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History repeats itself.  Teenagers, enamoured with the multimedia potential of their powerful new home computer, apply themselves to digital creativity, finding a wide audience for their innovations.  But I’m not talking about the PC, MS-DOS based ANSI artscene, rearing up circa 1992, but the community revolving around the Commodore Amiga, a revolutionary machine which just celebrated its 30th anniversary.  (The Amiga itself repeats splashes made by Commodore’s earlier Commodore 64 and even the Apple 2, but those are distant enough second-degree connections that I will choose to overlook in this particular post 8)

In terms of computer art, Amiga users were living in palaces of high art when IBM-bound PC users were huddled in stinking mud huts, unaware that we were as blind and deaf to the nature of computer art as the denizens of Plato’s Cave were to reality itself.  We thought 16 colours in our computer games was hot stuff while we watched special effects produced on Video Toaster-equipped Amigas appear in millions of colours in our favorite TV programs and movies.

Where was the Amiga “scene”?  They had BBSes PD and underground and, sure, even a squished variant of ASCII art, but due to its limited community and showing up at the party a little early, they missed being a major part of the artscene (well, Electronic Arts made it the powerhouse for the 16-bit generation of game developers, knowing that here at last was the power to make games sexy – and for a few years published tools and applications (like Deluxe Paint, source code just liberated) needed to seed the future video game industry.  So they were players in the digital underground in the sense that they were developing the games our couriers were warezing 8)

But don’t let me go on about the visionary Amiga scene at too great length, because (despite my entry at the Amiga Music Preservation site) … I was never part of it.  But these guys were: EuphoniX broke the mold for the 604 music-tracking scene – first in to make a splash, greeted and name-checked by all and sundry who followed… and all using only a masterfully minimal four channels!  Their period of scene activity was so brief (at nearly four years of “active” activity, Mistigris outlasted nearly all – but never had a chance to distinguish itself with a big splash until October 2015 , by which point the competition had really dwindled 8) but their manic method of what could be described as “rapid prototyping” resulted in such a flood of output that their moment on the stage felt like a genuine era.  This fan already took a crack at boosting his teenage obsession – over ten years ago!  (That write-up provided the basis for this collection’s infofile; it has been mildly groomed and updated.)  I won’t put you to sleep by rehashing it yet again.

The collection – as complete an omnibus of the complete tracked works of EuphoniX as is possible, plus a few tracks by satellites of their crew – can be enjoyed in-browser courtesy of pc.textmod.es , as day 9 of Mistigris’ May Music Madness… forensic retrieval of their cassette tapes continues apace, but we’ll simply have to let you know if and when they are successfully recovered, remastered and re-released.  For the time being, we’re all about the .MODs.

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Mistigris was extraordinary.  I could just end right there and it’d be true, but I have a point to make here, so I’ll continue: we were extraordinary in our commitment to the spectrum of computer arts.  Many groups were ANSI or ASCII-only; some also accepted the filesize-thrifty vector art format of RIPscrip.  Some took the extraordinary next step of committing to the file-size increase of having a high-resolution art (or “VGA”) division, and few further also folded in bulky tracked computer music.  Those who could included programs, but typically that only went as far as an application generator and a file viewer.  And then, of course, there was our most unconventional inclusion: lit – which, if we included, meant that we basically had to take in anything that came our way.  But let’s back up a few steps here, because it really is tracked music I’m discussing today.

Following a couple of false starts with Ophidiac and TeklordZ, our very first realized Mistigris World Tour stop was in December of 1996 with the long-running B-list group Blade (B-list ha, I recall we described this one-month gestalt as “Blistigris”) – and as a second-stringer, like us, they were forced to take what they could get, making them our only tour companions to enjoy pre-existing lit and music departments we could just slot our releases in those formats into.  As the false starts had delayed the start of our tour (originally intended to get underway immediately following our 2nd-anniversary release), Blade inherited quite a backlog of pent-up submissions.  Fistful of Steel, our next tour stop in January of ‘97, also was kind enough to accept tracked music in their release.  And then, and then, and then… arrangements fell through, and we drifted for three months with no guest outlet for our creations.  Keep working on them, I cried, I’ll find a worthy home for them!  And I did: the tour ended with two great appearances in two great artgroups, Fire and Dark.  (The Blender competition was at this moment also a welcome release valve as well as a font of inspiration.)

