_//\\________________________________________________________________________ _\\__T_A_T_I_C___L_I_N_E________________________________________ April, 2000 __\\_________________________________________________________________________ \\//__ Monthly Music E-Zine ________________________________ 112 Subscribers _____________________________________________________________________________ --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Table Of Contents ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Opening: Message From the Editor Features: The Meaning of Life Ambience 2000 Pary Report Columns: Music: The Listener -- Music from Darkhalo and Aisth Retro Tunage -- "Skyscraper (remix)" by Necros / FM Zen of Tracking -- End of Zen Demo: Screen Lit Vertigo -- Short Review of Some Ambience Releases (Line 774) Intro Watch -- "Lost Vegas" by 3State General: Call to Keyboards -- The Fall of Another Great SceneMag Scene Dirt -- Rumors Link List -- Get Somewhere in the Scene Closing: Credits --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Message From the Editor ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Big month for us all, but a very busy one for me. It's that time of semester where everything is due. You wouldn't know it from looking at this issue, however. We got five new columns, two new staff writers, and 22 new subscribers. However, because I'm behind in my schoolwork, In Tune will not run this month. I will be back next month, hopefully. Boy, is this issue huge. First of all, the new stuff: We welcome aboard Tryhuk and Gecko. Both come to us from previous work with Demojournal. For those of you who don't know, DJ has changed its format. All it's regular columns have been shifted to Static Line so that the legacy may continue. We also have new columns: Scene Dirt (News and tidbits), Link List (Scene Related Links), Intro Watch (Intro Review by Gecko), Retro Tunage (Classic Tune Exposure/Review by Tryhuk), an The Listener (More Current Song Review by Tryhuk). This all has of course caused some minor issues with the format of our magazine. For one, features are now printed before regular columns. I have also separated the columns into categories: Music, Demo and General. This just makes things easier to manage. To make navigation easier, the Table of Contents above now has line numbers as well. As always, I enjoy feedback. But with so many changes as of late, I want to hear from you. Do you like that we've gotten larger? Is there anything we could change, add, or remove? Let me know, please. --Coplan --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- The Meaning of Life By: Roz (guest writer) ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- I sit here in my bedroom on a cold Thursday night, with 3 empty coke bottles sitting on my desk and a nice cigarette cough. My eyes are red from IRCing for hours straight without blinking. But I am happy. I have discovered the meaning of life within Orange's 1997 Assembly 2nd place demo winner "The Secret Life of Mr. Black". I discovered this fact quite by accident one evening. After watching this demo over 25 times, I was struck by an overwhelming sense that there was something deeply profound hidden within this work. I decided to investigate. I watched the demo another 3 times carefully noting everything that I could, the patterns of the particles and the details in the pixel graphics. I still got no closer to cracking the hidden message I knew was hidden in the demo. I decided to take a brief break from this most pressing work. I took a leak and headed to the kitchen to grab yet another coke. Feeling refreshed, I turned all the lights out in my room, and sat back down in my battered desk chair. Then it hit me. The demo was a metaphor for the cycle of life. It starts out telling of a somewhat dysfunctional family through images and sound, then goes on to display the cycle of life in the effects and images: first, you are born; then you grow to be 12 years old; then you go on to start your own family; eventually you become an old man sitting around drinking beer with your friends and dreaming of young women frolicking in the water; and finally you die, which is so beautifully symbolized by the fading smoke Orange logo. Hidden in all this metaphorical bollocks is the actual meaning of life: pi. Yes, pi. "What?", you say? "Pi" i respond! 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510...! Life is circular! PI! Now i challenge you to go forth and spread the word, but more importantly keep watching demos! NOTE: the author of this article was extremely stoned while writing this work. please do not take it seriously. do not hire monkeys to take your notes in class either. never trust a monkey. monkey == bad. banana == good. --Roz --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Ambience 2000 Pary Report By: Seven, with special guest star D-lee ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- Note -=- This time I've re-written this report at home, from the notes I made at the party. This explains the random changes from present to past perspective. I had hoped that it would be less chaotically this way :) As usual, times are in European notation (20:55 = 8 h 55 p.m.) Friday 10-3-00 -------------- Baxter/Green picked me up at home around 7 o'clock, with the small van from his parents instead of his usual red car. So there was more than enough room for hardware and I decided to take my 17" screen along instead of that crappy 14". We drove from Gent/Belgium to Antwerp/Belgium to pick up Corona/Green, and went on our way to Venlo/The Netherlands. Much to my surprise, we found the partyplace without getting lost a single time :) 20:55 : Unlike previous year, there was no queue waiting at the entrance. We got a stamp on our hand, a paper with some info about the LAN and more importantly: our voting key. In less then 10 minutes, we had installed ourselves in hall A. Let me describe the partyplace: Ambience is held at the Hogescholen Fontys, a large school complex. Hall A and B are two rectangular cafeteria-rooms, forming an L-shape. Hall B (where smoking is allowed) lies higher then hall A, with a stairway between them. In the corner of the L-shape, between A and B, there was a bar where you could order fries, hamburgers and other junk food during most of the day. In addition to hall A and B, there were a number of smaller classrooms at the second floor (area C), and of course the gym-hall which served as competition room. The fact that this gym-room lies a few corridors away from the scener-halls turned out to be a big problem, but more about that later. Some other rooms in the building was reserved for gamers, because Ambience was a Demo/LAN/Gamers-party, as stated on the website :/ Almost immediately we spotted Eggbird/Green, who was dressed very original in a real kilt! (you know, a Scottish skirt for men :)) He's a cool guy, but sometimes he speaks so fast I've problems understanding him. He's making the music for my 4K intro, plus some tunes for the music/MP3 compos. The tables were a bit small, especially for my mega-monitor, but the network worked flawlessly. After checking the deadlines for the compos, I continued working on my 4K. 22:01 : Bwiiizzzzz.... Speakers shut down, fans halt and monitors fade to black: the first power failure is a fact. Actually it's just a part of the room, but our table is a victim too :(. Just when I was typing some notes for this report! But well, we'll forgive the organizers, it's just the start of the party, so it's probably a misconnection or something. And indeed, 10 minutes later everything went fine again. Saturday 11-3-00 ---------------- 00:24 : During the second power failure :(, I stopped programming (obviously) and walked around at the partyplace a bit. In the relaxation area at the second floor, someone had put an old 386 for a public party-report: everyone was invited to write on it. I read the things typed so far, mostly stupid comments in Dutch, till I noticed a message from D-lee. He's a Hungarian scener but lives in Germany at the moment, and he has