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While the Mistfunk Tumblr was … down for maintenance during the holidays, we ran several swell Horsenburger teletext pieces on Mistigram to celebrate the holiday season. We’re doing a bit of a batch catch-up here, so as you can see you missed his blocky renditions of the Grinch, Scrooge McDuck in Mickey’s Christmas Carol, Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life, and Stripe the Gremlin dressed as Santa in Gremlins. Also, a totally nuclear New Year’s wish for everyone. You could catch most of these as part of his teletext advent calendar through December, and also we used the images for visuals in the music video for our 1999 “Silent Night” remix and from there in the MIST1216 artpack. So now we should be just about all caught up! Cheers!

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I was surfing around for some counterpart to Horsenburger’s masterful teletext advent calendar entries, thinking that they needed a complement for their appearance in the “Silent Night” music video and MIST1216 artpack, but something substantial was needed to counter them at the risk of being “all the teletext and then a couple of other things.” Then I found Vinny “@C64_endings” Mainolfi sharing a series of self-winterized images from classic C64 video games and I realised we just might have what we’re looking for! There were a pile of them (indeed, there are some he hasn’t even released yet) – these are ones we’ve featured in Mistigram so far, revamped versions of Bubble “Bauble” (Bobble), Impossible Mission, Bruce Lee, and Last Ninja (I Gave You My Heart). Formidable!

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We got the new year off to a good start on New Year’s Day with Horsenburger’s second illegitimate appearance in the esteemed Sixteen Colors ANSI of the Day listings… illegitimate since his particular textmode artform is, of course, teletext rather than ANSI. But we can’t argue with the results! The AOTD appreciated his manly take on the Christmas holiday as epitomized by this trifecta of pieces celebrating the movie Die Hard (not incidentally also acting as a send-off to actor Alan Rickman who shuffled off this mortal coil early in 2016.)

(As for the first… it appears to have slipped us by in all the confusion surrounding the release of MIST1116, but fear not: we will be returning to set the matter straight!)

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And after all the sweat of assembling the collection of assets for that music video, we figured… why not give people a chance to look at them, static, for longer than a few seconds? So here they are, all the bits that went into “Silent Night”, lovingly reassembled for a reunion as the MIST1217 artpack.

It was a retrocomputing extravaganza, with the Apple ][ represented via Melodia’s curation of seasonal demos for that pioneering platform extruded into three dimensions through her Octalyzer, the Commodore 64 in full effect thanks to @C64_endings and his winterized screenshots of classic C64 games, Atari ST representing courtesy of STuART “Forgotten Grove” and his STatariART cadre… I faked a Mac Classic selfie thanks to the iOS Retrospecs app, and of course we had a pile of amazing Horsenburger pieces on board thanks to his advent calendar project this year! (The only truly vintage platforms missing are the TRS-80 and ZX Spectrum… well, and the Amiga, but they have their own thing going.) All that plus a few pieces from Mistigris irregulars – Diane Smithers’ Prismafied photos, FidoNet-style ASCII art by ldb and more.

You can enjoy the whole thing, admittedly a little after the fact, through a browser-accessible web gallery at textmod.es. Cheers!

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j33p33’s oldschool ANSI art Mist logo from atop the infofile of the recent MIST1116 artpack was today’s Mistigram pick, but those of you who saw it in our MIST1116 trailer would remember that it passed through a few beats en route to completion. j33p33 flaunted different takes and approaches in the internal Mistigris Facebook group all the while laughing off polite requests to submit an .ANS version so it could be used in the artpack’s infofile. Then he suffered catastrophic SSD card data loss! But fortunately, somehow, we found a mostly-complete version of the logo at its most fully-featured to run in the artpack, and if the bottom of the S and the crescent beneath the M were never filled in… no one ever complained.

Along the way, you can enjoy the diversions the logo went through – an icy take to counter its ultimately fiery temperament. Also you can see a version moderated by “Deep Dream”, as well as xer0’s post-complete glitched-out version. They’re only four little letters, but they leave you many, many options!

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Cyber Monday? Let me tell you about Cyber Monday. Back when I was a kid, every Monday was “Cyber Monday”! But… I guess it didn’t mean quite the same thing it means now. What was I talking about again?

Oh yes – our artists, they do not get paid for appearing in artpacks. But if you approve of their work, here you do have a timely chance (for there is a gift-giving occasion rapidly approaching) to become their patron or at least a collector of their creations. In some cases, you can get your hands on physical versions of their artworks – reproductions, or even occasional originals – and in other cases you can purchase the services needed to mint virtual goods to order, deliverable immediately upon completion with no shipping of electrons needed! (And in some final cases – curiously over-represented among the musicians – all you get is the opportunity to give an artist a tip in support of the work they’re creating anyway. But they may provide convenient legitimate MP3 downloads where the only free alternatives were streams and hassle.) I’m here to lay out the grand catalogue of Mistigris artpack participants with goods for sale this holiday season, and if you’re part of the artscene and have a storefront that could use a signal boost, let us know and we can fold you in here, as what you’ve got will probably be up the alley of any of our hypothetical customers also.

