Fresh from pretty much cleaning up in the oldskool competitions
at the Assembly '02 demo-party in Helsinki, Finland, in July
(well, 3rd in oldskool music, 3rd in oldskool demo, 2nd in oldskool
graphics utilising classic machines like the Commodore 64, Vic20,
and Gameboy, you get the idea..), the prodigously talented Aleksi
'Heatbeat' Eeben, formerly an Amiga demo-scene legend as part of
CNCD, has used his own JohnPlayer 'tracker' for C64 to produce
this new opus, over eleven minutes of, well.. would it be wrong
to call it a heavy metal-orientated bleep symphony?
That's certainly somewhere around where "The Grand Rules" is
orientated, and it's pretty amazing to consider that the entire
piece was composed on a 20-year old home computer with 64k of
memory and just five and a quarter inch discs (if you're lucky!)
to keep you company. So, from the first delicate introduction,
through the gut-wrenching bass and drum solos, through the almost
pizzicato middle section, right up to the triumphant density of
the final coda, it's not only the musicality, but the breadth of
sound that astounds.
Sure, it may not be to everyone's tastes, but a "Good Vibrations"
for the C64 in terms of unheard sounds and clarity of vision? Put
it this way, Aleksi can come and play in our sandbox any time he
wants, with or without the fireman's hat.
[As an alternative, you can download the 4 .SIDs (original Commodore 64 music files) that make up this release, in a handy 20k .ZIP file, here - they'll sound pretty decent if you play them in something custom like SidPlayW.]
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