also written for DemoJournal (like me). At the end of the text, there was a large Hungarian message, and just then someone with short black hair and glasses said "That's me who has written that, I'm D-lee". Wow, coincidence! D-lee brought me to area C, to show some funny wild demos on Magicboy/Liquid Motion's PC (he had only some harddisks with him). The LTP 3 opening demo from Syndrome was really cool, you really should get that one when you have the chance! He also showed some unreleased stuff from Exceed, "just crap", but it was much better than anything I've ever done (although that is not so hard :)). I just hope it will be released someday. The Exceed joke-intro for Ambience didn't want to run on any PC, not even on KB's where it had run before. It looked like some part of the code had committed suicide :/ Now it was my turn to show D-lee what I was working on (my 4K), but yet another power failure made that impossible :( Fed up with power failures, I reinstalled my stuff at the opposite table, which had not had any problems so far. I was really anxious to finish my intro, because I had learned from previous party-coding sessions that no matter how much time you have, your production is NEVER finished in time, and it looks never as good as you want it to be. In the mean time I had a talk with Space/Inscene about Inscene 2000, intros and the power failures that he was angry about, as he had lost already 2 writable CDs. 3:03 : Just found an extremely nasty bug in my 4K (which I had decided to name Turn It Back II, = TIB2, for the reverse filter-effects in it). I don't understand how the hell it could have run with it! I'm so happy now that I've decided to ignore another, smaller bug :) Baxter and Corona have followed my example, and are also tapping power from this table, after YAPF: Yet Another Power Failure. People start to get really angry about it, which is perfectly understandable: how can you code/compose/pixel/leech/game/listen to music without electricity ? 4:44 : Just walked around a bit through the halls, and I must say: there are quite some active sceners, not just gamers. For example, Eggbird tweaking his adlib-tune for TIB2 :). I missed some movies that I wanted to see (like American Beauty), but D-lee assured me that the quality wasn't very good (the screen was too small, and you could notice it was an mpeg). 11:38 : Phew! The deadline for the 4Ks is over. I upped my entry, which was only 3780k. (Not enough time to add more effects, as usual :/). D-lee and Eggbird helped a bit with the colors. Anyway, a lot of people are sleeping now, probably in order to be fully awake when the compos start. As the 4K-compo is only in a few hours, I will just stay awake for it. In the meantime, I'm gonna browse the net for wild-demos. BTW, the power-failures are fixed. Good! 15:47: I was interrupted in my leeching-activities by D-lee, who wanted to submit some 64K-intros and pictures. As he had only his harddisks with him, and the entries had to be submitted via the website, he needed a host-PC. After some try-outs, his HD finally worked more or less together with my HW. According to D-lee, "design is everything", so he spent a lot of time writing beautiful FILE_ID.DIZ's and such. I thought that was quite ironical, because the 64K's were joke-entries from a Hungarian joke-group White Rainbow, and they consisted almost entirely of bad porn :) After that it was time for the 4K-intro compo (I had already skipped the 4-channel compo). We waited outside the compo-hall... 10 minutes ... 15 minutes ... 20 minutes ... Then the orgos came saying that the compo was cancelled, cause they had not received any submission! Aargh! I had a deja vu of Bizarre'99, where my 4K was also lost on the network. D-lee & I went to the orgos, I brought my intro on disk, and they agreed to show it before the 64K. Well, last year there were 6 4K's, and as TIB2 is my best 4K to date, I was really looking forward to see if I could beat people like The Watcher/TUHB or Ritz/Revolution. But at least it will get shown, so my efforts are not in vain. Now all I've to do is stay awake till the 64K compo (at 23:30), cause if I go to the sleeping area now, I'll probably stay there for the rest of the party :) 21:27 D-lee came to say that the animation-compo was over. So I missed it, damn :( It's not a problem that compos are delayed (happens everywhere, every time), but it IS when the orgos do not announce when they finally start! Either you wait for them in front of the compohall, in a cold corridor, or you wait in the main hall, and you risk to miss (part of) them! I'm eating French fries now, while Baxter & Corona are making a fun-demo with the theme "only for the money" :) They use only their new OpenGL sprite-engine, so all effects are 2D. Too bad there is no one to make graphics, so it doesn't look very spectacular. The house music compo was delayed so long that I heard a part when I went to watch the GFX-compo. In fact there were 4 GFX-compos after each other: ANSI, hand-pixel, photo-based and raytrace. I thought it was a good idea to split hand-pixeled and photo-based pics, but it wasn't what I expected. Most of the entries of the hand-pixeled compos were still based on photos (redrawn, and maybe even Photoshopped), and the entries in the photo-based compo looked more like website-GFX, with different photos merged into each other via filters. There were some good pictures, but most of them were only average. The quality of the projector is good, but the switching is very annoying, it went like this: - Screen 1 "Next entry: X by Y in compo Z" - Blue screen for some seconds - Brand of projector that I can't even remember, for several seconds - Screen 2 (with the entry) for a fraction of a second, spoiling the surprise in the GFX-compo - Blue screen again for some seconds - Screen 2, now for real Sunday 12-3-00 --------------- 00:11: The delayed music-compo (multichannel) is still going on. I really could use some sleep! Promise, after the 64 & 4K compo, which should have started at 23.30 :-( D-lee has found the TBL-people, which he was searching for yesterday, but they arrived only now. I remember he told something funny about them for this report, but I didn't wrote it down so I forgot. Sorry, D-lee. 2:25: It was just announced that the 64K intro-compo, for which everyone was already waiting half an hour outside compo-room, suffered from some server- problems, which should be solved in about half an hour. Well, not everyone is happy with that, but at least we now know the reason for the delay. IMHO, they should have told this much sooner. Because, the only thing that people talk about when waiting for a delayed compo, is about the bad organizing :) And now a special guest appearance from D-lee! (applause) X:XX: D-lee missed the 64kb competition... He was idling somewhere with Jace. (Now D-Lee typing... 1. thanks to the Aspirin pal. 2. That "Freestyle" entitled trip-hop-d'n'b track by Bombfunk or who is played in every 2 minutes somewhere at the party... A little boring.) Seven again: 9:53: The 64Kb compo was very good, although I missed the first 2 entries (one of them was the only non-disqualified intro of White Rainbow :) I expected that most of them would not be shown...) The ones from Aardbei & 3State were very very good. People applauded two times DURING the 3State intro, once when hundred little robot-men jumped up and down, and again for a growing tree, made of TV-screens. Wow, respect! Turn It Back 2 was not shown, but it will be shown before the demos . I asked if I could test my 4K on the compo machine, and that was OK: there were no compos till next morning. Alas, the compo-machine has a SB PCI 128 (not 100 % adlib-compatible, although it claims to be), and all the instruments in the tune sounded totally wrong :( Other 4K's with adlib that I tested on the machine had the same problem. So, the largest part of the time till now, I've been coding again, trying to correct the sound. Too bad this was impossible |-(. I proposed the orgos the swap the soundcards, but they thought it would be easier to bring my