
Where did it all start, how did you get into the demo scene and how did you become a member of LSD.
Before I had my own Amiga I’d seen the Puggs In Space demo at some computer shop at the time and a friend had an Amiga and a stack of demos. Coupled with the allure of its audio capabilities that’s really where my interest started with the Amiga.
It was 1989/1990 and it wasn’t long before I had my own Amiga, a copy of Sound Tracker and a stack of floppies stuffed with samples. I spent a few years with the platform making tunes and was getting into the Public Domain scene of disk swapping and acquiring friends via the process.
Through these contacts I got in touch with Pazza and Shagratt of LSD. A lot of the LSD guys were from Gainsborough/Lincoln/Scunthorpe and they got together once a week at Pazzas house. I’m not quite sure how I got there or who introduced me, but I attended one of these evenings and played them some of my tunes. On hearing my tunes they invited me into LSD and it all started from there.
As a musician, did you ever consider the Atari ST over the Amiga?
I actually owned an Atari 520STFM (upgraded to 1MB by soldering in the RAM and decoupling capacitors myself) before I had an Amiga. I never used the MIDI functions (MIDI equipment was way out of a 15 year old’s league) but worked in Quartet to produce sample based tunes. It was primitive, it was score notation, it sounded bad - but it was better than nothing.
Even on the ST I was into the demo scene, not producing anything myself, but still gaping in awe at the Big Demo, Cuddly Demos, The Union Demo and all those old classics. Yes, I even listened to a ST tunes as I cycled around Grantham on my early morning paper round with my Sony Walkman cassette player attached to my belt! Good times.
I played the ‘My ST is better than your Amiga’ game like we all did at the time, but I eventually succumbed to the Amiga’s superior audio capabilities.
Were you in any other groups before/after LSD?
LSD was the first real group I was ever in and I remained in LSD for many years until it all eventually fizzled out and people grew apart. I never went on to be part of any other demo group.
How old were you when you wrote the music for JOE?
I wrote the music for JOEs in 1992, so that would make me around 17.
Where did the idea for Jesus on E’s come from?
Back in the early nineties after I left school I got a job at a laser display company. As well as assembling laser display systems for use in night clubs, my Friday and Saturday nights often involved lugging massive water cooled laser display systems up on the top of scaffold towers and doing the laser effects at raves. It wasn’t long before rave music began to interest me, and naturally the music I was writing followed suit.
I seem to recall being into a few of the ‘Hit the Decks’ megamix style releases of the time and wanted to do my own. LSD’s first attempt was a production called Total Kaos (which I actually think is better musically than JOEs) but it consisted of nothing more than a scroller and a rotating equaliser – not very exciting stuff.
We wanted to produce a rave-style demo with flashing images and patterns typical of the projections of the time, but there were technical challenges to overcome – the sheer size of the Total Kaos mods meant that there wasn’t much room left on the two floppies for much else, and memory was tight back then too, with most machines not having more than a 512k chip ram upgrade installed.
Taking an idea from Mahoney & Kaktus’ Sounds of Gnome music disk, I proposed that all the mods were made from a pool of sounds instead of being individually stored in their separate entities (previous experience making Total Kaos revealed that I repeated a lot of the same samples throughout the mods). The JOEs coder – Shagratt – defined the size of my sample pool, imposed an individual mod limit of 175Kb (as two of these would have to be loaded into RAM simultaneously so that they flowed seamlessly into each other) and got to work on coding the effects.
Another problem was how to sync the demo’s effects to the music. As ProTracker (the mod making tool I was using at the time) was a tool in a fairly early stage of its development, many of the effects commands (entered as hexadecimal entries into the tracker’s channel steps) were unused, so I devised a method where we would use these unused commands to trigger effects in the demo.
The name was my own invention.
What were your main goals/objectives for the demo?
Musically I wanted to create a long seamless megamix of rave tunes, taking some of my favourite tunes and sounds from the era, adding my own spin and mashing them altogether.
Visually I expected something different to how it turned out – I actually had coded the majority of effect commands into the modules before I’d even seen a single effect, having no more than a few words from Shagratt to loosely define each one. Time constraints of getting it ready for release at the Digital Symposium party (1992) meant we had little time for polish. Still it worked, even it if didn’t match my imagination!
How many members of LSD worked on JOEs?
A fairly small team worked on the demo itself, but there was a lot of input from other members. I did all the music and Shagratt did all the code, but Pazza contributed a lot by making some of the other graphics and organising things. Watchman did the bitmap graphics for the splash and loading screens. It was a community effort.
How did you work together on the demo?
We worked like many groups of the day, mainly working in isolation but meeting up at Pazza’s flat every week or so. Geographically everyone that worked on the demo was pretty close to one another, so this didn’t present too much of a challenge. Once the initial design concept was done it was just a case of each person working on their contributions and getting them to Pazza so he could get them to his brother (Shagratt) so they could be incorporated into the demo.
How long did it take to complete?
Concept to completion took around 6-8 weeks.
What other demos were around at the time that you drew influence from?
