Blaze Runner (Christian Desnoyers)
Belgian techno tracker, music coordinator of PURE (formerly TRAXX) with Blue Adonis, and the first traxweekly interviewee to describe registering his tunes with a collecting society and preparing a vinyl release. The single source for this page is Populus's interview of May 1995 (source: s-tw008-interview-blaze-runner).
Facts#
- Christian Desnoyers, 25 in May 1995, final-year biotechnology engineering student in Belgium. Started on a C64, then an Amiga 500 "with nearly all the tracker programs"; learned accordion (waltzes), the source of the theory "that I use every day now".
- PURE: TRAXX was founded around January 1994 by Blue Adonis (ex-PHUN) and The Undertaker; he joined in July 1994 when he got a modem; PURE had a column in TraxWeekly's early issues (TOC, #2 "PURE (Ex-TRAXX) Column").
- Gear: Sound Blaster AWE32 (2 MB) — fasttracker-2 with 16-bit samples set up as an SB16, playback through AWEplay (native AWE32, reverb and chorus), digital out to DAT at 44.1 kHz/16-bit; MIDI filter control "like on an analog synth"; a small Yamaha keyboard as controller; a TB-303 clone planned. Samples from CDs, his voice, and the AWE32's own synth resampled. Noted D-Lusion's X-Tracker as another AWE32-native tracker. "The GUS users laugh at the AWE … they also have to hear the AWE32 used by someone who knows it" (gravis-ultrasound).
- Workflow: from a sample or from a melody in his head; add instruments, a second melody and drums; one or two patterns → variations → the song (tracking-workflow). A "techno waltz" in 3/4 is "harder to implement in a tracker, but it's not impossible".
- Commercial: registered with SABAM because of a commercial project; Blue Adonis had heard his own tune in a club and Amiga demo tunes had turned up in films; a tape with the producer of a small label, vinyl planned ("played by good DJs"), name "Blue Blaze" or none — see commercial-tracking.
- Listens to Belgian underground techno, trance, happy house, Kraftwerk, electro-pop, U2, Cure, Depeche Mode. On the scene: growing, level rising, "a lot of crap" among the many releases.
- populus (June 1995): Blue Adonis, Blaze Runner and George "have released the best music of PURE"; "BLR is my friend", but the members who joined at the merger (except George) "have just saved up dumb .XM files for fun" (source: s-tw016-interview-populus).
Related#
commercial-tracking · fasttracker-2 · gravis-ultrasound · midi-in-trackers · recording-samples · tracking-workflow · populus