PC to the compo room. Which was OK for me :) I got also permission to add another effect to it (way after the 4K-deadline :)), because the demo-compo would only start in 10 hours, and I had about 300 bytes left... As a result, I'm now more than 2 days awake on a diet of French fries, sugar and orange juice :) Strange enough, I don't feel sleepy now. For the ones that have never tried anything like that (shame on you :)), the sleepiness comes in waves, up and down, and now I'm just "over a top". D-lee is sleeping next to me, just sitting on a chair with his head and arms on the table. Weird :) I told him there was a comfortable sleeping-area, but he didn't needed that (5 minutes later our neighbor started to play house-tracks very loud, I think D-lee regretted his decision. But he fell asleep anyway). Baxter asked if I could search Corona, which was also sleeping somewhere. Baxter hadn't found him, and neither could I, so he had to finish their demo without Coronas help. 15:00 : Big jump: all remaining compo have passed: all surprise compos, the 4k "compo", other system demos, and of course normal demos. The surprise compos were cool: ANSIs for a BBS, tunes with AUTOEXEC.BAT and other textfiles for samples (some were pretty funky), pictures of "the ultimate gamer", effects with the names of all Ambience orgos etc... Turn It Back 2 played on my own system, with the correct music, and the audience liked it. One person (I didn't see his face, so I don't know him) started to applaud when the reversed water-effect showed up, and I really felt like "At least one coder that understands how hard it is to program that", with a big grin. (For the non-coders: if you make a wave on a water-surface, it moves along but dies out after a while. No matter which form it has or in what direction it moves, you end up with a flat surface after some time. So how can you show the reverse, starting with a flat surface ? You don't know which wave you need to end with ... think-think-think :)) There were 3 "other system" demos: the first was Pavlov/Elitegroup, for the Playstation. The Ambience rules forbid to re-submit entries that were released before, but maybe the orgos didn't know it, or allowed it anyway :-/ The next was a video-tape from a black/white LCD screen, with waving clouds, I'm not sure which machine it was made on (ZX 80?). And the last one was a Basic entry on a 386, that really annoyed the audience. It showed lots of progress bars that increased and decreased, some very simple effects, boring text... It was supposed to be funny (and it kind of was, at the start), but it was so way over the top, that people would have attacked the control room, had it continued 30 seconds longer :) I found this hilarious, probably due to my lack of sleep :) Because I had no seat (The room was full, and I came from the control room to start TIB2), I was sitting at the ground, which is NOT a good idea if you want to pay attention to over half an hour of demos. I remember a blur of 3D rooms, spaceships flying over streets, blue mushrooms, robots... Sorry for not remembering any names :/ Now I have to vote, but I can't connect to the site. Maybe I'll have to kidnap Corona's PC (yes, Corona has returned from the unknown!) And here's D-lee again: Y:YY: (D-Lee last time scratching... So i gety some commercial videos i like, (A-Teens, Vengaboyz, BombFuck MC) and will travel back 2 Germany with the lovely Smash Designs people. Thanks for all people, especially for the beer support (much people), Aspirin (7) and G-Day (free call on his mobilephone). See ya soon dunno where.) Z:ZZ: Seven, back home because the power was cut after the prize ceremony: The prize ceremony followed less then an hour after the last compo, so it's a good thing I voted quickly. It started with that Freestyler/Bomfunk MC music, which was without doubt the most-heard tune at Ambi2000. Some people were so tired of it they started to boo. The first half of the ceremony was pretty boring: - "And the (3th/2nd/1st) place from compo X is Y! Give him an applause! And he gets (a linux release, some games, a Ambi2000 T-shirt and/or some hardware)! Do you want to say anything to the crowd?" - "No/Thanks for voting" - "OK, give him another applause!" After twenty or more times, this is not really exciting anymore :/ But during the music compo, the guy that gave the prizes suddenly said "Hmm, Houston, we have a problem!" It turned out they had by accident given the prize for the 3rd place to place 4, for the 2nd place to place 3 and for the 1st place to place 2. So the winners had to come back on stage to switch prizes. I had to go on stage once to collect the prize from someone in White Rainbow for the 3rd place raytrace, because that entry was submitted by D-lee which had already left (after asking me to collect any prizes they happened to win), and a bit later for the first prize in the 4K intro compo (of course :)) Elitegroup won the "other systems" compo with their already submitted "Pavlov". They threw the games they had won in the audience (which I found sympathetic), but destroyed their Linux release right on stage by jumping on it, which I found extremely rude. I'm not a Linux user, but I've sold my version to a friend at university, which is way better then pissing off the sponsors who are watching the prize ceremony too :( We had some more surprises: in the 64K compo, Lost Vegas/3State placed only 3rd! 2nd place was for the Mekka/Symposium invitation intro, and Please the cookie thin/Aardbei came first. I had voted 3State first and Aardbei second, but the audience didn't think like me. Maybe it's a result of that "eliteness-diagram" that 3State showed in their intro, with 3State being the most elite group and the other groups far below them :) But the strangest thing happened in the demo compo: the orgos announced that the first place was for "Farb-rausch 02" by Farb-rausch. Farb-rausch is one of the pseudonyms of Elitegroup, but before Elitegroup could go on stage, people started to yell that this demo wasn't even shown in the compos! The audience started to rumor, and the organizers asked for the people who had voted for Elitegroup to raise their hand. Only a few tens out of several hundred did so. The orgos felt very uneasy, but said that according to the voting system, this demo had 600 votes more then the 2nd (Buckle 3 Arena/Liquid Motion. So they gave the prizes to the Elitegroup guys, who weren't looking very happy either. No one did applaud when they came back, and after having talked to each other, they got back on stage and gave their prizes to the Liquid Motion guys, saying that "next time, the audience should vote for quality". I left the compo-room with a strange feeling, and I'm sure I was not the only one. What happened? Cheating? Cracking the vote-system? Or too much people voting tactically? (Tactical voting means to vote your production as nr 1, and to put very bad or disqualified entries on places 2 & 3. That way, you don't give points to your direct competitors. If enough people do this, results are totally worthless! ). Back in the main hall, we saw that the power was cut, so Ambience 2000 was definitely over. We gathered our stuff, said goodbye to our friends, and drove back home. Needless to say, I was asleep in the car most of the time :) The week after the party ------------------------ Of course the demo-results provoked some emotional reactions on comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos. People accused Elitegroup from stealing votesheets from the gamers (remember there were hundred of non-sceners in the other rooms of the building). Elitegroup said they had 15 votesheets from them and their friends, and admitted that they had 9 votesheets from gamers. However, if 24 votesheets were enough to change the results dramatically, then a) the Dutch people hadn't voted enough or b) the vote-system was fucked up. Also the Liquid Motion demo, Buckle 3 Arena, started some controversy. The main part was a 3D fly-through of a Quake 3 Arena level, to show off the 3D engine. As the creators thought that everyone would