But Fire did not want to bloat their pack’s filesize with tracked music, which was at this point a painful pent-up burden, and we weren’t in a position to dictate terms to them.  So, as you saw, some were shunted aside to a Sonic Equinox release; the rest were earmarked for the upcoming Dark pack.  FIRE0497 launched with our “everything else”, and we were intriguingly integrating with Dark when the news dropped: Fire was going to use our music, a month following our tourstop with them, to help flesh out the inaugural release of their new, long-planned music division, “Radiance”.  And yea, there a truly shizoid collection was unleashed.  On the one hand, you had three months’ of Mistigris musician compositions – “art for art’s sake”, as it were (especially Jake Blues’ epic unparalleled >10-minute Akira-taiko tribute Neo Tokyo Dawning), but still basically scene music by creators for whom music was their primary outlet.  And then, there in the other corner, was a deliberately abrasive collection of music tracks predominantly by creative types best known as ANSI artists.  In fact, I don’t know if any of them ever released tracker music in the artscene ever again following this lopsided debut – promotional art (pictured here) and fruitless labour on music-playing executables to the contrary, this remained Radiance’s only release.  Fire’s side provided what could be considered compelling compositions – bolder, more iconoclastic ones than we dished up –  but unlike the rest of the tour-stops, this is one occasion where the different groups’ contributions would probably have been better received independent from each other.

Dark was genuinely disappointed at the lost opportunity to showcase Neo Tokyo Rising, but probably sighed in relief at dodging the bullet of being confronted with having to deal with the sum of a season’s worth of Mistigris songs and not just the two we’d come up with in the meantime.  And that is the story of how Mistigris released music in three different collections in the month of May 1997 – none of them Mist packs!

For the eighth day of Mistigris May Music Madness, I dug up this collection – because, in accordance with the old “too artscene for the demoscene archives, too demoscene for the artscene archives”, the collection had fallen between the cracks and disappeared from the historical record.  I no longer had the archive, but I had managed to hang on to the individual tracks (tracker wisdom: don’t throw out that song!  I might be able to use its samples sometime!) which, through the magic of analysing file timestamps, I managed to isolate.  I feared I’d have to reconstruct its vital packaging, the infofile and FILE_ID.DIZ, but after some prodding, Nail of Fire delivered a (corrupted) copy of the original disk from the filebase of his decomissioned BBS.  Between the two of us, we managed to Frankenstein the original archive back together, for better (additional context from an Ay Lektriq interview in the infofile) or worse (the original FILE_ID.DIZ, repeating the worst part of the Fire tour pack).  For the first time in years, you can once again enjoy the sounds of RAD_DSK1 (well, maybe not the Fire stuff – you can experience those fauvist sounds 8) in-browser over at pc.textmod.es

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Mistigris May Music Madness: Day 7 brought us to the final SONiC EQUiNOX music disk release, SE_D0897 – audible and executable in-browser at pc.textmod.es!  With our bloating assistance left to a minimum, it weighs in as a slim volume containing 6 songs by 4 composers (Onyx, Esquire, Freaq, and Quip guesting from Mist), plus a regrettably upskirty picture and a sweet little loader by Melkor… and also the standard application generator and executable infofile (including a text dump of its contents, allowing me to sample more generously here.)

There’s nothing here telegraphing the fact that This Is The End For Sonic Equinox; the releases followed a bit of a boom and bust in regards to how packed their archives were, but even at this slim end of the spectrum they still make a respectable showing.