* Abstract painter Andrea Schmidt, last spotted in MIST1015, has micro and macro paintings for sale to suit a range of budgets, from $28-840… and not much in between!

* An Historic, whose accordion JRPG arrangements you’re still enjoying from MIST1116, is a musical genius engaged in several compelling projects. One donation gets you access to his entire vaults!

* Another feverish musical madman, Seattle’s Brad Dunn, gives you precious few opportunities to financially support his vital work. But here is one!

* For the love of God and all that is holy, please fund bryface, so he can give up his day job and become a full-time international chipmusic evangelist.

* They only contributed a single song to MIST1015, but the Creaking Planks have … a second song available by donation for you to further enjoy. They also have awesome T-shirts, but need to get their act together before they can send you one. But while on the subject of their music…

* You can enjoy $20 prints of Elin Jonsson’s perfectly gothy creatures from Afterland (which you can also play for free on iOS and Android devices – micropayments optional!)

* Mist Classic writer Eoanya is living the dream, and has a few books available for sale – including a brand new one not yet turning up on her Amazon page.

* Mist Classic visual artist Etana has her original paintings available for a song ($50-250), plus other goodies. (But I have the only Mistigris coffee mug she designed!)

* You can give Mist Classic mainstay Happyfish a tip for her award-winning filk music!

* The teletext genius known as Horsenburger, rockstar of the recent MIST1116, is not only taking £20 commissions for portraits, but he’s just branched out into wearables also!

* Production guru Ill-esha has a vast back catalogue and it is for sale, so load up!

* Tireless painter Jenn Ashton sells a wide range of both prints and originals as well as a variety of other goods.

* You only saw the drawings of Jenny Ritter in MIST1015, but you’ll thank me for having a chance to get an earful of her music!

* Jeremy Stewart also is a creative industry whose iceberg we’ve only been in a position to show the merest tip of.

* Self-publishing DIY guru Jim Munroe has books and ebooks, comics, movies and games, all available for sale and all eminently worthwhile.

* Kevin Bryce was the favorite musician of Mist Music when we revived in October 2014; maybe his tunes will catch your fancy also?

* Lord Nikon has graced our collections with insanely detailed typewriter art, which is also available for sale as prints and on T-shirts.(Also available for sale: shirts featuring his ASCII art designs, released elsewhere.

* The paintings and drawings of Mist Classic artist Maeve Wolf are available for sale on a casual basis: “Just email me to buy!”

* The vintage video game cover art designs of Marc Ericksen are available for sale as prints and on T-shirts.

* The textmode art designs of Blocktronics typography wizard Matt Matthew are available as prints and you would be exceedingly foolish to not take advantage of the opportunity to class up your house with his works on every flat surface.

* Melodia is just pivoting her “Paleotronic” shop from store to workshop, so opportunities to financially support her ventures there are up in the air… and her indispensible mobile apps are given away for free, so no luck there… but you can at the least show your appreciation by flipping her a tip on her Empress Play music page!

* It didn’t ever really occur to the Mythical Man that anyone would want to buy his paintings… but he was delighted when someone inquired, and is happy to sell his original pieces. Just ask him about the one you’d like!

* A selection of the colourful original paintings of Nick Lakowski are for sale at prices ranging from $360-1150.

* Mist Classic musician Onyx pivoted to writing sometime around the turn of the century, and you can purchase his books and ebooks through Amazon (or, if you like, in hardcover from Lulu.)

* Galza’s ASCII art (and now PETSCII) genius Otium has his textmode designs for sale as prints, garments and phone cases, with a secondary EU-based shop to help local consumers avoid import taxes.

* Phatal’s striking design “Two Minutes to Midnight” from MIST1016 is available in limited quantities as a print and on T-shirts. Inquire directly!

* When we say that Raquel Meyers delivers the goods, we usually aren’t speaking quite so literally, but her brutalist PETSCII and teletext are available for sale in book and fabric forms through her website.

* Drum ‘n bass producer Psidream has an enormous back catalogue of recordings, and they are all available for sale.

* Mist Classic artist Sentience is involved with the graphic design venture Heart Monsta, whose creations are available for sale today!

* Starstew’s latest offering is a book for the cat-lovers on your Christmas list, but he has other goods for sale through his Etsy page.

* Also on Etsy, you can find the Sculpey creatures that crawled out of the feverish brain of Theresa Oborn.

* A limited supply of the original fine art creations of Tom Heuckendorff are available for sale for budgets ranging from $30-300.

* Finally, you can flip Vordreque, the hardest working man in retrowave, a tip.