recognize the Q3A level (also from the title), they did not mention this in the credits. Which caused other guys, that noticed the similarity only after some time, to accuse them from ripping. My final opinion about Ambience 2000 ------------------------------------ Well, I still enjoyed it, regardless the things that went wrong. It's been half a year since my last big party (Bizarre'99), and I had a great time meeting old friends and making new ones. The network worked immediately and was fast, the catering was open at reasonable hours, there was a *real* bigscreen this year, and in fact the orgos were quite helpful. Let me explain that last statement: I've been in the control room for testing TIB2, and I've seen them working very hard, testing productions, dealing with sceners whose entries did not work on the compo machine (I wasn't the only one who was allowed to use my own PC), etc. But while preparing the next compo, they didn't pay attention to the waiting sceners, which was a real problem. So things I hope to see improve for Ambience 2001: - no more power failures. - better announcements, 5 minutes before the compo really starts. - the soundsystem was low-quality, according to some musicians. - prevent cheating (maybe by giving votekeys only to sceners, the gamers don't even watch the compos) - and more competitors in the 4K intro compos :) --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- The Listener Music from Darkhalo and Aisth By: Tryhuk ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- "Desert shades" and "Underwater voyage part 1" -=- -=- Music by Darkhalo -=- Because traxinspace announced Darkhalo as artist of the month (feb), I've decided to get two songs of his: A huge mp3 release called "Desert shades" and a 2MB XM called "underwater voyage". Let's look at the first one. Genre of this track is Drum & Bass (DNB), but from the first moment you'll hear that it is more of an ambient track with DNB sequences than simple DNB. To understand, you have to skip to end of the first minute. 'Till this point it just floats on ambient sounds, a little bit in the style of Fsol. Because it would be too monotonous to keep only this kind of sound, Darkhalo puts in very carefully chosen percussion. First come wooden beats at low volume and set up the tempo. Only then comes the real DNB sequence, which gets full sound right after a very short break. Because this wouldn't work for 2nd time, he uses (in the rest of the track) almost direct breaks and, thanks to the good use of the bassline, he keeps the beats on reasonable level. Intensity of drumline is also reduced by higher volume and activity of other sounds and again right after the percussion he uses wooden instruments to make the break softer. He does it so good that I had to rewind the track to hear how it was done. "Desert shades" is almost 7 minutes -- a long track -- and it builds chiefly on the changes of the moods which are very soft, but impressive. If you like ambient music and DNB, you have no choice but to get it. Today's second track, "underwater voyage" is a soft song with harp, piano, nice bassline influenced by howie b, and a lot of underwater ambience. From tracker's point of view it's nothing superb, darkhalo uses a lot of sampled sequences here and that reflects in less variation in lead instruments, but come on, it's and ambient track. If you can listen to music without watching how it's done, you will enjoy it. Song Information: Title: "Desert shades" "Underwater voyage part 1" Author: Darkhalo Filename: 12144-desertshades.mp3 4983-UnderwaterVoyage1.zip (xm) File Size: 6514 kb (zip/xm) 650 kb / 1888 kb Source: http://www.traxinspace.com -=- "Empty me" by Aisth -=- The intro of this tune kicks ass. Just imagine - organ-like sounds at low frequencies with low volume and a voice of Alison with it. This combination really provides a place for her voice to show what she's able to sing up. But this is also weak point, because you need really strong words that would get listeners attention especially when, for most of the listeners, english isn't the native tongue. Also Alison should have more faith in her voice and give to it more variation in both frequency and volume. Because whole track as it is, it became more an ambient song than ballad, but anyway it is good enough. Song Information: Title: Empty me Author: Aisth Filename : Aisth-Empty_me.mp3 File Size : 3034 kb Source: http://www.aisth.com -=- Other Tracks Worth checking -=- Willbe released new tlt mp3 track called "Livedown". Chosen genre is triphop and when somebody says this word, I think of portishead (btw "roseland nyc live" is in my opinion best live performance ever recorded). But this one is different, it is more optimistic and it has a lot of jazz and DNB. Nice song that won't excite you, but you'll be certainly pleased. Two new tracks by Distance are out. Trax'00 mp3 1st place "07/10/99" is a great Jarre-like pop song. The whole song sounds quite simple and childish. But this sounds like a lot of his tunes, and trust me, you will still hear it in your head while falling asleep. Other tune is "13/10/99" and it's a monotonik release. Can't describe it, check it out. Both tracks are mp3 releases. As you may have noticed, there's a lot of hq dnb/triphop/other style tunes at mp3.com/tokyodawn. Visit this tdr outpost if you haven't yet done so. I won't highlight any of the tracks because they're all good and there aren't any that would be more exceptional than the rest. "My Weakness (remix)" by Amino Acid is a remix of a tune by Moby. It falls somewhere between mellow ambient and intelligent dance. It's "must have" release from KFMF. (8:59/mp3/8340kb) Another good track by KFMF is Wayfinder's "trapped in a spider's web". (http://www.kosmic.org) --Tryhuk --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Retro Tunage "Skyscraper (remix)" by Necros / FM By: Tryhuk ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Readers of Demojournal already know this column. Because there isn't any space for old tracks in the current diskmags, I've decided to give it some space in demojournal. Unfortunately after few issues PS ended his scene career (and returned pretty fast) and demojournal (in the original form) with him. However PS and Coplan liked this column so much, that they've forced me to move it to Static Line and continue. Every month you will find here a review of one of the old but good tracks and if you want, you can write a review of your favourite track yourself or just give me a link and I'll do it for you (if it is good enough of course). Before I proceed to review, I have to react on a pained :) letter by George Marinov aka Stereoman of noise. I wrote a review of his old musicdisks in demojournal#82. I wrote that he is releasing songs in mp3 to protect his samples. George has been rightfully complaining. So I need to make things clear. I remember that he said this then he started releasing songs in mp3 format. (no I won't search where it was) However with time these possible reasons lost their importance. As you apply reverb and similar effects on your tunes, their size grows pretty fast, and also with windows based trackers high end cpus start to be slooow. I had a conversation with distance/lackluster about it and he was complaining that two of his songs suck just because he ran out of cpu power (and he uses PIII at 500MHz !). For those who still don't understand - this is my apology to esem, because if he ever meant it seriously,the reasons for mp3 are different today. If you (musicians) out there want to read reviews before being published and avoid this kind of misunderstanding, let me/us know please. I'm quite curious on your opinion. I would also like to ask authors of windows based tracking programs if they can optimize their code a bit - for example noisetrekker eats almost 100% of my P200 by interface only! For those who are interested on more tunes by esem: you can find the homepage at http://techno.orbitel.bg/esem or just by browsing noisemusic.org/stereoman. And now finally to the review (phew): "Skyscraper" belongs