I reckon the Afrika demo part of Budbrain Megademo 2 had a fair part to play, and I definitely ripped the breakbeat from Anarchy’s 3D Demo but those are the only specifics I can think of. There wasn’t really any existing rave type demos at the time (although Spaceball’s State of the Art wasn’t far behind JOEs) so I think that’s probably about it.
Do you still have contact with any members of LSD?
I’m still in touch with a few LSD members like mUb, Fish, SGTruck and Maximan. Maximan was best man at my wedding in 2006!
Was there anything planned/written that didn’t make it to the final demo?
The music was complete (well, as much as I could be bothered!). I would like to have changed some of the effects and the way they appeared in the demo, but time constraints meant that wasn’t possible. As far as I am aware it was content complete.
What were your musical influences at the time/what were you listening to?
By 1992 I was quite heavily into rave and not just in touch with my dark side but groping and dry-humping it too. There are too many tunes to mention, but I know I spent a hideous amount of time listening to the Hit The Decks megamixes volumes 1-3 and a tape of N-Joi’s Live in Manchester set, so it’s no coincidence that these were also the source of many samples used in JOEs.
How did you go about writing the music, where did you source you samples, did you compose directly on the Amiga etc.
Samples were pulled from tape cassette and other mods. I credited a lot of the sources in the JOEs End Part, but that scroller was put together in a hurry and is nowhere near complete. I do wish I’d kept an accurate record of the sources!
Everything was done on the Amiga in ProTracker.
What hardware did you use in the process? Amiga and Musical
By 1992 my Amiga setup consisted of an A500 equipped with a partially populated A590 equipped with a 20Mb IBM XT hard drive. The only other device I used was an 8-bit sampler which plugged into the parallel port – I had no synths or anything, everything was done using samples in ProTracker.
The use of the Rolf Harris and the Muppets samples are legendary, were you playing around with these before the demo?
The Rolf Harris voice came from one of the Hit The Decks tapes, but it was my idea to mix his own style of beat-box with a drum loop.
About 4 weeks into the project I was at Pazza’s flat explaining how I was beginning to struggle for ideas. There were a few rave tunes around that had started to remix some classic kids themes (Sesamie Street, Magic Roundabout, etc) and I wanted to do something similar but wasn’t sure what. On hearing this Pazza pulled out a Muppets vinyl LP. 20 minutes later “Mah-Na Mah-Na” was sampled and had an accompanying breakbeat.
In retrospect, it would have been better do put that tune earlier in the mix, but it also served well as an amusing treat for those who managed to get that far in
Did you attend the Digital Symposium 1992 party, what was it like? What was the reception was the reception to JOE
Yeah I was there. I took my Amiga and a mountain of speakers as I recall! JOEs wasn’t received well – they only managed 10 mins before moving on to another demo, partly because the music was an acquired taste but also because many of the routines were not particularly ground breaking.
What happened to Shagratt and Pazza, what was the last you heard?
I’m not sure about Shagratt but if memory serves Pazza got together with some Woman and moved out of his flat. I’ve not heard from or seen him since..
Where was Digital Symposium held?
At Rawmarsh Leisure Centre in Rotherham, nr Sheffield.
Do you have any photos from the event?
Nah. These days were pre-digital photography days and I had no camera to speak of.
If you were to re-do the demo again on the Amiga what would you do differently?
Well, the music would need an overhaul for starters with better production quality. Other than that I guess more effects and variation would be key, but given the two floppy limit it might not turn out much different than it did!
Post JOE where was the focus, was there ever to be a follow up?
I started on a sequel called ‘Satan on Speed’ but only got 4 mods into it before losing interest. Great name though! If you’re interested the Satan on Speed mods can be found on my mods page archive.
What are your thoughts on the current “demo” scene?
I know little about the scene these days, but still try and find the time to catch up on modern releases in the PC demo scene. It’s all changed of course – no longer are demos about showing off what the coders can do with limited hardware as it’s all handled by the graphics API’s. There’s still innovation in the effects but I feel much of what made demos of the Amiga era so great no longer apply.
What are your top 10 ECS demos of all time?
Tough call. There were so many great demos, but for a demo to be good for me it had to be more than just fancy routines – the music had to be good too and if the demo effects were timed with the music then all the better. If I had to name my favourites, then it would have to go something like:
1. Spaceballs – 9 Fingers
2. Spaceballs – State of the Art
3. Budbrain – Megademo 2
4. Virtual Dreams & Fairlight – Full Moon
5. Kefrens – Guardian Dragon II
6. Kefrens – Desert Dreams
7. Virtual Dreams & Fairlight - Love
8. Pygmy Projects - Extension
9. Phenomena - Enigma
10. Sanity – World of Commodore
So many awesome productions, 10 just isn’t enough! The ‘Amiga Rules’ part of the World of Commodore demo where the lead synth kicks in still gives me goose bumps. Beautiful tune. Perhaps I’ll do a remake at some point!
JOE’s made a lasting impression on people, what is it do you think that that makes JOE one of the most talked about demos.
I honestly don’t have a clue! The demo was pretty rough and fairly niche musically and I expected it to be received in much the same way on the scene as it was at Digital Symposium ‘92. It wasn’t though – Shagratt and I both received a £75 cheque out of the blue from some PD library as thanks as they’d sold so many disks containing the demo!