[gallery]
Queen fiend Nitnatsnoc must be spinning in his retirement! I was waiting to feature this one in Mistigram to build some tension, but the Sixteen Colors ANSI of the Day was drawn straight toward it like a moth to a flame! The artist: cccfire, another parallelly-evolved case of ANSI art from the 8bitMUSH like today’s Mistigram artist LDA. The artwork: an extra-wide XBin piece of monochrome ANSI art enshrining the members of the glam rock Queen (and enjoy the bonus, the same scene quite more minimally arranged by some anonymous SharpSCII artist), plus a late-breaking addition of the group’s logo in glorious colour… and what we can most definitiveely describe as the ultimate, final “smallest textmode Mistigris logo” of all time.

The piece competed against the fruit of Blocktronics (including no fewer than four pieces by the godly ungennant) at the Demosplash demoparty earlier this month in its truncated form, and placed… 10th. (But in his defense, cccfire runs laps around all of the multi-decade veterans who outscored him in light of a “most improved” metric, maturing as a real contender with – an admittedly idiosyncratic style – in under a year. At this rate cccfire will be pulling down top scores for his ANSI art when all of Blocktronics will have been 15 years in the cold ground!)

We will revisit the piece on Mistigram to take a peek at some of its finer details. And happy to say, we have other recent pieces that the AOTD has lighted upon over the past few days to also celebrate with you – but they carry with them a little additional bonus content that needs to be a massaged a bit before we serve up their full stories to you.

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It gives us great pleasure (and enormous relief) to announce that MIST1116, the Mistigris computer artpack collection for which we’d been gathering submissions since the end of April, is finally out following a series of delays.

With a strong current of pieces dealing with themes of technology, transhumanism and cyberspace, there’s also plenty to enjoy to suit camps old and new alike – several varieties of textmode artwork, including typewriter masterpieces and an unstoppable parade of teletext, plus the “real-life” art forms historically absent, including drawing, painting, photography and collage. (Still no dance! We’ve got to have something to strive toward, I guess.)

And keeping us relevant despite our celebrating the occasion of our 22nd anniversary, the kids will enjoy an unsettling SnapChat face-swap and an canonical literary work transliterated into emoji.

(Also, at least three accordions. They’re made to fit in there thematically somehow, but huh – go figure!)

If you’d like to download the entire collection in one 185-meg go for local enjoyment, please point your web browser to bit.ly/MIST1116 ; if on the other hand you’d like to wander through a garden of thumbnails via a web gallery, textmod.es is hosting (most of) it at bit.ly/MIST1116gallery

(Pictured: “V for Vendetta” ANSI adaptation by cccfire
“Smoke and Mirrors” by Delphine Hennelly
Textile Kaleidoscope by Daniel Wickert
“God organ, its jubilant appreciation” painting by Nick Lakowski
Judge Dredd teletext by Illarterate
“A Hundred Impossible Species of Blue” collage by Arielle Olivier
“The Old Guitarist” Shift_JIS adaptation by Kalcha
“Maakscii art” by Pannekoekologist
“Couture” drawing by Theresa Oborn
“Imissthenineteenhundredandnineties” by xer0.)

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Last night our community radio colleagues at the long-running Art of Beatz radio program closing the daily broadcast schedule at CFRO Co-Op Community Radio (100.5 fm in Vancouver BC) were kind enough to have us on their show to present a curated hourlong tour through the rich history of the .MOD tracking and computer music tradition of area code 604, by way of promoting the imminent MIST1116 artpack battering down the gates.

Tonight on Art Of Beatz Radio: Mistigris and Chad Munson
Hour 1: Mistigris
Tuck in your Tamagotchi and crack open a frosty bottle of J0lt cola, for everything old is new again: this week we’re celebrating a local tradition of 2 and a half decades of computer music out of area code 604 with Cthulu of the computer art collective MiSTiGRiS (est. 1994), who will be representing a golden thread of chiptunes and musictrackers from the LSDJ of today all the way back to the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. Sine waves, static channels, and samples – oh my!

You can hear the whole hourlong broadcast as a digital audio stream or, if you already know the history and don’t want me blabbering on top of all the songs, I’ve prepared a download of “just the tunes”. And here’s the playlist!

Freddy43 / Mistigris - Trackerfix song, 2016
Lofryr - 5th Dimension, Apr 1993
AcidFrog - Drowning In Your Love, Aug 1995
Admiral Skuttlebutt / Digitallusions remixed by Marauder / Euphonix - Rave 95
Esquire - C02, Oct 1997
Jazz / Euphonix remixed by Sidewinder - Night of the Living Hoovers, 1995
The Pope / The Immortal Syndicate - Christe 1, Apr 1996
Fingers / Euphonix - Otesnpyneneidells, Sept 1994
Unicode / Mistigris - Remember, Oct 2015
Ill-esha - Line by line, Oct 2015
Haquisaq / Mistigris - Night Shift, 2001
Cthulu / Mistigris - pure white light, 1999
Anton Van Oosbree - Aerodynamic (Daft Punk), 2016
Obsidian Zero / Sonic Equinox - Good Night, 1998

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teletextart:

Happy Halloween! Here is a gallery of artwork courtesy @horsenburger. http://twitter.com/horsenburger

You can find all these artworks and more in the Mistigris @mistfunk Halloween artpack, which is OUT NOW! https://artpacks.org/2016/MIST1016.zip ​

I was hoping to showcase them individually but as you can see I might well grow old and die before I catch up… And would you believe that he’s got a whole other batch of sweet teletext goodness queued up for release just a couple of weeks from now? The basic conundrum is that he appears to be able to draw them faster than I can celebrate them!