amongs the classics, which should never be forgot. Original song "mmm skyscraper i love you" has been done by Underworld and it is 2nd song on the "dub no bass with my head man" album. It is a very progressive track which mixes techniques of techno, modern electronica and classical rock, with many original parts. Necros takes the original 13 minutes long track and compresses it into 6 mins of pure energy. He takes the best parts and uses them as a base for his tune, which sets up a very high tempo from the beginning and keeps it through the end. It has a very solid structure, less ambient than the original and open-eared listener can hear that in some aspects, it is similar to the legendary "Mechanism eight", which came out in 1996. You'll immediately register high volume and stereo separation of the percussion, especially bass drum which will dance on your speakers almost the whole track. This is the main reason why this track looks so solid and it also creates an interesting effect, where other sounds sound like they try to get through a barrier made of the wide panned drumline and that makes a nice tension. I won't describe it more detailed, because there are only two possibilities - you know it or you haven't heard it and it would be stupid to destroy the feeling of the track by detailed description. So I'd rather let you go and play this awesome track. Song Information: Title: Skyscraper (remix) Author: Necros / Five Musicians Release date: 09/15/1995 Filename (zipped/unzipped): fm-scrap.zip / fm-scrap.s3m File Size (zipped/unzipped): 390 kb / 712 kb Source: ftp://ftp.scene.org/pub/music/groups/fm --Tryhuk --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- The Zen of Tracking The End of Zen By: Dilvish ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Well folks, after a considerable break from the music scene (about two years), I'm tickling the ivories again, working on a new album, and preparing myself to study music in school. The last couple of years have been a major change for me. I've been married, moved all over the country, and finally come home. The marriage is over, I'm done pretending that I'm anything but me. I'm an artist; a musician to the core. My work in computers has proven to be good to me financially - at a huge cost to my soul. My marriage prompted me to concern myself with the practical issues of building a good income to support a family with, but I tried to take shortcuts. I attempted to pass myself off as a software engineer rather than a composer - and while I'm quite good at it, I did not like the person that I pretended to be. Zen was my free space - a place that I could go mentally to remember who I really am, and what I'm really after. The things I discussed in the column are the things that I explore in my music. I think they work much better set to a wicked beat than being glared at on a computer screen, so the last article will remain the last. I may hint at deeper meanings, and spirituality in future articles, but the focus will be on the tools and techniques for creating quality music. I think I should explain a little bit about my music philosophy before I go on. To me, good music always improves life in one way or another - whether it's does it by pointing out serious political and social perils, or by making you laugh doesn't matter all that much in the long run. If it has a lasting effect on improving life and society in general, or even your mood after a hard day at work, it's a good song. It's hard to write a song that does that without knowing yourself well - knowing the things you need (not necessarily the things you want) to hear and say. Whatever the case, there are certain qualities that a really good musician must have. The first is honesty. You must be honest with yourself. If things aren't going your way, it's easy to blame everything and everybody around you, and forget about yourself - and it might be a lot of fun to rant about them in your lyrics, but in the end, you're hiding behind scapegoats, rather than arriving at solutions. Songs like that may entertain - but it gets really old listening to "heroes" whine about their rough lives on the radio day in and day out. People need real heroes who aren't afraid to take some responsibility. The next is charity. You will never understand the human condition well enough to actually touch a person's soul unless you get an intimate knowledge of the struggles other people face. When I say charity, I don't mean that you should make a $2 per month contribution to the Christian Children's fund - I mean that you should be charitable with your time. Go out and help somebody. Whether it's the old lady across the hall who's too frail to pick up her mail downstairs, or a friend who needs a place to crash for the night, and somebody to lend an ear... you'll learn a lot about your own problems, and gain a fresh perspective that might really boost your own creativity. And it just feels good to be needed. Here's one that I think just about every musician on the planet has had trouble with at one point or another: humility. Humility is understanding that you are human. You are not a musical God to everybody around you - even if you are a legend. The world does not revolve around you, I don't care how rich and famous you get. You are still a human being and all that it entails. You still have to urinate, just like the rest of us. When you start to consider yourself superior - whether or not you're smarter, or tougher, or you can solo like Carlos Santana on steroids - you put yourself on a pedestal. Great for the ego. You just love that, I'm sure, but when you're up there, the air is thin. It starts to effect your brain cells - and it takes you out of the loop. You begin to forget what it's like to live the human condition. You forget what touches a mortal soul (since you're obviously unaffected by those silly things)... and your power fades drastically. You also loose a lot of your grasp on the second virtue - Charity. What do other people matter to a musical God like you, anyway, right? If only... In future articles, I might address anything from music theory to mixing technique, to great prices on some fabulous audio gear. Whatever I discuss, keep in mind that technical issues are just that - technical issues. Music without soul is nothing. Cultivate your soul. That's where all the music starts. That's it for now, --Dilvish --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Screen Lit Vertigo Short Review of Some Ambience Releases By: Seven ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Look, I'm having a hard time with the Ambience releases. Several of them do not run, like Farb-rausch 02 (not enough memory, although I've 589KB free) or the Mekka/Symposium intro (DirectDraw error, because my card prefers 24-bit colors over 32-bit). Buckle 3 Arena/Liquid Motion and Phlubby Gnome/Trepaan are both over 10 MB, so I haven't downloaded them yet because my account at University has a 20 MB limit, and it's almost full. The demos & intros that DO run require DirectX 7.0, and a 3D card to run at full speed. Since I still haven't got one, I can't really judge the productions fairly (3 frames/second), hence the short review. BTW, you can find all the stuff at http://www.scene.org, as usual. -=- Please the cookie thing/Aardbei: 1st place 64K-intro -=- This one takes a LONG time to generate textures, music, models... Progress is indicated by a circle of 3D blocks instead of the usual progress-bar. We start with a landscape in red mist, double-textured with rock-textures and sliding lightbeam-textures. Particle-credits pop up, and we dive in a nice free-direction tunnel with another particle-cloud. Some abstract 3D objects are shown, like a virus with long hair :) and a complex blob-form. The best part is during the greetings, where we can see several tens of little machines marching over a landscape. They look like springs, always toppling over. We end with some more weird tunnels, some intertwined spirals and a morphing Escher-knot. The music starts very softly, very ambient, and goes into