I still get emails and kudos from people 18 years after the event thanking me for playing a pleasurable role in their teenage years. It’s pretty amazing and also humbling if I’m honest.
Are you still involved in the scene?
No, not at all. The closest I get is watching modern PC demos and uploading Amiga demos to my YouTube channel.
When was the last time you composed on the Amiga
According to my archives, the last Amiga made tune was created in OctaMed sometime in 1996.
How did you initially find the move from the Amiga to the PC?
While I’d had an Intel DX2-66 machine, it was mainly for playing Doom. Eventually I upgraded to a Pentium machine with Windows 95 and had 16-bit sound capabilities courtesy of a Creative SoundBlaster 16 ISA card. FastTracker filled the gap for a while, but it wasn’t too long before I moved to using Cubase, got myself some MIDI equipment and started to take music a bit more seriously.
What are you up to these days?
Musically, I do very little these days due to a mild lack of interest, other interests, work and family commitments. I did drop music entirely for a good 5 years and sold my entire studio as it all became more chore than pleasure and took up photography which was much easier to pick up and drop on a whim. Recently I’ve started on a few tunes again, but purely for pleasure. I’m really into a lot of the tunes found at AmigaRemix.com and have even created a few remixes myself, so I hope to continue to keep a foot firmly near my Amiga roots.
Someone mentioned Jesus on E's earlier... Back in 2010 I found "echo" from LSD the man responsible for the music and asked him some questions which you can find below. This is now 3 years old
icard cant believe its taken till now to post...Where did it all start, how did you get into the demo scene and how did you become a member of LSD.
Before I had my own Amiga I’d seen the Puggs In Space demo at some computer shop at the time and a friend had an Amiga and a stack of demos. Coupled with the allure of its audio capabilities that’s really where my interest started with the Amiga.
It was 1989/1990 and it wasn’t long before I had my own Amiga, a copy of Sound Tracker and a stack of floppies stuffed with samples. I spent a few years with the platform making tunes and was getting into the Public Domain scene of disk swapping and acquiring friends via the process.
Through these contacts I got in touch with Pazza and Shagratt of LSD. A lot of the LSD guys were from Gainsborough/Lincoln/Scunthorpe and they got together once a week at Pazzas house. I’m not quite sure how I got there or who introduced me, but I attended one of these evenings and played them some of my tunes. On hearing my tunes they invited me into LSD and it all started from there.
As a musician, did you ever consider the Atari ST over the Amiga?
I actually owned an Atari 520STFM (upgraded to 1MB by soldering in the RAM and decoupling capacitors myself) before I had an Amiga. I never used the MIDI functions (MIDI equipment was way out of a 15 year old’s league) but worked in Quartet to produce sample based tunes. It was primitive, it was score notation, it sounded bad - but it was better than nothing.
Even on the ST I was into the demo scene, not producing anything myself, but still gaping in awe at the Big Demo, Cuddly Demos, The Union Demo and all those old classics. Yes, I even listened to a ST tunes as I cycled around Grantham on my early morning paper round with my Sony Walkman cassette player attached to my belt! Good times.
I played the ‘My ST is better than your Amiga’ game like we all did at the time, but I eventually succumbed to the Amiga’s superior audio capabilities.
Were you in any other groups before/after LSD?
LSD was the first real group I was ever in and I remained in LSD for many years until it all eventually fizzled out and people grew apart. I never went on to be part of any other demo group.
How old were you when you wrote the music for JOE?
I wrote the music for JOEs in 1992, so that would make me around 17.
Where did the idea for Jesus on E’s come from?
Back in the early nineties after I left school I got a job at a laser display company. As well as assembling laser display systems for use in night clubs, my Friday and Saturday nights often involved lugging massive water cooled laser display systems up on the top of scaffold towers and doing the laser effects at raves. It wasn’t long before rave music began to interest me, and naturally the music I was writing followed suit.
I seem to recall being into a few of the ‘Hit the Decks’ megamix style releases of the time and wanted to do my own. LSD’s first attempt was a production called Total Kaos (which I actually think is better musically than JOEs) but it consisted of nothing more than a scroller and a rotating equaliser – not very exciting stuff.
We wanted to produce a rave-style demo with flashing images and patterns typical of the projections of the time, but there were technical challenges to overcome – the sheer size of the Total Kaos mods meant that there wasn’t much room left on the two floppies for much else, and memory was tight back then too, with most machines not having more than a 512k chip ram upgrade installed.
Taking an idea from Mahoney & Kaktus’ Sounds of Gnome music disk, I proposed that all the mods were made from a pool of sounds instead of being individually stored in their separate entities (previous experience making Total Kaos revealed that I repeated a lot of the same samples throughout the mods). The JOEs coder – Shagratt – defined the size of my sample pool, imposed an individual mod limit of 175Kb (as two of these would have to be loaded into RAM simultaneously so that they flowed seamlessly into each other) and got to work on coding the effects.