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Trick or Treat! Our Hallowe'en-styled 22nd anniversary (!) artpack (you may recall its awesome teaser trailer from a couple of weeks back) is officially released, and is now available for local download at http://bit.ly/mist1016 … there is some ANSI and ASCII art, by old hands and a few new names to boot, plus our ongoing investigations into other genres of textmode art (PETSCII, Shift-JIS, and a ton of teletext!) Also lots of #inktober sketches, drawings and paintings, plenty o’ varied hirez, even music… and of course it wouldn’t be a Mist pack without some lit!

                                            Mar 10
I passed a man.
He wasn't human.

Like a rapidly-decaying Jack O’ Lantern (yep, got one of those too!), don’t let it get past optimal seasonal freshness – grab the whole pack today and get your Hallowe'en started right!

(Featured in this post: FILE_ID.DIZ by Nail, Ambush by Raqel Meyers as ACIDT*, Happy Helloween by reNM8R, Albina by Elin Jonsson, Hellboy teletext by Horsenburger, Strange Weather by the Mythical Man, Haunted House #inktober sketch by Bonemouse, Click or Treat Shift-JIS by Kalcha, Just Because You Are Afraid Of Me Does Not Mean I Am Dangerous #inktober sketch by Theresa Oborn, Castlevania by Whazzit. (Oh yes, and the poem is by Crowkeeper.) But everything in this collection is Hallowe'eny, this is just a sampling to demonstrate its incredible diversity!)

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Separated at birth? Today on Mistigram: on the left, “Steampink” by legendary ACiD hirez artist (and wicked tattooist in his off hours) CatBones, featured as a guest in last year’s MIST1015 artpack… and on the right, the cover artwork to Jane’s Addiction’s 1987 eponymous live album. But only one of them has ASCII art printed on their midriff!

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_________|`  ____,___|`_|   |___33
__, __, __, `(____-  ,_,'_, _______
#|'  |'  |'  |'   ,__,  `|' _|'  |#
@|___,___,____-__(____,__,'___,__,'@
(mistigris) (the first pack) (10/94)

Hats off to Eerie! Long celebrated as one of the most relentlessly creative visual talents of the underground computer artscene, he seemed to have long since moved on, never acknowledging the longago world in which for years he was its Picasso – his engine was merely stuck on overdrive, perpetually being driven forward, onward, with no opportunity for reflection in the rapidly-receeding rear view mirror. He has only just recently given us a nod with “33RULES”, the complete, collected artscene works of Eerie from April of 1994 to his last gasp in September of 1998 – one month later than we managed to hang in there, plus the nominal hiccup for ACiD-100. It’s all the glories of the artscene in a nutshell, a masterclass in a dozen different styles, and a valuable window into the endlessly creative brain of a true computer artist.

He was a key character in the foundation of Mistigris (look up top in his timeline, the first ANSI he’s made this century, minted in TheDraw – c'mon man, that big blue Pablo logo from our debut means you know better! – where you see the brief blip we occupy at the start of his long and illustratious scene career) because he started where we started: with the NWA (Vancouver’s New Wave Artists) / GRiP/AD (Quebec’s Graphic Revolution in Progress - Art Division) merger known as iMPERiAL. It was not to be long for this world, but it got our feet up on the rungs. Before that particular bubble popped, he got well established with his influential-in-naming trendsetting BBS Sarcastic Toaster. Concretely he gave inspiration, advice and technical assistance to Nitnatsnoc when our first WHQ BBS, The Screaming Tomato, was being set up, possibly even before we had any plans to run an artgroup out of it.

Our continuity with iMPERiAL was disappointing, as most of the handful of its still-active former members at that early juncture lent their support behind Fab One’s competing proposed artgroup, PATRiOT, later RAiD (and ultimately leading to Darkforce’s Integrity.) Thanks to the connection with Nitnatsnoc he lent material support to our bid for existence not only with (as you can see above – the FILE_ID.DIZ for our first artpack release! that’s ground floor foundational contribution right there!) actual artwork (despite already holding membership in RELiC – a dual-grouping conceit that would shortly explode with membership held simultaneously – if briefly – in ACiD, RELiC, SHiVER, UNiON and Katharsis ASCII) as well as, with Sarcastic Toaster serving as CHQ, a whole potted division of Quebec-area artists he brought along with him, including Zoltar, The Naughty Tycoon, Diamond Traveller and The Extremist – that last who would carry on the role and continue representing us in the 418 code right up to our closing months with Dionyzos and Enelf Daragard.