More telling, perhaps, is that over half of the pack’s contents comes from an individual artist – a sign of personal virtuosity, to be sure, but not necessarily a promising indicator for the team.  Onyx was the one seemingly propping things up with his bottomless creativity, but despite his prolific talents, they didn’t provide a compelling reason for a group to remain assembled around the eternal fountain.  Like Cthulu and Mist, Onyx continued creating at full tilt after Sonic Equinox and, yea, the whole computer artscene dissolved around him, these solo efforts amounting to nothing more than one instrument continuing to sound a note after the orchestra has stopped playing.

Settling down as a family man, he was presented with an ultimatum to focus on a single one of his creative outlets rather than dickering around with this and that, so today though his visual and sonic creations have been shelved, you can catch him self-publishing ebooks.

This, their final infofile, seems unaware of the grand occasion, but here’s what things looked like before the lights went out:

           What’s new in SE land? Well, this being my second time around as
 cheiftan, I still haven’t a clue what’s going on. With summer upon us, I
 find that our _active_ memberlist is a finite thing, so I’m now on the
 lookout for new members. Hey, we all appreciate the help from mist, but SE can’t sustain itself on life support forever.

           Whazzat? Hey! look who’s back! Zinc is in the house! I don’t know
 about the rest of you, but I’m looking forward to some of that trance he’s
 known for.

           Okay, punks, think ya gots talent? Prove it! I told ya I’m looking
 for new members, and YOU might be one of them! Music? Code? VGA? Anything else that would look good in this pack? SE’s goal is to provide a forum for enthusiastic nerds- er, creative people to get their stuff seen. Seen? Seen by WHOM, you might ask? Glad you asked. As well as being able to extend your sig by one affil, you K-radder, you can brag about your nerdsome glory to all your friends! Muhahaha! Who else is watching? Well, for one, Delphic oracle is watching. Ok, you ask, who the heck is DO? DO makes games. DO has just sent out their first game with Spectrum Pacific publishing, and now begins on an even larger project. Of course, while that is still hush-hush, but an eye is always open for someone with the skills and dedication to put some decent work on a large-scale game. What’s needed most right now is VGA, but ANYONE who can make a large enough contribution will be considered.

 In the pack— – -  -   -   -      -              -

  Good vibrations from-
     Esquire
        esq-atmq.xm  -Atomique
     Freaq
        frq-heav.s3m -Find my Heaven
     Onyx
        onx_mars.s3m  -Mars Invades (no inspiration from mars attacks..)
        onx_outl.s3m  -Outlash
        onx_wowi.s3m  -World Wishers
        onx_thrm.s3m  -Therm (imbedded in SE-WAVE.EXE)
        onx-lftl.s3m  -Lullabye for the Lost (playing now, in the exe..)
        onx-blst.pcx  -Generic anime type scene.. classy!

  Vibes imported from Mist-
     Neophyte
        yt-trg18.it   Tradgedy 18.
                      (Neo’s changing his name to Quip! get used to it!)
  Toy!-
     Melkor
        SE-WAVE.EXE, SE-WAVE.TXT, SE.DAT
  The usual-
     ETO
        SEP.BAT, SEPLAY.EXE: Sonic Player
        SE_NFO.EXE: the thing running THIS text thingie!
        SE_APP.EXE, SE_APP.DAT: application generator
     Bits & peices
        FILE_ID.DIZ: thanks to quip!
        SE_NFO.TXT: This text in a file.

 Getting a hold of us— – - —  -    -   -         -                -
  SONIC LINK MEMBERS            NUMBER        SYSOP
     Entrance to Obscurity      604-555-5555  ETO
     Crimson Helm               604-465-4247  Onyx (crippled at 2400!*)
     Daemon’s Gate              604-948-0363  Mavrik
     Fuzzy Doorknob             604-943-4626  Sylphid
     Paradoxious                604-931-6984  Tzykaar
     Dark Domains               604-469-5851  Raven
     DoDEL                      604-299-5191  Etana
     Sonic Equinox Homepage     www.in2nett.com/ETO/SE/index.htm
     Mistigris Homepage         www.geocities.com/Athens/1758/mist.html 
   (*psst! got a 14.4 external?)