normal house/DNB mode after a while. There's a break during the greetings, with only bells playing, which sounds really great, but the main theme takes over (too) quickly. Overall: Technically very impressive, good design, nice music. Must-have for 3D-card owners -=- Lost Vegas/3State: 3rd place 64K-intro -=- In software rendering, all textures have disappeared :( This is really bad, because Lost Vegas uses a lot of texts, which are shown as textures. So I'll have to use my memory. It starts almost immediately, no long precalcing delays. It features a lot of complex objects build from very simple ones: a string of transparent cubes inside spirals, a "tunnel" filled with of transparent polys, a growing tree that consists of TV-screens. It is very original, also because 3State has a very elite attitude, which they show in the texts. There is a part with hundreds of identical little robots jumping up and down, and one big robot: IIRC. The text with it was something like "we don't follow the mainstream, we are different" etc. Another funny part was a diagram with 3D columns, the height of which showed the eliteness of groups like Aardbei, Elitegroup, and (the largest column of course :)) 3State. The music is in the intelligent dance music genre, very repetitive, strange beats etc. Overall: Technically less good than the Aardbei intro, but very original, tons of attitude, and some Danish design with according music. -=- Editor's Note: -=- Also make sure to read Gecko's Column, because he reviews the same intro. -=---=---------------- -=- Adelanto/Nostalgia: 4th place demo -=- I had to fiddle with the settings in energy3d.cfg file for some time to get this 6MB demo running. It's best to change only the bit depth and the frequency: when you lower the resolution, the 3D parts go faster, but the 2D pictures and logos are not scaled down, so you'll see them only partly. Adelanto features a mix of 3D scenes, with fuzzy grayscale images between them as transitions. The first scene is a futuristic elevator that goes up in a high-tech surrounding, with adverts for TakeOver2000 (a big party in the Netherlands). The credits are shown with a horizontal blur, in a nice font. The other scenes are a landscape with lensflares flying over it, a cafeteria and a cellar with some crates. As they are static scenes, with just the camera moving, they are rather boring. Also the lighting is not very good, but maybe that's due to the software rendering. I prefer the 2D transitions to the 3D parts: the images look like old photos, and are the perfect background for the poetic lyrics that are written on them. The music is in an oldskool style, which is no surprise as you know that The Rew made it. Ambient flutes and bells waving a dreamy melody, with a good drumline: this is music I like :) Overall: The music and the poems are the best parts IMHO, to appreciate the 3D you really need an accelerator. --Seven --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Intro Watch "Lost Vegas" by 3State By: Gecko ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- With Psychic Symphony suddenly quitting the scene (sort of), Demojournal came to an end. I was asked to continue its intro review corner here. I would like to know if you the readers are interested in reading about intros at all. Besides, if you have found an intro which you think should be reviewed, just mail me. Lost Vegas by 3State 64k intro 3rd place at Ambience 2000 Credits: Sagacity - programming Sarix - programming Stevie - graphics Distance - music Requirements: Windows 95, DirectX 7 Download: http://connect.to/3state Lost Vegas is an intro made in the "minimalist" style, similar to that of Blasphemy demos; plus it has the special flavour of 3State-egoism added. The music is a kind of mixture of noises, with a strong bass rhythm and a small melody. It fits into the intro quite well. High resolution is used, usually with a yellow-blue color scheme. There are no still pictures, only some logos, and a weird font. The intro consists of many parts, each has its title or a short comment displayed. There is no story whatsoever, the parts are only loosely connected by their style. Most of the effects are rather original and look fine. I'll describe a few of them to illustrate the mood of the intro. In the "mass media" part, small human figures are crowded up in infinite rows, and they are jumping up and down. There is the effect which is humbly announced as "the effect of the year". It is a distorted tunnel, with holes on its surface, and particles flying inside it. In the next part they prove with a 3d statistics chart that 3State is the best demogroup. As for me, the last part is the best: there is some foggy terrain, and a fractal-tree of monitors grows up on it. Lost Vegas is a fine intro with original effects; although probably some people will dislike it for its style. -=- Editor's Note: -=- Also make sure to read Seven's Column, because he reviews the same intro. -=---=---------------- --Gecko --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Call to Keyboards Wrapup: CD's in the Underground New Topic: The Fall of Another Great SceneMag By: Coplan ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- Wrap Up: CD's in the Underground -=- Keskitalo's Reply: Right, the tracking scene is underground music scene, and as we dig through to the surface we're probably first going to break into another underground scene, which is independent record companies. It would be nice to hear from the tracking labels, such as Mono, Tokyo Dawn Records and others about how they've done in selling, marketing, promoting "real" records. I don't wonder (although I worry) why Necros isn't available in stores in a greater scale, mainstream isn't really all about talent. And heck, I'd rather see a scene-born rising quality record company than Five Musicians signed to Sony. --Keskitalo / tempo.pkbrp eino.keskitalo@purkki.mbnet.fi -=- New Topic: The Fall of Another Great SceneMag -=- -=- Editor's Note -=- About a week after this article was written, Psychic Symphony announced that Demojournal will remain in existance, just a different format than the standard. Well...so not to loose an article simply 'cause it mentions DJ as being closed, I didn't pull the article. But, Demojournel is still in existance, but more of a true news post. -=-=----------------- Many people may believe that the Diskmags (I prefer the term SceneMags) are all plotted in competition against each other. Well, as I can very well speak for Static Line, and Demojournel, this isn't true. Many also believe that these SceneMags are useless and, to be blatent, 'dated'. I guess you can see where I'm going with this, eh? Granted, I may have a bit of a biased view, but I feel that the whole concept of SceneMags (okay, I'll let you call them Diskmags if you wish) is essential to the development of a tracker. News, technique, examples, resources -- all parts of a typical SceneMag. There is no one out there that can convince me that any one of these magazines doesn't have at least one of those elements. They exist, so use them to grow. Now, a few weeks ago, Psychic Symphony (aka PS) announced that he was folding up shop for Demojournel (at least as we know it anyhow). Frankly, i'm sad to see it go. Now I'm not going to say anything stupid like "this is the end of an era," because it isn't. No one is going to die because DJ has changed so much, and there isn't going to be a decrease in Demo, GFX or Music creation. It's not a hole in the scene, and this isn't the end of a world. The average scener will move on and maybe occasionally make a comment along the lines of "I miss Demojournal." But, it is a lost resource. Lets face it, SceneMags bring all of us sceners quite a bit of information that we wouldn't be able to find any other way. It's like comparing the year 1000 to the year 2000. News? Well, its very easy to find out what's going on in our world these days. Hell, all we have to do is jump on the 'net and we can figure it out. If we're not that advanced, there's still the television (I don't know about other