To reiterate: Eerie was only with us for three months at the end of 1994, but echoes and effects of his brief tenure were still being felt in the final stages of Mist Classic, in August 1998 nearly four years later. In the meantime, he’d made a legend of himself. We weren’t the start of the legend, but we were near the beginning. (And reflect that any of the umpteen groups in which he held membership at one point or another could likely gush for as great length as I have here about his tenure there!) Here in this post you can enjoy his brief intersection with us, and as a bonus… here, enjoy a couple of brief Misty pieces – his spot illustration of one of my lits, and his abrasive tracked song from the “lost” Mist/Fire Radiance music disk we revived last year – that didn’t make it into his collection!

And we’ll end on something particular to Mistigris that no other artgroup (you sure as heck would never have caught it in an ACiD or Integrity pack) would have allowed him to release: a “lit” of his own!

        bloody mary







    apoplexy of a bludgeoned country
    emanations
    corrosion
    the last feedback is reechoing in your destroyed voice
    wake-ups
    highway's ending here

    i could try
    yea, yea, i could try to shout
    to puke my bile by the pores of my skin
    to be dismembered
    i could try to weep
    but it's impossible
    cuz she's sticking in my landscape
    cornering my brain without being able to exit
    her humid body
    the haemoglobin dropping from her mouth

    we won't go anywhere
    there's nowhere to go
    i want her to stay
    i still want to force myself to watch her at 3am
    i don't want to rape anymore
    i don't want to kill anymore
    but without attacking i lose my only defence

    sweet impaled flesh
    sweet impaled flesh
    SWEET IMPALED FLESH

    i'm searching you
    no clue on where you could be
    bring me back home
    don't die anymore
    i want you
    bring me back in your bed
    bring me back i don't know where
    don't bleed anymore
    don't moan anymore
    i love you

    reclothe you
    don't be hurt again
    bring me back in your arms
    so i can still believe i'm innocent
    take me
    so i can still believe i'm
    eternal
    amen







        first motion




        i

    at some places on the asphalt
    agenda pages, dispersed
    a date another one
    pages splashed with some blood drops
    countries splashed
    only the corpse and the scandal are missing
    the newspaper car left the place
    "we all know, you, journalists
    only think about
    SATISFYING
    people" money
    justice was undone
    let's attack the city
    let's attack those people swimming in their drains
    mountains splashed
    valleys assassinated
    population drowning
    my mother swallowing

    scarlet rivers
    start back from the source
    no one would dare to regret
    ISN'T IT?


        ii

    beautiful terror
    beautiful panic
    beautiful fright
    spread on the surface
    enough to corrupt everything
    and confound everything in the burst

    RIVER
    into which the population was forced to
    CLEANSE itself
    beautiful dirty river
    hands immersed in this incandescent liquid
    incardinine

    BUT YOU TOLD ME BUT YOU ADVISED ME BUT YOU APPROVED ME BUT YOU

    when the widow
    nowhere else


        iii

    - The bath has been filled with blood. Write this down.
    - "The bath has been filled with blood."
    - Write this down too. The woman has been drowned in this blood.
    - "The woman has been drown in this blood."
    - She is now dead.
    - "She is now dead."

    edge
    yes of course i'll be waiting for you
    get here fast i can't wait to

    - We certified the decease. That's it. We don't have anything else
to do here. Let's go.

    where will you meet me
    with who


        iv

    memory you stab with the turpentine
    the creature has gushed
    poor frail innocence why
    did you manifested yourself
    beautiful and young so beautiful and young
    why

    no

    the sea is prolonging day after day
    already finished the story

    everything that happens unconsciously
    when the skin is naked
    when the soul is turned off
    when the conscience is dying


        v

    they were beautiful so beautiful
    so magic

    conversation recorded on magnetic tape
    one day they will know
    no
    yes no yes
    SET ME FREE

    a life without disappointment
    an existence without normality morality
    them girls without disappointment
    them girls without ignorance
    without naivety

    i tell you
    set me free
    yesb

    cold shower
    steaming bath



    now
    life can be
    while a moment of ecstacy
    while the absolute bombardment
    of hell hell you see
    real liberation
    from the soft cushion and the old bread
    from the paradise of the dungeon
    adjunction of liberty
    to the sad yesterdays that
    continue cant stop
    for an infinite deflagration
    of which the epicenter will be
    in my brain
    synapses will create the spark

    atomic garden
    atomic garden
    smell the radioactive flowers
    of an internal hiroshima


        un

    the steep bank
    the beach is empty
    drown yourself
    nobody is watching
    search somewhere else

    torn covers
    land of crimes
    buy my piece of asphalt
    speckled with guts

    a child, raped
    under a fire-orange sky
    the water the torrent rumbling faster
    way too fast

    i don't want to be the killer tonight
    drown yourself alone


        decimated i

    and this time
    at the window
    beheaded remorses
    a blood-stained body on the bed