Another problem was how to sync the demo’s effects to the music. As ProTracker (the mod making tool I was using at the time) was a tool in a fairly early stage of its development, many of the effects commands (entered as hexadecimal entries into the tracker’s channel steps) were unused, so I devised a method where we would use these unused commands to trigger effects in the demo.
The name was my own invention.
What were your main goals/objectives for the demo?
Musically I wanted to create a long seamless megamix of rave tunes, taking some of my favourite tunes and sounds from the era, adding my own spin and mashing them altogether.
Visually I expected something different to how it turned out – I actually had coded the majority of effect commands into the modules before I’d even seen a single effect, having no more than a few words from Shagratt to loosely define each one. Time constraints of getting it ready for release at the Digital Symposium party (1992) meant we had little time for polish. Still it worked, even it if didn’t match my imagination!
How many members of LSD worked on JOEs?
A fairly small team worked on the demo itself, but there was a lot of input from other members. I did all the music and Shagratt did all the code, but Pazza contributed a lot by making some of the other graphics and organising things. Watchman did the bitmap graphics for the splash and loading screens. It was a community effort.
How did you work together on the demo?
We worked like many groups of the day, mainly working in isolation but meeting up at Pazza’s flat every week or so. Geographically everyone that worked on the demo was pretty close to one another, so this didn’t present too much of a challenge. Once the initial design concept was done it was just a case of each person working on their contributions and getting them to Pazza so he could get them to his brother (Shagratt) so they could be incorporated into the demo.
How long did it take to complete?
Concept to completion took around 6-8 weeks.
What other demos were around at the time that you drew influence from?
I reckon the Afrika demo part of Budbrain Megademo 2 had a fair part to play, and I definitely ripped the breakbeat from Anarchy’s 3D Demo but those are the only specifics I can think of. There wasn’t really any existing rave type demos at the time (although Spaceball’s State of the Art wasn’t far behind JOEs) so I think that’s probably about it.
Do you still have contact with any members of LSD?
I’m still in touch with a few LSD members like mUb, Fish, SGTruck and Maximan. Maximan was best man at my wedding in 2006!
Was there anything planned/written that didn’t make it to the final demo?
The music was complete (well, as much as I could be bothered!). I would like to have changed some of the effects and the way they appeared in the demo, but time constraints meant that wasn’t possible. As far as I am aware it was content complete.
What were your musical influences at the time/what were you listening to?
By 1992 I was quite heavily into rave and not just in touch with my dark side but groping and dry-humping it too. There are too many tunes to mention, but I know I spent a hideous amount of time listening to the Hit The Decks megamixes volumes 1-3 and a tape of N-Joi’s Live in Manchester set, so it’s no coincidence that these were also the source of many samples used in JOEs.
How did you go about writing the music, where did you source you samples, did you compose directly on the Amiga etc.
Samples were pulled from tape cassette and other mods. I credited a lot of the sources in the JOEs End Part, but that scroller was put together in a hurry and is nowhere near complete. I do wish I’d kept an accurate record of the sources!
Everything was done on the Amiga in ProTracker.
What hardware did you use in the process? Amiga and Musical
By 1992 my Amiga setup consisted of an A500 equipped with a partially populated A590 equipped with a 20Mb IBM XT hard drive. The only other device I used was an 8-bit sampler which plugged into the parallel port – I had no synths or anything, everything was done using samples in ProTracker.
The use of the Rolf Harris and the Muppets samples are legendary, were you playing around with these before the demo?
The Rolf Harris voice came from one of the Hit The Decks tapes, but it was my idea to mix his own style of beat-box with a drum loop.
About 4 weeks into the project I was at Pazza’s flat explaining how I was beginning to struggle for ideas. There were a few rave tunes around that had started to remix some classic kids themes (Sesamie Street, Magic Roundabout, etc) and I wanted to do something similar but wasn’t sure what. On hearing this Pazza pulled out a Muppets vinyl LP. 20 minutes later “Mah-Na Mah-Na” was sampled and had an accompanying breakbeat.
In retrospect, it would have been better do put that tune earlier in the mix, but it also served well as an amusing treat for those who managed to get that far in
Did you attend the Digital Symposium 1992 party, what was it like? What was the reception was the reception to JOE
Yeah I was there. I took my Amiga and a mountain of speakers as I recall! JOEs wasn’t received well – they only managed 10 mins before moving on to another demo, partly because the music was an acquired taste but also because many of the routines were not particularly ground breaking.
What happened to Shagratt and Pazza, what was the last you heard?
I’m not sure about Shagratt but if memory serves Pazza got together with some Woman and moved out of his flat. I’ve not heard from or seen him since..
Where was Digital Symposium held?
At Rawmarsh Leisure Centre in Rotherham, nr Sheffield.
Do you have any photos from the event?
Nah. These days were pre-digital photography days and I had no camera to speak of.
If you were to re-do the demo again on the Amiga what would you do differently?
Well, the music would need an overhaul for starters with better production quality. Other than that I guess more effects and variation would be key, but given the two floppy limit it might not turn out much different than it did!
Post JOE where was the focus, was there ever to be a follow up?