countries, but just about every single home in the US has a television). If you want a break from the news, that's damn near impossible, because there's always someone out there that has it. Now, in the year 1000, people didn't even know what time of day it was, let alone what is happening halfway across the globe. But, if you put things in perspective: WHO CARED about what was happening halfway across the globe. But we live in the modern age, where it is very easy to get across the globe, so perhaps we might want to know what is out there. So, how does this all apply to the demoscene? Take away the SceneMags, and you take away quite a bit of communication. Sure, we can jump on #trax, and figure it out, but wouldn't it take much longer to go by word-of-mouth (or text-of-hand as the case may be)? Sure we can jump on a so-called-news base like United Trackers, but guess what folks? They don't know either, because no one sent them a SceneMag. Someone asked me the other day "when was the last time I released a tune." So I jumped on my FTP server and checked: October 1999. In fact, I only released four songs in 1999. That is way below average, i'm sure. So, then the person in-turn asked why I don't make any effort to promote the scene. So, I explained that I publish Static Line, and he responded: "Since when was a magazine contribution?" Am I missing something here? Because I feel insulted. You're opinions here, please. --Coplan --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Scene Dirt Rumors By: Coplan ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- Well, I guess I should explain this a bit. It's not quite a gossip column, but it is a good resource for tiny bits of information on scene happenings. Essentially, the stuff that isn't big enough to have its own article will show up here. If you have any submissions, send them to coplan.ic@rcn.com (that's me). -=- Hornet Archive Domain Expiration -=- Many of you may have jumped on the legendary Demoscene Archive lately, or at least tried to, and found that you can't reach the site. It's official, the Hornet Archive Domain Name has expired. This isn't to say that the website is completely offline, but unless you know the IP address, the site is unavailable. For those of you who aren't aware of the details behind the Hornet Archive, the songs will still be available online through ftp://ftp.cdrom.com and various cdrom.com mirrors. That does mean, however, that you most likely need to know the directory structure, and a the filenames of the songs your looking for. -=- Demojournal Changes Format -=- For those of you who aren't subscribed to Demojournal, Psychic Symphony had a brief (very breif) leave from the scene. The original plans were to drop DJ all-together. But, PS is back and kicking again. DJ still continues on, but in a different format. It's pure news now, and one can find out all the latest from Demojournal. As for the regular columns, they have been shifted to Static Line so that they can continue in their legacy. To subscribe to Demojournal, you can visit their site: http://demojournal.planet-d.net -=- New Group: Azure -=- If you visit SceneNet IRC (irc.scene.org) often enough, and jump in #trax on occasion, you may have seen a topic one day advertising a new group to the scene: Azure (http://azure.zerion.com). Azure is focusing on the music style popularly known as trance. They've already got a few new tunes out there, so jump on there and grab them. The group is organized by Wayfinder and Phace. -=- Immortal Coil Closing its Doors -=- Okay, this one is sentimental for me. Immortal Coil (aka iC -- the group I have belonged to for almost 5 years now, and have organized for a little over 3 -- the group that brought you Static Line) has announced that it will close its doors after a loyal 6 years in the demoscene. iC will now only exist in the memory of the many tunes out there, and within the website that will soon become a shrine to the group (we've got to keep our songs available somehow). Having iC tacked onto the end of my name has always been an honor to me, and a few others who ever passed through the group. But now, we must all go our seperate ways. Worry not, Static Line will exist for many more years to come. --Coplan Scene Dirt is a semi-regular column offering the latest tidbits of information to its readers. If you have any bits of information that you think should be here, contact coplan (coplan.ic@rcn.com) and offer as much information as possible. --=--=-- --=--=------=--=------=--=---- Link List ----=--=------=--=------=--=-- -=- Editor's Note -=- For those of you who were readers of Demojournal, this will look very familiar to you. It should be. With the change of Demojournel, Static Line has made an effort to pick up Demojournal's invariable resources. This is among the first. From now on, Static Line will mantain this vast link collection with one minor (and temporary) change: Personal Links will not be shown within this magazine. Fear not, they have not been lost, but they can encumber the magazine. Presently, we are working on a web based database for these links, and at that point you may witness the return of personal links. If you think we're missing a link, please contact me and provide any information that I will need: coplan.ic@rcn.com. --Coplan Groups: 3g Design..............................http://3gdesign.cjb.net Aardbei.....................................http://aardbei.com Acid Rain..............................http://surf.to/acidrain Agravedict........................http://www.agravedict.art.pl Anakata..............................http://www.anakata.art.pl ANDESA Soft International..................http://andesa.da.ru Astral..............................http://astral.scene-hu.com Astroidea........................http://astroidea.scene-hu.com AtomiK....................................http://atomik.ini.hu <*> Azure..................................http://azure.zerion.com Bomb..................................http://bomb.planet-d.net BlaBla..............................http://blabla.planet-d.net Blasphemy..............................http://www.blasphemy.dk Byterapers.....................http://www.byterapers.scene.org Calodox.................................http://www.calodox.org Chrome..............................http://chrome.scene-hu.com CoPro.....................................http://www.copro.org Damage...................................http://come.to/damage Dance...................................http://dance.flipp.net Defacto 2..............................http://www.defacto2.net Dolops......................... ........http://dolOps.scene.hu Exceed...........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/~exceed Fobia Design...........................http://www.fd.scene.org GODS...................................http://www.idf.net/gods Green.....................................http://green.dyns.cx Grif........................http://arrabonet.gyor.hu/~rattgrif Haujobb......................................http://haujobb.de Hellcore............................http://www.hellcore.art.pl IJSKAST.............................http://www.ijskast.cjb.net Immortals..............................http://imrt.home.ml.org <*> Immortal Coil.............................http://www.ic.L7.net Infuse...................................http://www.infuse.org Just For Fun...........................http://jff.planet-d.net Kilobite...............................http://kilobite.cjb.net Kolor................................http://www.kaoz.org/kolor <*> Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org Kooma.....................................http://www.kooma.com Label zero.........................http://labelzero.pganet.com Mandula.........................http://www.inf.bme.hu/~mandula Monar................ftp://amber.bti.pl/pub/scene/distro/monar Nextempire..................http://members.xoom.com/NEXTEMPIRE Ninja Gefilus.........http://www.angelfire.com/or/ninjagefilus Noice.....................................http://www.noice.org Orion..............................http://orion.arfstudios.org