    in a chapel
    administrative gods oracle
    the territory
    where the incestuous union will happen
    nothing on the terrain
    else than two naked bodies
    fucking under the heat of an eternal summer


        decimated ii

    the serial killer
    swimming in the innocence of his victim laying down on the mattress 
tied to the poles
    all she has is her cries

    the virgin is there she looks to the sky




        second motion


        northwest

    hallucinated amoebaes
    hear the stretch of the glaciers
    see the red disaster
    of the sacrificed aurora borealis
    of the infernal screen
    the one that will prevent you
    to think about the winter
    flames will reach your mouth
    and your tongue will decompose
    your cells will split up
    and carbonize the snow by their effervescence

    and i'll shit on your corpse


        insanities

    i'm coming here to take you
    we're going

    average catholic images
    life used to be moral normal with excellent reputation corporative 
parents javellized childhood full of lethargic laughs and microwaveable 
love
    no way baby
    the highway is just a second away
    my soiled hand in your sweet blond hair
    shut up


        instant departures neighbouring regions
        nocturnal celebrations with sulfuric acid

    seas of sand
    skidding continents
    cannibal torrent

    i'm building my non-existant soul
    from the wounds of my victims
    i lost my sight
    because of the vinegar
    i will never recover from my insanity
    even with the radiations
    even with the drugs
    every day
    every night
    even with the insomnias i will never leave the nightmare

    i went away
    i left the dump when i saw you weeping
    with an hatchet i broke the bones of my friends
    they shouted and they shut up, petrified
    i closed my eyes
    mist on hometown, usa
    grey pick-up on the nine
    six am

    come with me
    i'm going outta here
    i'm escaping to the states
    don't suffer for me
    i'll suffer for you
    come with me
    i'm the muthafucker who's awaitin you
    to fuck me kiss me fuck me kick me fuck me kill me
    to fuck me

    i crucified my reality
    i carved my acid truth
    i drowned my cephalic territories
    me, that compulsive liar
    i have no intention of repenting myself
    there's only you i can't lie to

    come with me
    i wanna get outta here


        exit 223

    i feel like dislocated by your presence
    viaducts pass so fast
    lamp posts and lamp posts
    ten-wheelers and ten-weelers

    you don't say anything
    i first thought about doing as if it was okay
    i even tried
    but the only thing i did was to destroy myself more
    when i saw you hurling in the rearview mirror
    when i saw you losing the last remains of your purity

    my heart is lacerated
    your moans are scourging me
    your bloody wrists are confounding with the explosion of my retin

    was it you i was waiting for?
    was it you i saw, yesterday, on the guard-rail
    vomiting the medication inoculated the day before
    the face demolished under a tide of industrial alcohol
    emerging
    desesperately seeking for air

    radio is broadcasting its aseptised fast-mood
    who cares
    in my head the ten-wheelers are still driving
    faster
    louder

    and the pelting rain
    and the wipers
    and on the right the acid sea
    and on the left the dry fields
    and the pelting rain
    and the wipers
    and on the right the acid sea
    and on the left the dry fields
    and the pelting rain
    and the wipers
    and on the right the acid sea
    and on the left the dry fields

    i love you
    on the back seat
    when you are dying

    and your finger on the trigger
    who cared



    I COULD HAVE I WAITED FOR YOU ALL NIGHT LONG LYING ON THE SNOW WAITING 
FOR TOMORROW EVEN IF I KNEW TOO WELL THAT AWAKING WOULD BE HELL ALL NIGHT 
LONG CARS PASSED WHILE I WAS WRITING YOUR NAME I LOST ALL MY HOPE NOW MY 
WORDS ARE LIKE KNOCKS OF HAMMER ON A FUCKING REALITY MADE FROM DREAMS HOPES 
FIGHTS BEAUTIES UGLINESSES I WROTE YOUR NAME I SHOUTED IT I MASTURBATED IT 
ALL NIGHT LONG SNOW FLAKES ONE AFTER ONE FELL ON ME AND BURIED ME I THEN 
REALIZED THAT MY WORK THAT MY SHOUTS THAT MY CALLS THAT MY DESIRE THAT ALL 
THIS DIDN'T EMBELLISH MY BURNED BRAIN I THEN DROWNED UNDER AN INTENSE 
VOLLEY OF SNOW BLOODY MARY I KNOW THAT YOU WON'T COME I KNOW THAT YOU DON'T 
EVEN EXIST I WAITED FOR YOU ALL NIGHT LONG KNOWING THAT YOU WOULD NEVER 
COME I WAITED FOR YOU WITHOUT EVEN HOPING YOU ALONE ALONE ON THE ROAD DID 
YOU HEAR ME DIE?

[gallery]
Always with a few projects underway, and seemingly at odds after the recent release of the 1999 music disk, creative dynamo Melodia (one of our oldest-school members) has recently relocated from Australia back to home sweet home – the environs of Victoria, BC – and taken up a new business: proprietor of a vintage video games and computing shop, PALEOTRONIC at #3-829 Goldstream Avenue in Langford. It hit the ground running and is already a going concern – I don’t know if there was an opening party, but you can celebrate on Hallowe'en with a party they’re throwing. To any of our friends passing through the vicinity of Vancouver Island, it must be considered a mandatory stop! I for one can’t wait to swap some floppies, discs and carts!