I started on a sequel called ‘Satan on Speed’ but only got 4 mods into it before losing interest. Great name though! If you’re interested the Satan on Speed mods can be found on my mods page archive.
What are your thoughts on the current “demo” scene?
I know little about the scene these days, but still try and find the time to catch up on modern releases in the PC demo scene. It’s all changed of course – no longer are demos about showing off what the coders can do with limited hardware as it’s all handled by the graphics API’s. There’s still innovation in the effects but I feel much of what made demos of the Amiga era so great no longer apply.
What are your top 10 ECS demos of all time?
Tough call. There were so many great demos, but for a demo to be good for me it had to be more than just fancy routines – the music had to be good too and if the demo effects were timed with the music then all the better. If I had to name my favourites, then it would have to go something like:
1. Spaceballs – 9 Fingers
2. Spaceballs – State of the Art
3. Budbrain – Megademo 2
4. Virtual Dreams & Fairlight – Full Moon
5. Kefrens – Guardian Dragon II
6. Kefrens – Desert Dreams
7. Virtual Dreams & Fairlight - Love
8. Pygmy Projects - Extension
9. Phenomena - Enigma
10. Sanity – World of Commodore
So many awesome productions, 10 just isn’t enough! The ‘Amiga Rules’ part of the World of Commodore demo where the lead synth kicks in still gives me goose bumps. Beautiful tune. Perhaps I’ll do a remake at some point!
JOE’s made a lasting impression on people, what is it do you think that that makes JOE one of the most talked about demos.
I honestly don’t have a clue! The demo was pretty rough and fairly niche musically and I expected it to be received in much the same way on the scene as it was at Digital Symposium ‘92. It wasn’t though – Shagratt and I both received a £75 cheque out of the blue from some PD library as thanks as they’d sold so many disks containing the demo!
I still get emails and kudos from people 18 years after the event thanking me for playing a pleasurable role in their teenage years. It’s pretty amazing and also humbling if I’m honest.
Are you still involved in the scene?
No, not at all. The closest I get is watching modern PC demos and uploading Amiga demos to my YouTube channel.
When was the last time you composed on the Amiga
According to my archives, the last Amiga made tune was created in OctaMed sometime in 1996.
How did you initially find the move from the Amiga to the PC?
While I’d had an Intel DX2-66 machine, it was mainly for playing Doom. Eventually I upgraded to a Pentium machine with Windows 95 and had 16-bit sound capabilities courtesy of a Creative SoundBlaster 16 ISA card. FastTracker filled the gap for a while, but it wasn’t too long before I moved to using Cubase, got myself some MIDI equipment and started to take music a bit more seriously.
What are you up to these days?
Musically, I do very little these days due to a mild lack of interest, other interests, work and family commitments. I did drop music entirely for a good 5 years and sold my entire studio as it all became more chore than pleasure and took up photography which was much easier to pick up and drop on a whim. Recently I’ve started on a few tunes again, but purely for pleasure. I’m really into a lot of the tunes found at AmigaRemix.com and have even created a few remixes myself, so I hope to continue to keep a foot firmly near my Amiga roots.
---------- Post added at 00:50 ---------- Previous post was at 00:36 ----------
I bloody love the rave. I was probably just a little bit too young to be attending raves and around that time I was more interested in my C64 & Amiga than anything else. I eventually took a retrospective look back into the 90's after a visit to ibiza in 2003 where I happened upon ratpack performing a set at a random pool party I fell upon. Of course during the 90's I did enjoy listening to the commercialy stuff already posted but after that chance meet in Ibiza I ventured into the more hardcore rave and acid house which I love to this day, although no longer get as much chance to listen to. It also ultimately led to the purchase of a Roland TB303, Roland Alpha Juno 2, Roland SH101 & a Roland J3XP which I had great fun with for a few years.
Someone mentioned Jesus on E's earlier... Back in 2010 I found "echo" from LSD the man responsible for the music and asked him some questions which you can find below. This is now 3 years old
icard cant believe its taken till now to post...Where did it all start, how did you get into the demo scene and how did you become a member of LSD.
Before I had my own Amiga I’d seen the Puggs In Space demo at some computer shop at the time and a friend had an Amiga and a stack of demos. Coupled with the allure of its audio capabilities that’s really where my interest started with the Amiga.
It was 1989/1990 and it wasn’t long before I had my own Amiga, a copy of Sound Tracker and a stack of floppies stuffed with samples. I spent a few years with the platform making tunes and was getting into the Public Domain scene of disk swapping and acquiring friends via the process.
Through these contacts I got in touch with Pazza and Shagratt of LSD. A lot of the LSD guys were from Gainsborough/Lincoln/Scunthorpe and they got together once a week at Pazzas house. I’m not quite sure how I got there or who introduced me, but I attended one of these evenings and played them some of my tunes. On hearing my tunes they invited me into LSD and it all started from there.
As a musician, did you ever consider the Atari ST over the Amiga?
I actually owned an Atari 520STFM (upgraded to 1MB by soldering in the RAM and decoupling capacitors myself) before I had an Amiga. I never used the MIDI functions (MIDI equipment was way out of a 15 year old’s league) but worked in Quartet to produce sample based tunes. It was primitive, it was score notation, it sounded bad - but it was better than nothing.
