Five Musicians (FM)

A five-member "band" formed on IRC in March 1995 by necros, Mellow-D (Jaakko Manninen), big-jim (James Storer), basehead and purple-motion. Necros and Mellow-D wanted "a new music group with just a few people in it"; Big Jim named it FM so that it would fit "four AND five"; its purpose was cooperation — learning from each other's styles and making co-op tunes — in a scene that offered "no chance for cooperative efforts". They called it a band, not a group: "a group is a bunch of people that do stuff independently under a common name, a band is a bunch of people that do music together". No structure ("we are all equals"), no release schedule (source: s-tw003-interview-five-musicians).

Facts#

• Necros and Mellow-D left kosmic to form FM; Basehead stayed in both. Specialities: Big Jim theory and melody, Mellow-D everything by ear, Necros big chords and harmonies, Basehead jazz/ambient, percussion and mood (source: s-tw003-interview-five-musicians).
• First release Realization 2 (Necros). Planned musicdisks in July 1995: Kaktoos II, Progression (Necros) and Modernize (source: s-tw018-interview-basehead); Modernize-1 became Basehead's solo disk Lotus Position (seven songs, ~4 MB, ~57 minutes) in September 1995, and the scene promptly compared it with Progression (source: s-tw027-interview-basehead-lotus-position).
• Necros signed "Necros / FM" in April 1995 (source: s-tw005-what-its-like-to-be-a-pc-musician); the Modsquad's chiptune seminar jokingly sends questions to necros@fm.org (source: s-tw077-chip-off-the-block).
• Drew flames on #trax for "elitism"; the members' answer: "we're just friends forming a group … isn't that how all the old classic demo groups were formed?" (source: s-tw003-interview-five-musicians).

Seen from the members and from outside (1995–96)#

• Big Jim's account (June 1995): he met Mellow-D on IRC; weeks later Mellow-D "had this new idea for a 'virtual band'" and asked him in; a co-op started by Mellow-D was in progress and he hoped to track with him at Assembly '95; an FM musicdisk "at some point" with no timescale. Popcorn's introduction called Big Jim "the next Purple Motion" after Foreign Skys (source: s-tw013-interview-big-jim). This agrees with the March 1995 version above (Big Jim proposed the name; Necros and Mellow-D asked Big Jim and Basehead) (source: s-tw003-interview-five-musicians).
• Admiration. stalker (April 1995) lists "everyone in FM" among his favourites; thehacker expected FM's output to be "really diverse" (sources: s-tw004-interview-stalker, s-tw005-interview-thehacker). jase (August 1995) liked Big Jim's "huge symphonic demo music"; master-of-darkness excepted Big Jim's guitars from the rule that guitars in modules are looped samples fit only for chords (sources: s-tw022-interview-jase, s-tw029-faces-in-the-crowd-smeghead). balrog (January 1996) wished for "more cooperation between musicians (like what they did in FM)" (source: s-tw042-interview-balrog).
• As a model — and as the mainstream. ultrabeat (1996) was "structurally based on FM: limited membership, music only", while injekted found that FM "caters to mainstream tracking" (source: s-tw054-interview-injekted-and-subhuman).
• Hosting and meetings. ryan-sprott's group Grey had its releases at ftp.fm.org/pub/music/grey/ in 1996 (source: s-tw063-interview-ryan-sprott); Mellow-D was at The Party 5 with Necros, where liam-the-lemming met them (source: s-tw066-interview-liam-the-lemming).

Related#

necros · basehead · purple-motion · kosmic · big-jim · ultrabeat

Sources#

s-tw003-interview-five-musicians · s-tw018-interview-basehead · s-tw027-interview-basehead-lotus-position · s-tw005-what-its-like-to-be-a-pc-musician · s-tw077-chip-off-the-block · s-tw013-interview-big-jim · s-tw004-interview-stalker · s-tw005-interview-thehacker · s-tw022-interview-jase · s-tw029-faces-in-the-crowd-smeghead · s-tw042-interview-balrog · s-tw054-interview-injekted-and-subhuman · s-tw063-interview-ryan-sprott · s-tw066-interview-liam-the-lemming