For further details, please consult its Facebook page.

[gallery]
First making a splash on the euphonium in musica intima and the Orkestar Slivovica, the fabulous, legendary fellow known only as The Mythical Man decided a couple of years back to take up oil painting as a hobby. We featured a slice of his burgeoning practice in last year’s Mistigris artpack, and now you can enjoy his paintings in a non-virtual gallery – they are having a showing, “The Last Possible Moment”, at the Britannia Library’s art gallery from October 5 to 28th, with an artist-in-attendance reception opening night from 6:30 - 8:30 pm. There you will no doubt see – live, tangible, in the highest resolution possible – artworks you were previously able to enjoy only virtually from last October’s Mistigris artpack … as well as a sneak preview of paintings slated for inclusion in this year’s collection, rapidly upcoming!

We’ve had a number of artists involved in exhibitions – Jenn Ashton is basically perpetually exhibiting non-stop, and it’s a substantial failure on our part to not manage reporting on any of them (but fortunately, there are also many chances to pick up the ball). We’ll try to do a better job in the future, as we are only but one minor outlet artists have to get their works seen.

[gallery]

Today on Mistigram, a cartoonish mad scientist from the desk of Quip, who drew this ANSI art not-a-Mist-promo (actually it advertises the BBS Geeksta’s Paradise, but the logo at the bottom got cut off). It was first released in January of 1998, but later saw thematic re-use in the photo announcement (99 weeks ago!) of our 2014 revival, along with: the unique Mistigris coffee mug Etana made me for a turn-of-the-century birthday party, the volume of Poetry Comics, the physical-ANSI-art Duplo, and the USB floppy disc drive containing a copy of the limited-edition 10th-anniversary TABdisks from way back in 2003.

[gallery]
Vancouver was on the ground floor of the electronic future – not merely serving as homebase to Neuromancer author William Gibson, not just ground zero for Canada’s first video game successes (the Sidney Development Corporation with Evolution and B.C. - Quest for Tire), not merely possessed of the longest-lasting and most populous dial-up BBS scene in the world (to say nothing of its pivotal role, albeit an accidental one, in phreaking in the early ‘70s), not just coincidentally the spawning ground of Gravis, Mainframe Entertainment Inc. (of “Money for Nothing” and ReBoot fame) and Distinctive Software (later to flourish as EA Sports) … and it’s been if anything over-represented by performance, conceptual and electronic arts through such hubs as the Western Front, Video In, and the Edgewise Electrolit Centre … so why, in the 34 years since the Commodore 64 hit the stores, has it never enjoyed much in terms of a live experimental electronic performance scene?

Nettwerk in its earliest days (heh, somewhere there is a chat log of an online meet 'n greet by Sarah Mclachlan at the Nettwerk BBS in which she greets TABNet!) enjoyed the scantiest of scenes around Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly, and sure, we hosted a couple of instalments of the “New Media” demoparty in the early '90s, and okay, we got raves filling our warehouses same as everyone else did, but basically… none of it ever amounted to much of anything! Ben Potts won a Gravis Ultrasound and a few rooms full of people danced while out of their gourds, but in the end things looked pretty similar to how they looked at the beginning.

So here we are in the 21st century and finally at long last those of us not living in New York, Berlin or Tokyo are beginning to have some options presented to us for public enjoyment of music that emerges from a SID chip or comes out of a Game Boy’s beige housing. Mistigris alumnus bryface has been travelling the world as opportunity allows for the past few years, witnessing, networking with and learning from chiptune events and organizations all over the place, and I guess he’s reached the point where he’s concluded it might be nice to be able to enjoy a show without having to get on an airplane. I don’t know if there is or is not any formal relationship organizing as high up as the Northwest Chiptuning Facebook group but for a hyper-local focus we can now look to the Vancouver Chipmusic Society to dish us all up a healthy serving of square, sine, and sawtooth waves (a static channel is extra, though.) (Do you think that they are an actually-registered society in accordance with the Societies Act of BC, with rules about membership and annual general meetings? We felt crazy when we registered our accordion community, which has to be at least as niche as chiptunes, but it was an essential step on the way to being able to tap into grant funding to support our activities. They can get away without registering for two or three years as long as they keep good financial records. But I digress!)