This concludes our look into the musicdisk releases of our friends in 604 would-be demogroup SONiC EQUiNOX, but at a new “lost” release every day for a week, the Mistigris May Music Madness was just getting started, with several further releases ahead of music collections which had been genuinely lost and unavailable (and not merely filed away forever in a very dark and dusty corner of the Hornet archive, as with these SE packs.)  Stay tuned for more!

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For Mistigris May Music Madness: Day 6, we re-released the next Sonic Equinox collection, SE_D0597, whose songs can be heard (and whose executables can be run) in-browser at pc.textmod.es!

In addition to musical duties from an extended roster of member composers Esquire, Freaq, Jake Blues and Onyx, this collection also included a slate of songs from Mistigris musicians (Cthulu, Fritz, Crystal Meth, Handiboy, Melodia and Neophyte) venting from their stockpile of tracks accumulated during Blenders and the Mistigris World Tour, making this somewhat of an unofficial World Tour stop during that 1997 spree.  Also it contains a new application generator (your window of opportunity to apply has regretfully likely closed) and Techno Retrace’s swell loader for Daemon’s Gate BBS.  All that PLUS promo art for Super Bubble Mania, the Pang (Buster Brothers) clone by SE’s gamedev spinoff Delphic Oracle.

You can’t tell, but the music-playing exeutable infofile in this collection ends with an interview of group leader Eto by Onyx, but due to the executable’s glitchy behavior it is difficult to steer the scrolling infofile there.

Is it possible we have only one Sonic Equinox musicdisk remaining to cover?  Stay tuned!

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As part of Mistigris May Music Madness and Merry Mayhem: Day 5, we continued re-releasing the complete works of local (to our area code of 604) music group SONiC EQUiNOX, fellow travellers whose work we also featured and vice versa, with a closer eye toward demoscene endeavours and game development.  The next collection up on the block was SE_D0896, so here are the visuals from that archive.  (My apologies: using photographs to document a music disk is a bit backwards and wrong-headed, but I believe the alternative would be blogging a single song at a time, which would be approaching the matter with a bit more fine-toothed of an approach than I had in mind.  You should be able to enjoy the musicdisk’s audio tracks in-browser over at http://pc.textmod.es/pack/se_d0896/ , so that’s something.)

The infofile is again encoded into an executable using Eto’s exclusive BIN2EXE mojo (and illustrated with his distinctive and notable outsider ANSI stylings, so stark considering his ultimate custodianship of modern ANSI creation with the ongoing development of the PabloDraw application), with the new additional complexity of playing a music track at the same time!  (Its stereo visualizer accounts for the red stripes you see running down the infodump.)  This pack didn’t represent a huge sea change for the group, with notes and updates regarding other projects in the works, but one point of distinction is that this release sees the inclusion of Sonic Equinox Player v0.2B, its debut, which will play the included .S3M songs and even provide oscilloscope visualization of sorts.

Noted in the infofile in passing is the release of the 604 Music Disk, an epic undertaking underwritten by Sonic Equinox leader Eto and “released” at the 1996 instalment of the NAiD demoparty in Montreal.  The 604 music disk got its own turn on the Mistigris May Music Madness stage, but you will just have to wait for it 8)  A major production bringing (nearly) all the 604′s music groups to the table, giving it the casual mention here is really the tail wagging the dog.

Also noted is Sonic Equinox’s own BBS echomail network, the Sonic Link, which … is of course just so much background radiation now.  It included message bases for play of Onyx’s homebrewed AIRS (Adventures in Infinite Realities System) tabletop RPG system, which had a ruleset released in Mistigris’ 3rd anniversary artpack, another artscene first!  But I digress.  Next up, Sonic Equinox ventures forth into the bold new year of 1997!

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Sorry for drifting off there amidst the Mistigris May Music Madness spree – the release sequence of the revived tracker-music collections was jumbled, and while waiting for them to get sorted out, other hurdles arose in compiling, releasing and hosting the remaining collections (almost all are now free in the wild; they will all get coverage here).

So, where were we?  Sonic Equinox: February 1996, which you can hear through your web browser at the linked hosting at pc.textmod.es.  This was to be the Day 4 release.