Even on the ST I was into the demo scene, not producing anything myself, but still gaping in awe at the Big Demo, Cuddly Demos, The Union Demo and all those old classics. Yes, I even listened to a ST tunes as I cycled around Grantham on my early morning paper round with my Sony Walkman cassette player attached to my belt! Good times.
I played the ‘My ST is better than your Amiga’ game like we all did at the time, but I eventually succumbed to the Amiga’s superior audio capabilities.
Were you in any other groups before/after LSD?
LSD was the first real group I was ever in and I remained in LSD for many years until it all eventually fizzled out and people grew apart. I never went on to be part of any other demo group.
How old were you when you wrote the music for JOE?
I wrote the music for JOEs in 1992, so that would make me around 17.
Where did the idea for Jesus on E’s come from?
Back in the early nineties after I left school I got a job at a laser display company. As well as assembling laser display systems for use in night clubs, my Friday and Saturday nights often involved lugging massive water cooled laser display systems up on the top of scaffold towers and doing the laser effects at raves. It wasn’t long before rave music began to interest me, and naturally the music I was writing followed suit.
I seem to recall being into a few of the ‘Hit the Decks’ megamix style releases of the time and wanted to do my own. LSD’s first attempt was a production called Total Kaos (which I actually think is better musically than JOEs) but it consisted of nothing more than a scroller and a rotating equaliser – not very exciting stuff.
We wanted to produce a rave-style demo with flashing images and patterns typical of the projections of the time, but there were technical challenges to overcome – the sheer size of the Total Kaos mods meant that there wasn’t much room left on the two floppies for much else, and memory was tight back then too, with most machines not having more than a 512k chip ram upgrade installed.
Taking an idea from Mahoney & Kaktus’ Sounds of Gnome music disk, I proposed that all the mods were made from a pool of sounds instead of being individually stored in their separate entities (previous experience making Total Kaos revealed that I repeated a lot of the same samples throughout the mods). The JOEs coder – Shagratt – defined the size of my sample pool, imposed an individual mod limit of 175Kb (as two of these would have to be loaded into RAM simultaneously so that they flowed seamlessly into each other) and got to work on coding the effects.
Another problem was how to sync the demo’s effects to the music. As ProTracker (the mod making tool I was using at the time) was a tool in a fairly early stage of its development, many of the effects commands (entered as hexadecimal entries into the tracker’s channel steps) were unused, so I devised a method where we would use these unused commands to trigger effects in the demo.
The name was my own invention.
What were your main goals/objectives for the demo?
Musically I wanted to create a long seamless megamix of rave tunes, taking some of my favourite tunes and sounds from the era, adding my own spin and mashing them altogether.
Visually I expected something different to how it turned out – I actually had coded the majority of effect commands into the modules before I’d even seen a single effect, having no more than a few words from Shagratt to loosely define each one. Time constraints of getting it ready for release at the Digital Symposium party (1992) meant we had little time for polish. Still it worked, even it if didn’t match my imagination!
How many members of LSD worked on JOEs?
A fairly small team worked on the demo itself, but there was a lot of input from other members. I did all the music and Shagratt did all the code, but Pazza contributed a lot by making some of the other graphics and organising things. Watchman did the bitmap graphics for the splash and loading screens. It was a community effort.
How did you work together on the demo?
We worked like many groups of the day, mainly working in isolation but meeting up at Pazza’s flat every week or so. Geographically everyone that worked on the demo was pretty close to one another, so this didn’t present too much of a challenge. Once the initial design concept was done it was just a case of each person working on their contributions and getting them to Pazza so he could get them to his brother (Shagratt) so they could be incorporated into the demo.
How long did it take to complete?
Concept to completion took around 6-8 weeks.
What other demos were around at the time that you drew influence from?
I reckon the Afrika demo part of Budbrain Megademo 2 had a fair part to play, and I definitely ripped the breakbeat from Anarchy’s 3D Demo but those are the only specifics I can think of. There wasn’t really any existing rave type demos at the time (although Spaceball’s State of the Art wasn’t far behind JOEs) so I think that’s probably about it.
Do you still have contact with any members of LSD?
I’m still in touch with a few LSD members like mUb, Fish, SGTruck and Maximan. Maximan was best man at my wedding in 2006!
Was there anything planned/written that didn’t make it to the final demo?
The music was complete (well, as much as I could be bothered!). I would like to have changed some of the effects and the way they appeared in the demo, but time constraints meant that wasn’t possible. As far as I am aware it was content complete.
What were your musical influences at the time/what were you listening to?
By 1992 I was quite heavily into rave and not just in touch with my dark side but groping and dry-humping it too. There are too many tunes to mention, but I know I spent a hideous amount of time listening to the Hit The Decks megamixes volumes 1-3 and a tape of N-Joi’s Live in Manchester set, so it’s no coincidence that these were also the source of many samples used in JOEs.
How did you go about writing the music, where did you source you samples, did you compose directly on the Amiga etc.
