[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU266CumO7E?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Happy Holidays! That’s my way of saying “Here’s one more piece of Christmas art we didn’t get around to sharing with you until after Christmas!” It’s the final installment of the Bells of Yule suite of tracker music from 1994 – the grimmest, darkest song representing the longest night of the Winter Solstice, illustrated here with a Rogue’s Gallery of nasty and crude textmode dudes, plus some filler from the artscene and textmode-related visual idioms of RIPscrip vector art and teletext. Better late than never! (Speaking of which… stay tuned!)

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fApZFio-aTo?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Today we share with you the fourth movement of our five-part 1994 tracker music epic of original moody instrumental holiday music, remastered by Melodia in 2014, souped up with tons of period seasonal imagery from textmode and artscene sources in 2015 and … paraded out again in 2016. Enjoy!

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p-D0j-awns?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Today we share part 3 (of 5) of 1994’s Bells of Yule suite of seasonal tracker music, from Admiral Skuttlebutt’s Atari ST to your ears! Remastered by Melodia in 2014, we put together a slideshow of plundered textmode visuals to accompany its ~10-minute runtime – this movement has a focus on period Public Domain ANSImation clips. Merry Mist'mas!

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9NRRadx-zY?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Yesterday we re-shared the second installment of the 5-part Bells of Yule epic seasonal holiday tracked music suite made on an Atari ST in 1994, remastered in 2014 and given period visuals from the PC artscene last year. This time around all we have to do is share the links! The music was composed by Admiral Skuttlebutt, remastered by Melodia, and the visuals this time around focus on 25-line ANSI art, largely from Public Domain sources, especially featuring the works of Ebony Eyes.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VZ8wNA8_Rc?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Aaaand it’s that time of year again: time to dust off the holiday content which, while awesome year-round, is only appropriate in late December. This video combines footage of an early intro made by Dr. CPU in December of 1994 with a hits parade of other seasonal art and writing made by Mistigris members in that month, set to the soundtrack of the first movement of the Bells of Yule music disk, which was also first released in that month. Enjoy!

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9kjKwrUTqc?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]
So while we came to the conclusion of our “original” re-heated Christmas content on Christmas Eve, we still have our spree of similar proportions from last year. We dug up a pile of seasonal loaders, lits and works of ANSI art from our own ‘90s artpacks in chronological order, but the secret was that it was all in the service of drawing more attention to the re-release of the never-heard-much-in-its-original-format music disk The Bells Of Yule, which finally in 2014 found the audience it so richly deserved.

This was the same motivation behind our cooking up these five ten-minute music videos we shared with you this year, an enormous promotional effort (with, I think, lesser primary success) behind spreading the word about old tunes from 1994, but fortunately it was an interesting exercise regardless.

And now we have ten artefacts to use to promote its enjoyment for Christmas 2016! Two more and we can do a genuine “12 Days of Christmas” run-up! (Sit down, Catholics, I know that the 12 Days actually come AFTER.)

So if we’ve worn down your resistance to hearing new things (or, actually, incredibly old things), know that you can enjoy listening to all five movements of the Bells of Yule suite right here!

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/177307886" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p-D0j-awns?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

On Sunday, you saw part 1; yesterday, you saw part 2… today, we bring you part 3 of the 5-part Bells of Yule holiday suite of period (1994) computer music, illustrated with fellow traveler pieces of textmode artwork from the Public Domain and the underground. Today’s video especially places an emphasis on a handful of animated ANSI art screens – or ANSImations. Stay tuned for the final two videos as we continue marching along on our Christmas countdown! Merry Mist'mas – share and enjoy!

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9NRRadx-zY?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]
You probably got the general idea from yesterday’s posting of the first of our five holiday music videos, but if you missed it and don’t feel like following that link, in a nutshell: in December 1994, we released “the Bells of Yule”, a music disk featuring a central 5-part suite of seasonal .MOD music composed on an Atari ST. It was sent to all of the BBSes, and when they dried up, it disappeared, seemingly forever… but in 2014, Cthulu made his personal copy available to the composer, who had since lost the originals, and in a remastered form, they were sent out back into the world once again, greatly fortified with other holiday computer compositions.

Now it is Christmas 2015, and we are following up this Lazarus-like feat from last year by making music videos for each of the five parts, one daily in the run-up to Christmas Day. We have drawn on the rich history of computer art, public domain and underground, to provide a wintery potluck of hundreds of pieces of thematically-appropriate fellow traveler works in a textmode, low-resolution idiom; part 2’s visuals draw specifically on brief, single-screen (or “25-line”) pieces of ANSI art – full attribution of the participating artists (and gosh golly, there sure are a lot of them) can be found at the end of the video. Merry Mist'mas – share and enjoy!

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

In December of 1994, Mistigris released a holiday-themed music disk, entitled “The Bells of Yule”, built around a five-movement epic instrumental suite from our friends at Digitallusions.  Though widely circulated locally on BBSes, it never made the leap to the internet, and when the final local boards went kaput circa ‘98, it appeared to be withdrawn from circulation… forever?

But this group of songs was much too special to lose: Cthulu kept his copy of it.  (Cthulu keeps as much as humanly possible.)  And now, two decades later, the disk emerges upon the Yuletide stage once again, 4-channel .MOD tracks remastered as MP3s, bolstered by fellow traveller holiday songs from the Mistigris glory days in the late ’90s and newer, thematically resonant tunes from Empress Play, which Digitallusions has gradually evolved into.  The 2014 collection boasts over double the songs of the 1994 one, has sprawled from an hour to 105 minutes, and as for its filesize… woah, Nelly!  The 186 meg archive is over a hundred times as big as the original release, which was in its time considered too large to mirror widely.  (Have you ever circulated an mp3 on a floppy diskette?  Cthulu has… but I digress.)

You can find the complete archive here (two days later: due to higher demand than anticipated, we hit a bandwidth limit, but the music disk is now mirrored at http://pixelwitches.com/MISTYULE.ZIP, http://bbs.ninja/pub/original/pack/2014/mistyule.zip , and http://bigbox.chattaway.com/temp/MISTYULE.ZIP), with supporting music from Melodia, Onyx, Freaq and Cthulu, or click below to enjoy the heart of the work, the updated 2014 remastered version of the original 5-part suite that got the whole (snow)ball rolling.

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/177307886" params="auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%" height="300" iframe="true" /]