As Strongbad would someday say: everybody to the limit.

The infofile will shed some light on the proceedings, but only through some work after the fact – encoded as one of Eto’s exclusive BIN2EXE executables, the only way to get up to speed is to cross your fingers, hold your breath and run it.  Well, here we have spared you the effort.  (This is the last time accessing the info will be so straightforward; future releases saddle the executable with a music soundtrack, which seems to throw a spanner of complexity in the works, but toward the end they also throw us a bone in the form of a transcript.)  The circumstances behind this pack’s creation were apparently relatively uneventful, as told by its words; in this intermediary stage, SE is now not only run by its primary programmer, also the SysOp of its WHQ, but also the public face of the group, penning the infofiles and even packaging the release with what might be termed “programmer art”.

It’s a humble intermediary release; only a fraction of the membership weighs in with contributions, longtime stalwarts Beyond Inertia, Lethal Impact, and perennial fount of creativity Onyx, but the organization regardless continues apace, hinting at projects behind the scenes which may or may not be realized in a public form (SPOILER ALERT: the fishie game never made it).

Gee whiz, that closing line in the infofile has got to be one of the most humble slogans of all time.

Next up – SE_D0896, then we leave Sonic Equinox’s 1996 behind!

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Canada cannot be that frequent a subject of underground computer art, despite its strong historical representation in terms of groups and membership: Mistigris, Integrity and the rest of the 604 area code provided a bounty of activity, but we were just the tip of the iceberg; southern Ontario was home to the masterful Dark Illustrated and even perennial number two iCE had strong Eastern Canada roots.  And then, as you saw in the last post, there was also a thriving Quebec scene going on, exemplified by Irato and eg. the different incarnations of GRiP.

But with the separatist zeitgeist of the ‘90s, we couldn’t count on les artistes Quebequois to celebrate our national holiday [Editor’s note: that is, today: July 1st is the national holiday of Canada Day, eh].  The typical artscene subjects left the field somewhat barren as well – though you would see plenty of red-white-and-blue ANSI scrollers of Captain America, U.S. Agent, and Superpatriot, I don’t know if any of us would have even recognized an ANSI of Captain Canuck.  Maybe there are one or two pics of Guardian / Vindicator out there, and perhaps some of their Alpha Flight cohorts, but from there on things get pretty thin on the ground.  Could indie comics phenomenon Cerebus the Aardvark represent the pinnacle of Canadian comics’ success in the niche of underground computer art?  Very possibly.

We didn’t go to great lengths to demonstrate our Canadianness so as to better fit in and uphold the uneasy status quo of our digital frontier town, but on this occasion we found a way to let our maple leaf shine: on Wednesday, July 30, 1997, Warpus of Lazarus, a Canadian immigrant from Communist Poland, ran instalment #39 of the Blender IRC competition, where computer artists strove to, under a time limit, fashion new works making use of a mixture of three topics – in this case, “midgets / wrestling / in Canada”.

We take what we can get.  14 artists competed, including a whopping 9 entries from Mistigris members (including a picture by Grinch and a story by Skrubly, neither of whom were even Canadian!)  In the full sequence of time, Mistigris won the Blender series – and on this occasion, we also won, with a stylized joint by Quip and Tincat.  There was also a song by Cthulu (how do you represent midgets musically?) and visual pieces by Grinch, Geekboy, Happyfish, Dead Soul, and Haquisaq (who submitted two entries!)

If you like, you can cruise Sixteencolors for maple leaves (ah, I see that Blender #16 also featured “goats / bowling” at Ottawa’s Parliament Hill, and I believe another [ah, Blender #5] elapsed at the Ontarian amusement park “Canada’s Wonderland”), but this is how we at Mistigris will be celebrating Canada Day!  So hold up a poutine and proudly say “Sorry!”, and welcome to longtime Australian Mist satellite member Maeve Wolf, who finds herself travelling through Canada (and indeed Vancouver itself) on this most Canadian of days today.  Cheers!