I started out writing a pretty cheesy techno tune, which just didn’t work. Then it started going more dubsteppy, which seemed to work a bit better, so I added some more breaks in and voila, ZombieRaveStep!

I call it, Gonna Eat Your Brains. <– click there to download it

Grab it while it’s hot, pulsating and covered in puss!

Tub.

Goulie Thousand Trousers

The one with the cheesey synth in the middle.

Download the 55th Flotilla Bangface Mix, which consists of the following:

1. 00:00 Dopplereffekt – Holomorpic n0 form
2. 00:50 Kelpe – Sylvania
3. 01:20 Bong-Ra – Giddeon War
4. 02:40 Ragga Twins – Juggling
5. 04:00 Jackson and His Computer Band – Headache
6. 05:20 Shanti-ites (almost aba shanti-i) – Father Give Life Verse 1
7. 05:20 Richard Devine – 126BI5
8. 06:20 Luke Vibert – Breakbeat Metal Music
9. 08:25 Altern-8 – Frequency
10. 09:55 Scotch Egg – Scotch Hausen
11. 10:35 Model 500 – Techno Music (m500 Version)
12. 11:05 Modeselektor – BMI
13. 12:40 Plaid – Bodyclocker
14. 14:07 Chas & Dave – Rabbit
15. 15:23 Longrange (with Aquasky) – Crosswire
16. 16:48 Digital Mystikz – B
17. 18:12 Kode9 – Kingstown
18. 19:20 Mat Carter – Solid Gear
19. 20:00 DMX Krew – Hard Times
20. 20:21 Krome and Time – This Sound is for the Underground
21. 22:45 The Doubtful Guest – Electrobotz
22. 24:02 Universal Indicator – Red, Side A
23. 25:00 Ceephax Acid Crew – Acid Varsity
24. 26:30 Knifehandchop – Tuiti Fruity Booty (Hardcore Mix)
25. 28:09 Hellfish & Producer – A Journey of Force (Manu le Malin Remix)
26. 29:43 µ-Ziq (Muziq) – Grape Nut Beats (Part 1)
27. 31:15 Squarepusher – Venus No. 17 (Acid Mix)
28. 32:49 DJ Stingray – Counter Surveillance
29. 33:01 Cylob – Cut the Midrange, Drop the Bass
30. 31:11 Remarc – Soundmurderer
31. 34:59 Bogdan Raczynski – Alright, Track 1
32. 36:07 Vexkiddy – Eskimo Tunic
33. 36:35 Venetian Snares – Husikam Rave Dojo
34. 38:14 Shitmat – Day-0
35. 39:22 Panacea – Wrong is Right
36. 41:56 The Flashbulb – That Missing Week
37. 43:13 Beardyman – Live in Wellington
38. 43:45 Kid606 – Buckle up
39. 45:37 Aaron Spectre – 1600 Penn, FTW
40. 48:46 Cassette Boy – Outro

And remember, if you like any of the tunes, buy them from the artistes!

Ever since I started making noises with computers* in the early 90’s I had been wondering how to make the process more tactile. The early days of using Octamed on the Amiga were fairly fiddly, and the feel was more akin to using a spreadsheet than writing music (especially since Octamed didn’t support MIDI well the version I had anyway). After a lacklustre dabble with making noises on the Amiga, I returned to playing games, and taking electronic equipment apart, like most normal kids.

A few years later, around ‘98, I took a music tech’ course at school which got me interested in sequencing sounds again, and even writing what could be vaguely described as music in Cubase and Cakewalk (now Sonar). I was amazed at how you could play a keyboard and, via MIDI, have your performance saved in a format you could go back and edit. No more worrying about duff notes! Just go back and put them in the right place.Unfortunately my lack of keyboard skills limited my use of early midi controllers, which led to me devising other means of musical interaction. The first of which was an old QuickShot joystick with the springs taken out so it just flopped about instead of returning to the middle. I managed somehow to convert the joystick input into midi somehow and patch it into Fruityloops 1.7 via ‘virtual midi cable’ (it was a long time ago, I can’t remember the details. Fruityloops now supports joysticks by default via the XY controller if you want to try it yourself).

The result was one of the first electronic tunes I ever wrote, the The Joy of Stix (MP3 Download) (get it? huh?).

In this tune the joystick was linked to the frequency and resonance of a lowpass filter, and a drum loop patched through it. I liked te effect so much I wrote the whole tune around the joystick.

Coming up in Part 2: Java, graphics tablets and burnt fingers.

*Yes, noises. The tunes didn’t start for a long time afterwards.