AmusiC (Sotiris Varotsis)

Greek tracker of Bass Productions in Athens and the organiser of the 20-minute-chip-compo from September 1995. His real name and the compo story come from his own column (source: s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo); his background from Popcorn's interview of July 1995, two months before the compo began (source: s-tw017-interview-amusic).

Facts#

• Started tracking in mid-1994; joined a local Athens group, OCT, then answered a Bass Productions advert in traxweekly by sending music to Sirrus, "the guy who has the final word in Bass", and joined a month later — about ten tunes under the Bass name by July 1995. Also united Athens' Amiga users in a group; in three groups, and expecting to work with Enigma (source: s-tw017-interview-amusic).
• No fixed style — "it depends on my mood", lately reggae and mellow mods; plays the piano; "I mostly compose or play the piano" rather than IRC. Favourite composers are "mostly Amiga people": Jester/Sanity, Lizard/Spaceballs, Mr.Man/Andromeda, Dizzy/CNCD and Jogeir Liljedahl, found on Aminet; lately Zalt and the one necros tune he had heard (source: s-tw017-interview-amusic).
• Greece in 1995: a demo party earlier in the year and "a big one" planned for October; a 6.2 Richter earthquake in Athens that he reported live on #trax at 4 a.m. (source: s-tw017-interview-amusic).
• The 20 Minute Chip Compo: made the chip-sample pack, opened #ChIpCoMpO and ran the first round the same night; wrote the weekly column in TraxWeekly from #26, with the rules, voting changes and result tables; paused the compo after Christmas 1995 and brought it back bi-weekly in March 1996 — its purpose "not the creation of many good chiptunes, but to have hours of fun and tension" (source: s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo). DennisC thanked him "for bringing more quality chippage to my ears in such a short span of time" (source: s-tw037-death-of-the-chiptune-debate).
• "Faces in the Crowd" hoped to interview him in #35 (November 1995) (source: s-tw034-interview-deus-ex).
• Bass Productions was shut down in 1996 "due to lack of activity" after Sirrus, Siren and Darkwolf left; AmusiC and liam-the-lemming founded Mach One, whose first project was a musicdisk with some .IT tracks (source: s-tw066-interview-liam-the-lemming).

To verify#

• Who ran Bass Productions: AmusiC calls Sirrus "the guy who has the final word in Bass" (July 1995), while psibelius is said to have "coordinated the group Bass" (TOC, #5) — see the note on psibelius (source: s-tw017-interview-amusic).

Related#

20-minute-chip-compo · compos · chiptune · traxweekly · hornet · liam-the-lemming · psibelius

Sources#

s-tw017-interview-amusic · s-tw032-20-minute-chip-compo · s-tw037-death-of-the-chiptune-debate · s-tw034-interview-deus-ex · s-tw066-interview-liam-the-lemming