Future Crew

The Finnish demogroup behind scream-tracker-3 and the s3m-format: sami-tammilehto (Psi) wrote the tracker and its format document; the S3M "old stereo control" command was used only by "the soundtrack from Panic by Future Crew", and skaven's AdLib song ships with ST3 as the FM example (sources: s-st3-tech-doc, s-st3-manual, s-tracker-history-notes). Its musicians are landmarks of the scene the wiki's TraxWeekly sources describe: jeffrey-lim names purple-motion's "When the Heaven's Fall" as the best S3M (source: s-it-manual), and Skaven and Purple Motion are among the early chiptune makers of 1995 (source: s-tw037-death-of-the-chiptune-debate).

Facts#

• Early ST3 builds circulated on IRC: Chuck Biscuits got 3.01b "from Psi and Gore" and stayed on it because 3.20/3.21 crashed on his GUS MAX (source: s-tw003-interview-chuck-biscuits). Necros's 1995 jibe — "a siner and a set of FC ripped samples do not a mod creator make" — shows how widely FC's samples were ripped (source: s-tw003-interview-five-musicians); Zapper traces the Second Reality lead sound to the Amiga's Sonix (source: s-tw027-interview-zapper).
• The "Second Reality samples" — the scene's most-ripped set — come from the demo's two music files, 2nd_skav.s3m (Skaven) and 2nd_pm.s3m (Purple Motion); Psibelius showed the overused marcato strings to be the gravis-ultrasound MIDI patch marcato.pat (source: s-tw024-sample-ripping-debate; see sample-ripping). Ganja Man's 1996 scene history names Future Crew and renaissance as the groups whose demos moved the tracking scene to the PC (source: s-tw064-potted-tracking-history).
• skaven's "Catch that Goblin" won the Assembly '95 multichannel music competition — with "the overwhelming majority of votes", though necros rated it only 6.5 (source: s-tw024-in-review-asm95).
• Status in August 1997 (Skaven): not disbanded, "just, like, 'inactive'". Trug, Psi and Wildfire were designing the Pyramid3D chipset; Psi was in the army; Gore, Skaven, Henchman and Marvel worked at Remedy Entertainment (Death Rally, the Max Payne project); Pixel at Factory Post Productions; Purple Motion studied music full-time. No scene plans until Psi's service and Pyramid3D were done (source: s-tw109-interview-skaven).

In the interviews (1995–97)#

• The demos as the way in. ryan-cramer took up tracking after hearing Unreal (with Renaissance's Amnesia); in April 1995 "we haven't seen much to top 2nd Reality" (source: s-tw007-interview-ryan-cramer). Unreal was the first demo and the first tracked music jase heard (about 1993) and what moved him from MIDI to FastTracker (source: s-tw022-interview-jase). khyron saw Second Reality as his second demo, after Amnesia, about 1993 — "everyone went apeshit over" it (source: s-tw111-interview-khyron). perisoft's first IRC question, during Assembly '94, was "Who's FC?" (source: s-tw011-interview-perisoft).
• The samples. Perisoft's standard sample was "FC SINER FROM PANIC" (source: s-tw011-interview-perisoft).
• The "FC fixation". claim (June 1995): people keep asking "will FC do more demos?" instead of supporting the groups working now (source: s-tw015-interview-claim). maelcum's "Future Crew-syndrome": people like an artist's worst work because of the name (source: s-tw019-interview-quarex). master-of-darkness (January 1996): Future Crew and Renaissance "made demo music the thing to do", leaving dance music without a precedent (source: s-tw043-interview-pariah).
• Thanks. vadimvs thanks FC "for giving the Scream Tracker to the world" (source: s-tw050-interview-vadimvs).

Related#

scream-tracker-3 · sami-tammilehto · renaissance · skaven · purple-motion · s3m-format · chiptune · sample-ripping

Sources#

s-st3-tech-doc · s-st3-manual · s-tracker-history-notes · s-it-manual · s-tw037-death-of-the-chiptune-debate · s-tw109-interview-skaven · s-tw027-interview-zapper · s-tw003-interview-chuck-biscuits · s-tw003-interview-five-musicians · s-tw024-sample-ripping-debate · s-tw064-potted-tracking-history · s-tw024-in-review-asm95 · s-tw007-interview-ryan-cramer · s-tw011-interview-perisoft · s-tw015-interview-claim · s-tw022-interview-jase · s-tw019-interview-quarex · s-tw043-interview-pariah · s-tw050-interview-vadimvs · s-tw111-interview-khyron