Chris Abbott

British occasional SID composer (born 1970 in Ilford, Essex) who became the C64 remix scene's publisher and promoter: C64Audio.com, the Back in Time CD series and the BIT Live concerts. By June 2003 the label had paid "over £20,000 to C64 composers since 1997 in royalties and other payments", and his position on the music was blunt — "free C64 music is a privilege, not a right" (source: s-sidin04-abbott-interview).

Facts#

• Life: a guitar class at school and a keyboard at 15; first computer an Atari 400 with 16 K; the C64 through a friend's machine (Hunchback, Attack of the Mutant Camels); MIDI interface and sequencer for both the Atari 800 and the C64; "Programmed some SIDs for Superior Software which are in HVSC" (hvsc); psychology at university, married in 1990, IBM in 1990, then an IT contractor; twins in 2002 (source: s-sidin04-abbott-interview).
• C64Audio and Back in Time: no music until an AWE32 in 1994 started him "programming MIDIs of C64 tunes"; a C64 CD planned with a "crap German publishing company" fell through, so "eventually did it alone, hence Back in Time 1. Many CDs follow. Back in Time Live." The CD market was smaller than his own nostalgia had promised: most former C64 owners "don't remember the music much" (source: s-sidin04-abbott-interview).
• BIT Live: "A BIT Live Event isn't fun for me" — planning is, the day is "moving heavy objects around and running around London trying to find a video adapter"; "I enjoyed BIT Live 2 though"; his mission "to make sure everyone else has fun". His argument for the events: "Would Rob Hubbard be performing unplugged unless he had been bought back into the scene by BIT Live?" (source: s-sidin04-abbott-interview).
• Planned in 2003: "The Galway Project – The Perfect SID Collection" (for which martin-galway "lent us his C128D and source disks"), Back in Time 4 (Martial Arts), 5 (Fantasy) and 6 (completion), Music for Starchildren, Crystal Dreamscapes 2, "01:04 Eternal" by FTC, an album by Makke; no new SID of his own — "my time is limited for musical things" (source: s-sidin04-abbott-interview).
• His own SIDs: the best "probably the Chess stuff. That was pretty damn complex!"; Galaforce 2 he is pleased with, though "it was Martin Galway's soundtrack that made it into the game"; the worst "a pretty crap Magnetic Fields one I did in the Software House demo" (source: s-sidin04-abbott-interview).
• Tastes: the 6581 — "8580s filters don't love my ears" (sid); emulators "great … Sometimes though you can't beat sitting in front of a TV with a real joystick and a real SID playing". Galway and rob-hubbard "combined experience, hard work, technical genius and sheer musicality"; older favourites Graeme Hansford, Chris Cox, James Lisney, Paul Norman, David Dunn. Best SIDs: Hubbard's Thing on a Spring ("the most influential SID ever made"), Gerry the Germ, Spellbound, Kentilla; Galway's Hypersports and Roland's Rat Race; fred-gray's Mutants, Shadowfire, Frankie Goes to Hollywood; Ben Daglish's Trap, Kettle, William Wobbler; david-whittaker's 180 and BMX Simulator (source: s-sidin04-abbott-interview).
• Money and the scene: "it's only through the sensible generation and use of money that the SID scene is as well integrated as it is. The CDs give the scene journalistic credibility, as do the live events"; "It's only through the generosity of copyright holders and composers that RKO and HVSC exist and flourish" (source: s-sidin04-abbott-interview).

Elsewhere in the wiki#

• Wrote Remix64's Last Ninja 2 vs Ninja Remix — "no room for two music drivers" — calling reyn-ouwehand's rescoring "one of the first steps in birthing Reyn Ouwehand — musical amazingness" and maniacs-of-noise "the new darlings of game music" (source: s-remix64-ninja-remix).
• Suggested matt-gray's Reformation project in 2013, crowdfunded in late 2014 (source: s-arcadeattack-matt-gray-interview); announced Gray's dominator driver source on chipmusic.org as c64audio — "If you wondered how composers such as Matt, Rob Hubbard, Fred Gray, etc, did their original tunes, then this will give you some good insight" (source: s-matt-gray-dominator-source).
• chris-huelsbeck names his Back in Time CD among the remixes he likes (source: s-remix64-huelsbeck-interview); Remix64's Galway interview opens with Abbott's line that Galway "could make the SID chip sing" (source: s-remix64-galway-interview).

In the SIDin news#

• HVSC 5.5 (2003-12-19) credited "Chris Abbott's great connection to martin-galway and Alistair 'Boz' Bowness ripping skills" for "the probably most sought after SID tune on this planet: The long lost Street Hawk", released in a prototype and a final version from Galway's own disks (source: s-sidin-news-digest).
• sidin #15 (2015-10-31) listed two Kickstarters under the c64audio account — his label's name, though the news names no organiser: Project Sidologie (Marcel Donné's "Commodore 64 music remakes with classic JARRE and Vangelis soundscapes") and the Back in Time Symphonic Collection — "A C64 symphonic music campaign in 8 bits: 3 main albums, 5 stretch albums. The first step to the Albert Hall with the LSO?" (source: s-sidin-news-digest).

Related#

martin-galway · rob-hubbard · matt-gray · reyn-ouwehand · maniacs-of-noise · fred-gray · david-whittaker · chris-huelsbeck · hvsc · sidin · sid

Sources#

s-sidin04-abbott-interview · s-remix64-ninja-remix · s-arcadeattack-matt-gray-interview · s-matt-gray-dominator-source · s-remix64-huelsbeck-interview · s-remix64-galway-interview · s-sidin-news-digest