The Vancouver Chipmusic Society’s flagship event will be dropping on the 604 next Monday night, September 26th, at the Fox Cabaret, with doors at 7:30 pm and bleeps and bloops until … late. (Its calendar says midnight. Then an hour is reserved for FidoNet traffic, right?) You can find out all about the event, Øverfløw #000: Vancouver Chipmusic Showcase, over on Facebook. The featured live performers include Norrin_Radd, meckz, Fastbom, and that bryface character, plus Melodia (who just this week released a music disk of an hour and a half of .XMs thought lost forever in 1999!) and uɴɪᴄ⊙ᴅΞ (among others) will be audible as part of the open mic portion of the evening. (This means that at least three of the performers at the night have appeared in past Mistigris artpacks… we’ll simply have to get to work chipping away at the others so we can improve that ratio 8)

If you’d like more information and find my account of things a little too insider baseball, bryface did an interview on the subject for Roundhouse Radio and you can get another take on it over there. And now, I’ll turn it over to their potted press release!

LIVE CHIP MUSIC | OPEN MIC | LIVE VISUALS | RAFFLES | MORE

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

ADMISSION
$12 online va EventBrite
http://overflow000.eventbrite.com/
$15 at the door

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Introducing Vancouver's very own chiptune event series! Enjoy a night of live electronic musicians pushing the limitations of old gaming platforms' sound chips to create fresh music in a diverse range of styles - electro, pop, drum n' bass, metal, jazz, funk and everything in between. 

Experience the raw, crunchy waveforms of the NES/Famicom, Game Boy, Amiga .MODs, Commodore 64 SID tunes, and 16-bit SNES/Genesis-era samples pumping full-blast through the Fox Cabaret's pristine sound system. Prepare to have your expectations shattered repeatedly as these artists use and abuse these vintage platforms and formats in unexpected and forward-thinking ways.

This special first installment of the show specifically highlights our locally-based talent - a killer lineup internationally recognized for their individual dedication to the craft of chip music and the low-bit arts. Join us in the celebration of new life given to vintage systems - this is definitely a night for tech/synthesis/gaming enthusiasts alike.

// MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26th, 2016
// DOORS OPEN 7:30pm | MUSIC STARTS 8:00pm
// $12 ONLINE/EARLY-BIRD | $15 AT THE DOOR | 19+

/// MUSIC

> NORRIN_RADD (Vancouver, BC)
> 16-bit soundscapes + Retro City Rampage OST mayhem

> MECKZ (Victoria, BC)
> insane progjazzclassical NES/famitracker mastery

> FASTBOM (Stockholm, Sweden)
> demoscene/cracktro-style Game Boy / C64 anthems

> BRYFACE (Vancouver, BC)
> eclectic + progressive Game Boy electrofunkbreaks

/// VISUALS: alterus (Victoria, BC)

[gallery]

Today on Mistigram, Amiga whiz Sentience upscaled the ANSI art Mistigris cat mascot and logo drawn by Etana for our 2nd anniversary in 1996… reproducing it as if drawn in a higher resolution (did someone say hirez?) sometime later. This went on the shelf for, if memory serves correct, a T-shirt design. There on the shelf it remained until it finally came out for inclusion in the MIST2000 collection of loose ends released to the public in early 2016. It’s not a bad likeness! Pity about the punctuality, though…

So, who wants a Mistigris t-shirt?

[gallery]

Some artists we only have an excuse to discuss once a year, in the wake of their making an annual appearance, like Punxsutawney Phil, in an artpack… then retreating back into obscurity. Others have a stable of projects they grind away on over the year, churning out projects and milestones on a regular basis like miniature computer art factories.

So, here we have VileR, who has featured in these pages before. Being a connoisseur of vintage technology, he recognized that a very significant milestone was coming up on the calendar – the 35th anniversary of the launch of the IBM PC, the contender that elevated home computing beyond the hobbyist miasma of the late ‘70s when the market was caught in three-way gridlock between the Commodore PET, the Apple II, and Tandy’s TRS-80.

Something important was folded in to the release of the IBC PC. In PC-DOS, one of its three options of included operating systems (supposing you eschewed CPM-86 or UCSD D-PASCAL), it included a BASIC language interpreter with some sample programs. There was a company specialising in home implementations of BASIC in those days: Microsoft. One of the sample programs included was a little driving game called DONKEY.BAS, written by a nobody named William Gates III. It could be characterised as … crude but effective. It boasted functional graphics, but let’s be fair here: what it really needed were textmode graphics. (I’m not sure that its graphics aren’t simply remapped text characters, but let’s not split hairs here.)(VileR responds: “I can say that Donkey’s original graphics aren’t remapped text chars after all… but that *does* touch on another idea I had…”)

VileR saw what needed to be done to mark this occasion: clone the historic (yet largely unknown) game, in the textmode it always so richly deserved, as a PC Booter (the delivery mechanism of nearly all original PC games), re-implemented in 512 bytes. And here you have it. All in a day’s work! Hats off to VileR and his Sorry Ass!

[gallery]

Today on Mistigram, Illarterate drew us this lovely garish teletext cake for our 21st birthday marked by the MIST1015 artpack. To celebrate the occasion I posed in a goofy selfie blowing out the candles with his VR girl enjoying the scene through augmented reality. (Truthfully, though I’ve always been a fan of angry fruit salad, I don’t know if my stomach is strong enough for teletext cake.)