Samples were pulled from tape cassette and other mods. I credited a lot of the sources in the JOEs End Part, but that scroller was put together in a hurry and is nowhere near complete. I do wish I’d kept an accurate record of the sources!
Everything was done on the Amiga in ProTracker.
What hardware did you use in the process? Amiga and Musical
By 1992 my Amiga setup consisted of an A500 equipped with a partially populated A590 equipped with a 20Mb IBM XT hard drive. The only other device I used was an 8-bit sampler which plugged into the parallel port – I had no synths or anything, everything was done using samples in ProTracker.
The use of the Rolf Harris and the Muppets samples are legendary, were you playing around with these before the demo?
The Rolf Harris voice came from one of the Hit The Decks tapes, but it was my idea to mix his own style of beat-box with a drum loop.
About 4 weeks into the project I was at Pazza’s flat explaining how I was beginning to struggle for ideas. There were a few rave tunes around that had started to remix some classic kids themes (Sesamie Street, Magic Roundabout, etc) and I wanted to do something similar but wasn’t sure what. On hearing this Pazza pulled out a Muppets vinyl LP. 20 minutes later “Mah-Na Mah-Na” was sampled and had an accompanying breakbeat.
In retrospect, it would have been better do put that tune earlier in the mix, but it also served well as an amusing treat for those who managed to get that far in
Did you attend the Digital Symposium 1992 party, what was it like? What was the reception was the reception to JOE
Yeah I was there. I took my Amiga and a mountain of speakers as I recall! JOEs wasn’t received well – they only managed 10 mins before moving on to another demo, partly because the music was an acquired taste but also because many of the routines were not particularly ground breaking.
What happened to Shagratt and Pazza, what was the last you heard?
I’m not sure about Shagratt but if memory serves Pazza got together with some Woman and moved out of his flat. I’ve not heard from or seen him since..
Where was Digital Symposium held?
At Rawmarsh Leisure Centre in Rotherham, nr Sheffield.
Do you have any photos from the event?
Nah. These days were pre-digital photography days and I had no camera to speak of.
If you were to re-do the demo again on the Amiga what would you do differently?
Well, the music would need an overhaul for starters with better production quality. Other than that I guess more effects and variation would be key, but given the two floppy limit it might not turn out much different than it did!
Post JOE where was the focus, was there ever to be a follow up?
I started on a sequel called ‘Satan on Speed’ but only got 4 mods into it before losing interest. Great name though! If you’re interested the Satan on Speed mods can be found on my mods page archive.
What are your thoughts on the current “demo” scene?
I know little about the scene these days, but still try and find the time to catch up on modern releases in the PC demo scene. It’s all changed of course – no longer are demos about showing off what the coders can do with limited hardware as it’s all handled by the graphics API’s. There’s still innovation in the effects but I feel much of what made demos of the Amiga era so great no longer apply.
What are your top 10 ECS demos of all time?
Tough call. There were so many great demos, but for a demo to be good for me it had to be more than just fancy routines – the music had to be good too and if the demo effects were timed with the music then all the better. If I had to name my favourites, then it would have to go something like:
1. Spaceballs – 9 Fingers
2. Spaceballs – State of the Art
3. Budbrain – Megademo 2
4. Virtual Dreams & Fairlight – Full Moon
5. Kefrens – Guardian Dragon II
6. Kefrens – Desert Dreams
7. Virtual Dreams & Fairlight - Love
8. Pygmy Projects - Extension
9. Phenomena - Enigma
10. Sanity – World of Commodore
So many awesome productions, 10 just isn’t enough! The ‘Amiga Rules’ part of the World of Commodore demo where the lead synth kicks in still gives me goose bumps. Beautiful tune. Perhaps I’ll do a remake at some point!
JOE’s made a lasting impression on people, what is it do you think that that makes JOE one of the most talked about demos.
I honestly don’t have a clue! The demo was pretty rough and fairly niche musically and I expected it to be received in much the same way on the scene as it was at Digital Symposium ‘92. It wasn’t though – Shagratt and I both received a £75 cheque out of the blue from some PD library as thanks as they’d sold so many disks containing the demo!
I still get emails and kudos from people 18 years after the event thanking me for playing a pleasurable role in their teenage years. It’s pretty amazing and also humbling if I’m honest.
Are you still involved in the scene?
No, not at all. The closest I get is watching modern PC demos and uploading Amiga demos to my YouTube channel.
When was the last time you composed on the Amiga
According to my archives, the last Amiga made tune was created in OctaMed sometime in 1996.
How did you initially find the move from the Amiga to the PC?
While I’d had an Intel DX2-66 machine, it was mainly for playing Doom. Eventually I upgraded to a Pentium machine with Windows 95 and had 16-bit sound capabilities courtesy of a Creative SoundBlaster 16 ISA card. FastTracker filled the gap for a while, but it wasn’t too long before I moved to using Cubase, got myself some MIDI equipment and started to take music a bit more seriously.
What are you up to these days?
Musically, I do very little these days due to a mild lack of interest, other interests, work and family commitments. I did drop music entirely for a good 5 years and sold my entire studio as it all became more chore than pleasure and took up photography which was much easier to pick up and drop on a whim. Recently I’ve started on a few tunes again, but purely for pleasure. I’m really into a lot of the tunes found at AmigaRemix.com and have even created a few remixes myself, so I hope to continue to keep a foot firmly near my Amiga roots.
