Author: lazerbeat

  • Charlie Visnic’s Double Bliptronome

    VBlank’s rather excellent Bliptronome put to good use.

    Via: Palm Sounds

  • Ne7 – Happy Hippo (ZX 1bit Beeper)

    Groovy little beeper track using Beepola.

    Ne7 – Happy Hippo (ZX 1bit Beeper)

    Here’s a fresh ZX spectrum beeper track done on the wonderful Beepola tracker available here: http://freestuff.grok.co.uk/beepola/ If you want the original data for the program grab it here: http://ne7.untergrund.net/zx/ne7-happyhippo.bbsong This one uses the ‘Savage’ replay… The ZX speccy beeper is literally a 1bit audio device – everything u hear is cleverly replayed using PWM to generate seperate notes ta to 4mat for pointing me to the new version – all the new replays rock

  • TCTD Interview with AY-Riders’ Yerzmyey pt2

    This is part 2 of an interview with AY Rider, Yerzmyey. Please look here for part 1.

    LB – I think my favorite release of yours was FREAKuencies on 8BP but I like Interphase on DWD a lot too. Which of your own releases do you like most and why?

    Y – Actually I don’t like very much my own music. If You ask me about music, I simply prefer AY-RIDERS’ albums. It’s good to gather a bunch of various people to get various and diverse album(s). Then it gets much more interesting. As for myself, I mostly try to fight with the AY’s limitations. :) It’s damn hard to force it to generate some _interesting_ synthethesized sound. All we get is only square waves or some acid noises. In contrast to the Atari ST, we use only original hardware posibilities or AY/YM chip, so the work is harder. Anyway, if You want to listen to good ZX Spectrum music, then don’t listen to my crap but go quickly and download AY-RIDERS albums. :)

    LB – What inspired you to start writing music? Was is a particular song or game or person?

    Y – Hmmmmm. From the music side in general, probably it was electronic music. Marek Bilinski’s art creativity or KOTO’s stuff… Also Vangelis, Jarre, Kraftwerk… Hm. From the game-music side, it was ZX Spectrum stuff, like “Agent-X”, “Chronos” or “Raw Recruit”. Generally – all the incredible stuff from Tim Follin. We used to say that they’re NOT games with musix but – musix with some games attached :)musix with some games attached.  And for demo-scene inspirations, surely it was Ziutek from ‘Ethanol Soft Inc’ group, as well as Hacker Kicia (with his demo songs for SoundTracker 1.1 ZX AY editor).demo-songs

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  • TCTD Interview with AY-Riders’ Yerzmyey

    This week TCTD talks to Yerzmyey, organizer of AY Riders, producer of awesome tunes, lover of the z80 and generally all round amazing guy. So thanks very much to Yerz for being so generous with his time and lets get down to business!

    Lazerbeat – Where are you from?

    Yerzmyey – Ah, well. I come from Rubber Planet. ;) A place where all computers have rubber keyboards. ;) Well, actually that’s not exactly true. :) ZX Spectrum was highly popular in PL, in 80s and early 90s, however, somehow it stopped suddenly and now literally only a few people support the machine here. Cry, cry! As for geography matters ;) , my mother’s family came here from Czech and Austria (in that time it was connected with Hungary) and my father came here from Lithuania.

    LB – It looks like you have been active in the Demo scene for for over 20 years. How old were you when you founded H-PRG? Why did you start it?

    Y – First programs we made with Mr Hangman about 1987. We were 12 years old or so, in those days. :) We were only making games (just occasionally some simple pseudo-demos, haha). The games were not that bad actually :) – ugly but playable. Sadly in those times the only thing we had for saving the progs – was a tape-recorder, so the games didn’t survive to the present day, heh. Our the earliest programs that have survived come from 1989, so I took the date as a beginning of the HOOY-PROGRAM group. :)

    And what is funny, it wasn’t me who started all of this, it was my younger brother (who isn’t very interested in 8-bit nowadays, after all) who met Mr Hangman – and HE started making ZX games with him. :) I only joined them. But then my brother lost interest (well, not in playing games but in making them :) ), and I stayed. In this way we founded a team. ;)

    They were funny times. :) I remember that we had to be very careful and save our programs very often because every time Mr Hangman’s refrigerator/fridge turned on – then ZX Spectrum got reset, hahaha. :)

    Also, while loading (from tape of course) everybody was forced to leave to room, so as not to disturb the loading process. (more…)

  • Lazerbeat VS Ten Thousand Free Men and Their Families.

    TCTD has interviewed some pretty amazing people in the past and today we continue that tradition with one of the true titans of Chip Music. Prodigy of Malcom Mclaren, licking the ankles of Crystal Castles and stepping on the groin of Timbaland, Ladies and Gentlemen, hot off his tour of the Asian Sub Continent and his release of his sprawling masterpiece “MKE or BRK”

    We give you, Ten Thousand Free Men and Their Families.

    LB: Who are your influences?

    10k: Well David, my number one influence was, is and ever more shall be, Malcolm McLaren. He is the master of exploiting underground sounds. After reading the article that he wrote for Wired, I started making chipmusic. The way he presented the chipmusic ideal in that masterful piece set my sights on Game Boy music and I simply could not turn back. He was the reason that I got in on the ground floor of the sound – he was there right at the beginning, really on the money, like he always has been and I was mere seconds behind him. I was really keen to be a hacker, a bender, a softpunker and a buffalo pirate and to use illegal software, because that is the way to be truly punk. I mean, what is more punk than using ripped software on a janked up consumer toy to create music? I have an answer for you: doing exactly that, then screaming your lungs out over the top of it. I think Malcolm would be proud of me, I stepped up his game to the next level. In the scene, I am really liking some of the tracks TV Death Squad had up on his myspace a while back – I hear he is killer live, too.

    LB: Were you really kicking yourself when you realised you had spelled “friends” wrong on the song title?

    10k: Mate! Are you suggesting I spelt it wrong? We do things different here Down Under and I guess this is one of those things we do differently. If I spelt it the ‘correct’ way, it would have really have increased the length of the EP drastically and that is something that obviously could not happen. Anything more than eight minutes is not punk enough. Next question.

    LB: You mentioned you’re from Australia, what is the scene like down there?

    10k: I find it really hard here sometimes, not having anyone else in the scene. I’d like to think that me putting myself out like I have will encourage others to get into it all. Maybe people down here should start some blogs, put on some regular chip parties, maybe even develop some ways of creatively interfacing with consoles? Who knows? Out of my hands. (more…)