Quad........................................http://www.quad.nl Rage........................................http://www.rage.nu Replay.......................http://www.shine.scene.org/replay Retro A.C...........................http://www.retroac.cjb.net Rhyme................................http://rhyme.scene-hu.com Skytech team............................http://www.skytech.org Sunflower.......................http://sunflower.opengl.org.pl Suspend......................http://www.optimus.wroc.pl/rappid Tehdas...................................http://come.to/tehdas Tesko..........................http://www.scentral.demon.co.uk The Black Lotus.............................http://www.tbl.org The Digital Artists Wired Nation.http://digitalartists.cjb.net The Lost Souls...............................http://www.tls.no TPOLM.....................................http://www.tpolm.com Trauma.................................http://sauna.net/trauma T-Rex.....................................http://www.t-rex.org Unik.....................................http://www.unik.ca.tc Universe..........................http://universe.planet-d.net Vantage..................................http://www.vantage.ch Music: Aisth.....................................http://www.aisth.com Aural planet........................http://www.auralplanet.com Blacktron Music Production...........http://www.d-zign.com/bmp Chill..........................http://www.bentdesign.com/chill Chippendales......................http://www.sunpoint.net/~cnd Chiptune...............................http://www.chiptune.com Da Jormas................................http://www.jormas.com Five Musicians.........................http://www.fm.scene.org Fridge...........................http://www.ssmedion.de/fridge Goodstuff..........................http://artloop.de/goodstuff Ignorance.............................http://www.ignorance.org Intense...........................http://intense.ignorance.org Jecoute.................................http://jecoute.cjb.net Kosmic Free Music Foundation.............http://www.kosmic.org Level-d.................................http://www.level-d.com Miasmah.............................http://www.miasmah.cjb.net Milk.......................................http://milk.sgic.fi Mah Music.............................http://come.to/mah.music Maniacs of noise...............http://home.worldonline.nl/~mon MAZ's Sound homepage.............http://www.th-zwickau.de/~maz Mo'playaz..........................http://ssmedion.de/moplayaz Mono211.................................http://www.mono211.com Morbid Minds..............http://www.raveordie.com/morbidminds Noise................................http://www.noisemusic.org One Touch Records......................http://otr.planet-d.net Park..................................http://park.planet-d.net Radical Rhythms.....http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/merrelli/rr RBi Music.............................htpp://www.rbi-music.com Ruff Engine................http://members.xoom.com/ruff_engine SHR8M......................................http://1st.to/shr8m Sound Devotion................http://sugarbomb.x2o.net/soundev Soundstate.........................http://listen.to/soundstate Sunlikamelo-D...........http://www.error-404.com/sunlikamelo-d Suspect Records........................http://www.tande.com/sr Tequila........................http://www.defacto2.net/tequila Tempo................................http://tempomusic.cjb.net Theralite...........................http://theralite.avalon.hr Tokyo Dawn Records........................http://tdr.scene.org UltraBeat.........................http://www.innerverse.com/ub Vibrants................................http://www.vibrants.dk Wiremaniacs.........................http://www.wiremaniacs.com Others: Arf!Studios..........................http://www.arfstudios.org Calodox demolinks exchange.....http://calodox.planet-d.net/cde #coders..................................http://coderz.cjb.net Comic Pirates.........................http://scene-central.com Demo fanclub........................http://jerware.org/fanclub Demoscene.org news forum..............http://www.demoscene.org Digital Undergrounds.....................http://dug.iscool.net Doose charts...............................http://www.doose.dk Dreams2 CD.........................http://nl.scene.org/dreams2 Freax...................http://freax.scene-hu.com/mainmenu.htm GfxZone............................http://gfxzone.planet-d.net Hugi size-compo...............http://home.pages.de/~hugi-compo Orange Juice.........................http://ojuice.citeweb.net PC-demos explained.....http://www.oldskool.org/demos/explained Pixel...................................http://pixel.scene.org Scenet....................................http://www.scenet.de Sunray..............................http://sunray.planet-d.net Swiss List.................http://www.profzone.ch/vantage/list Swiss Scene Server.......................http://www.chscene.ch TakeOver................................http://www.takeover.nl Textmode Demo Archive.................http://tmda.planet-d.net Hungarian scene page...................http://www.scene-hu.com Trebel...................................http://www.trebel.org Zen of Tracking.........................http://surf.to/the-imm DiskMags / SceneMags: Amber...............................http://amber.bti.pl/di_mag Amnesia...............http://amnesia-dist.future.easyspace.com Demojournal....................http://demojournal.planet-d.net Dragon......................http://www.wasp.w3.pl/pages/dragon Fleur................................http://fleur.scene-hu.com Heroin...................................http://www.heroin.net Hugi........................http://home.pages.de/~hugidownload Pain..................................http://pain.planet-d.net Scenial...........................http://www.scenial.scene.org Static Line......................http://www.ic.l7.net/statline Total Disaster...................http://www.totaldisaster.w.pl TUHB.......................................http://www.tuhb.org WildMag...........................http://www.wildmag.notrix.de FTPs: Amber.......................................ftp://amber.bti.pl Cyberbox.....................................ftp://cyberbox.de Flerp.....................................ftp://flerp.scene.hu Scene.org..................................ftp://ftp.scene.org Skynet archive.................ftp://acid2.stack.nl/pub/skynet ACiD2 Archive.............................ftp://acid2.stack.nl --=--=-- ----=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------=--=------ Editor: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan.ic@rcn.com Columnists: Coplan / D. Travis North / coplan.ic@rcn.com Dilvish / Eric Hamilton / dilvie@yahoo.com Gecko / Gergely Kutenich / gk@scene.hu Louis Gorenfeld / gorenfeld@vrone.net Setec / Jesper Pederson / jesped@post.tele.dk Seven / Stefaan / Stefaan.VanNieuwenhuyze@rug.ac.be SiN / Ian Haskin / sin@netcom.ca Subliminal / Matt Friedly / sub@plazma.net Tryhuk / Tryhuk Vojtech / xtryhu00@stud.fee.vutbr.cz Virt / virt@bellsouth.net Technical Consult: Draggy / Nicolas St. Pierre / draggy@kosmic.org Jim / Jim Nicholson / jim@kosmic.org Static Line on the Web: http://www.ic.l7.net/statline ftp://flerp.scene.hu/scene/DiskMag/StaticLine To subscribe to the Static Line mailing list, send an e-mail message to "majordomo@kosmic.org" with "subscribe static_line " in the message text. You will then be asked to confirm your addition to the mailing list. Expect a new issue during the first weekend of each month. To unsubscribe from the mailing list, send an e-mail message to "majordomo@kosmic.org" with "unsubscribe static_line " in the message text. Your subscription will then be removed. If you would like to contribute an article to Static Line, be aware that we will format your article with two spaces at the beginning and one space at the end of each line. Please avoid foul language and high ascii characters. Contributions should be mailed to Coplan (coplan.ic@rcn.com). See you next month! -eof---=------=--=------=--=--