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That was interesting reading there gazcbm
I'm into pretty much any genre and appreciate a damn good beat as much as the next person. I gotta say this era brought out some good stuff but it also spawned some absolute kaka. I think Deelite's Grove Is In The Heart still stands up as an awesome tune and I was a massive Soup Dragons and Charlatans fan. Chemical Bros yes and every now and again a bit of the Prodigy.
To be honest I can appreciate some of the stuff more now than when it was fresh though. I was at that age where I wanted to be a bit different and not doing what all the others kids were doing. I was very much into Blues at that time and Robert Johnson (there was an awesome re-vamp someone did of Red Hot) was top of my playlist alongside BB King (or as I like to call him the god of music),
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fk2prKnYnI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L6sGd0R6FI
Ray Charles and Howlin' Wolf but also the Stones and the Doors (actually shed a tear when old Ray Manzarek died earlier this year) were right up there.
There is also a lot Soul and R&B (that's Rhythm & Blues not the rubbish they call R&B nowadays) that I like to listen to, Reggae (ah a bitta Bob), funk, jazz, folk, country, trance, Indie, pop, punk and just a little bit of Mozart but what I suppose I listen to most over all the years is good old rock. Whole lotta Rosie still makes me jump around like a kid pretending to be Angus Young
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQWJog7eYqY
There's loads more deserve a mention like Fun Lovin' Criminals, Chilli Peppers, Faith No More, Lenny Kravitz, Sex Pistols, but I could go on forever
Blues Brother Rhythm & Blues Revue might just require a mention too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GlO2ZDwosQ
BB
To be honest I can appreciate some of the stuff more now than when it was fresh though. I was at that age where I wanted to be a bit different and not doing what all the others kids were doing. I was very much into Blues at that time and Robert Johnson (there was an awesome re-vamp someone did of Red Hot) was top of my playlist alongside BB King (or as I like to call him the god of music),
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fk2prKnYnI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L6sGd0R6FI
Ray Charles and Howlin' Wolf but also the Stones and the Doors (actually shed a tear when old Ray Manzarek died earlier this year) were right up there.
There is also a lot Soul and R&B (that's Rhythm & Blues not the rubbish they call R&B nowadays) that I like to listen to, Reggae (ah a bitta Bob), funk, jazz, folk, country, trance, Indie, pop, punk and just a little bit of Mozart but what I suppose I listen to most over all the years is good old rock. Whole lotta Rosie still makes me jump around like a kid pretending to be Angus Young
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQWJog7eYqY
There's loads more deserve a mention like Fun Lovin' Criminals, Chilli Peppers, Faith No More, Lenny Kravitz, Sex Pistols, but I could go on forever
Blues Brother Rhythm & Blues Revue might just require a mention too
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GlO2ZDwosQ
BB
That'd be either Slammin' Vinyl or United Dance. Both of which were based around that area.
FOL
Active member
I love the 90's Music and Today Music is Crap!
2 Unlimited - No limit, Workaholic, maxium overdrive, real things, get ready for this, face, No one, Here I go, Nothing like Rain, Jump for Joy(My Fav!)
Culture Beat - Mr. Vain, Serenity (Epilog), Got to Get It, Anythings,World in Your Hands
Snap - Exterminate, Rhythm Is a Dancer , Do You See The Light
Maxx - Getaway, No More
Cappella - U Got 2 Know, Light my Fire ,Move on baby,You and me, U Get let Music
Corona - The Rhythm Of The Night(The best Music ever for 90'S!)
Haddaway - What is Love?
Robert Miles - Children
urban cookie - the key
The Prodigy
Bomb The Bass - Megablast
Delerium Silence (Very Hyper Music that keep you going!)
JESUS, are we twins,
.I still listen to all them and rave,
. We were forever saving up to buy the latest rave event compilation releases. We would sometimes go into cardiff on the weekend. Catapult used to be the main place to get all the latest cassette collections of rave, .An awesome CD, is FACT (CARL COX). Not sure you would class it as rave.
Its funny, as people dont expect me to be into that type of music as I was in the School orchestra. I like classical too.
I don't really think it matters, as the pigeon holes are forever changing.
I remember when garage just meant you were a band that played music in a garage or similar makeshift orifice.
Now it seems to mean that you're some [snip] waffling about [snip] and [snipping] your [snip], whilst someone else's music plays in the background.
I'm sure it's great and everything, but the meaning changed
majsta
Active member
I always put together usage of computers and Rave or any other kind of electronic music and didn't quite understand how someone can be "geek" and not listen to Rave. I was part in Bosnian Rave movement. We produced lot of electronics musics, organized TV and radio shows. We had so much parties in old castles. We had so much fun playing doom like games on our parties with thousands of visitors. Most of the musics we produced on various trackers. now those days are gone since cheap, silicon boobies and lips music arrived.
FOL
Active member
lol, I suppose your right. I hate the term dub step, my kids think they are well cool when they say it,
icard.