Cheetah Specdrum!!! I still have mine, and my Spectrum and 2 Amigas.

Yes this is how you had to create music back in the day, although I have to say The RAM Music Machine on the Amstrad (or other computers) rocked more than the AMS – great for no additional hardware but you were stuck with that sound – now fashionable, or was – but then it really didn’t cut it if you wanted to sound like what you heard in the charts! Or create echo or sample – one of the amazing things about the RAM is it could sample – 1.22 seconds! WOOH!

Myself and Kirk produced many tracks on his RAM Music Machine before I graduated to this:

And yes my Amiga A500 made those annoying clicking noises too, I think it was a particular bug in A500+s!

This is OctaMED – what is called a music ‘tracker‘ rather than the usual ‘bar’ notation that is usually used in sequencers – most of the Amiga demos were created in trackers like this and Protracker, Fasttracker and the llike. I started with MED and graduated to OctaMED, and also used AudioMaster audio editor and dallied with Bars and Pipes – might sound a bit like an old fogey but actually I’ve not found any programs as good or as easy to use as these early programs – it seems with the PC and Mac modern software complexity and bloatware is the way – only Renoise, Ableton and Sony’s Acid have come close.

The recently RavEvil was produced originally like this, and remixed in Renoise – because I’m glad to say tracking is still going on the PC – with Renoise (I have bought Renoise) and the soul of Protracker continues in the open-source Madtracker!

And if you’re into chiptunes I recommend you use a tracker – either OctaMED Sound Studio emulated on your computer via Amiga Forever or the free WinUAE (you’ll need to hunt around for Kickstart ROMs and Workbench – I still legally own these, I suggest torrent sites) or use the PC version of OctaMED, MED Studio which has the chip synth creator in it – or use something like MilkyTracker if you can find it – site is currently down! I know you can get plugins etc. but really for that authentic Amiga-demo chiptune sound you need to use the original or similar tools, and understand all the slides etc.

Madtracker and Renoise:

There was an era in the mid to late 80’s where videos weren’t cheap. So when rave and hiphouse/hiphop came along they needed something for MTV and Top of the Pops etc – so enter the stand in front of a screen video, usually with graphics ‘genlocked’ (aka ‘keyed’) ie. placed digitally behind them, or stock video, even more cheaply projected behind them…and loads of silly dancing. Like this (Keith Haring a B movie inspired):

Other ones include A Guy Called Gerald’s Voodoo Ray, which owes rather a lot to Len Lye’s Colour Box, uses computer animation and projection, and suddenly I feel an unusual desire for Sanatogen, not MDMA:

Neneh Cherry might be more famous now for cookery programmes, but in 1987 she was standing in front of a screen with some very embarassing earrings. Am I bovvered?
Pointless fact: it was produced by Tim Simenon, aka Bomb the Bass hence the reference to Tim and Timmy, you might hear from that person shortly…

Obviously one of the problems was the complete anonymity of the dance music at the time – few vocals, no ’stars’, just rhythm. What to do? Well what about constructor worker garb, ripped video game graphics, weird building shots (cos it’s house! geddit?) and dodgy mosaic effect (cos it’s the nu digital age, right?). Erm…

ACCCIEEEDDD! Certain Residents inspiration to this one – the tune was banned in the UK so never shown fully:

And as rave took over, the videos got cheaper and more like Amiga demos, which is funny because they were probably produced on the Amiga:

And FSOL aka Stakker Humanoid were making their own 3D videos (Amiga probably too ) which seem very ahead of their time:

And apparently you should move your body over glowing radioactive lava fields:

and some actually became soundtracks for Amiga games:

Also pop got in the act twith bigger crowds but basically the same idea (1990)

As an aside, it’s interesting because I remember seeing videos by Cerith Wyn Evans using these overlay techniques from the early 80’s, and of course one of Leigh Bowery’s videos which was shot purely in a video booth at the Tropicana in London using the same idea…sadly neither are on YouTube but I’ve had a lot of fun looking at video of Leigh, he was a lovely man.

Anyway back to the (day)glowing outline 90’s – what’s interesting is that those with bigger budgets co-opted that ‘dance in front a screen’ style but maybe lost something of the original charm:

And then you have modern day, were the whole thing was co-opted by the new rave scene – such as the pisstaking Trashfashion:

and the MGMT Time to Pretend video which I refuse to link because they’ve obviously asked everyone who posted the video to disable embedding – they or their record company REALLY don’t understand new media and should be slapped. So there.

Gradually getting back into video and uploading some of my degree/personal video work.

(Excerpts from) The Milk Lab Tapes 1995 (remixed 2002)
(NSFW, contains super8 of birth and a rather charming 1950s porn lady, quite quaint really…)

Milk Laboratory was an experimental music night – well not that experimental, we’d play Aphex Twin, LFO, Throbbing Gristle, Air Liquide – industrial and dark ambient. I did the visuals, using found video, adverts, stuff I’d shot around Sheffield, and remixing Super8 that a friend had collected and was doing loops from. I also used to shoot a lot of video from buses – my degree show was shot in the bus station – and super8 shot on the moors (which will be another film/post) and upside down reverse video shots – literally I took VHS tape and respliced it upside down so the helical scanning drum would read  correctly yet backwards – and it worked! I loved the way the colours reversed and the image broke up.

Posted it here because a) it contains some music I’ve not released yet – from 1992-95 it contains the pieces under my Reality Engine moniker – you might be surprised from my pop mashups where my history lies, in more extreme noisetronica/experimental cutup work, that would be more akin to Merzbow, Zorn and Burroughs than Soundhog or Go Home Productions!

• ‘Killed or Murdered (Headcleaner mix)’ (the WW Catholic Radio sampling one, with feedback through an effects unit)
• ‘Test Broadcast’ which I did for a film in my second year (and yes that is me on vocals)
• ‘Semi Automatic (Headcleaner mix)’ which was a cutup I did on the Amiga, again with feedback, and the track I was working on for my degree installation -
  
• ‘Counter Surveillance Program’ which included loads of mobile phone scans. The rest of the tracks are bits from the N.E.M.C.

You can find part two here – both p1 and 2 were the ‘remix’ re-edit I did in 2002 from the 15 minute original,  taking out the boring morphs and really dodgy stuff. Yes there was dodgier stuff!

And here’s a video I did of people smashing up televisions. Yes as you will see in future posts I liked to destroy things, including intentionally glitching video: