Populus (Nicolas Roberge)

Co-founder of traxweekly and its first interviewer; member of epinicion and defiance; computer-science student. The main source for this page is his farewell interview of June 1995 (source: s-tw016-interview-populus).

Facts#

• "I founded TraxWeekly with Neurosis a while back": set up the newsletter's WWW page and mail, then handed the editorship to popcorn when he ran short of time; left for good in issue #16 (29 June 1995), tired of being asked for everything and of an internet account that had gone from C$30 to C$51 a month for 40 hours. Reader mail was mostly complaints about the ASCII art (source: s-tw016-interview-populus).
• As TraxWeekly's interviewer he did the newsletter's first interviews — basehead and phoenix in #1 (March 1995), leinad in #2 (signed "Epinicion / TraxWeekly", populus@llc.org; met "by coincidence" on IRC, chat of 1995-03-15), the five-musicians in #3, nemesis in #4 (chat ended 1995-03-05) and blaze-runner of PURE in #8 (May 1995; signed "TW/Union/Epinicion", "a last minute interview" — "we didn't talk at all french, for those who worried about that"; its intro singles out copyright registration and going commercial as subjects "that don't get around much") — and edited the English of the jugi interview in #10 (sources: s-tw001-interview-basehead, s-tw001-interview-phoenix, s-tw002-interview-leinad, s-tw003-interview-five-musicians, s-tw004-interview-nemesis, s-tw008-interview-blaze-runner, s-tw010-interview-jugi).
• psibelius, in December 1995, dated blackwolf's first interview (#6, April 1995) to "back when Populus was still running the show" (source: s-tw040-interview-blackwolf).
• Music: "I compose what I feel"; likes realistic-sounding tunes within his equipment's limits; Wild Amazon on the Otherness disk. Disagrees with necros on drinking while tracking: "you focus on one thing" (source: s-tw016-interview-populus).
• His June 1995 complaint: "big dumb phat techno" — a bass drum on two channels, no melody, no mood — floods #trax, the hornet archive and even Epinicion; XM's large samples added to the noise. Good techno exists (maelcum, Basehead, Krystall, Mental Floss, Inspekdah Deck); his own canon is the old Amiga musicians, Zodiak, Necros, Basehead, Jak, Moby, Jugi and HMW. Advice: small harmonies even if they are harder, a mood, and songs you will still listen to in ten years (source: s-tw016-interview-populus; see tracking-workflow).

Related#

traxweekly · epinicion · defiance · psibelius · basehead · maelcum · blaze-runner · tracking-workflow · popcorn · leinad · nemesis

Sources#

s-tw016-interview-populus · s-tw001-interview-basehead · s-tw001-interview-phoenix · s-tw003-interview-five-musicians · s-tw008-interview-blaze-runner · s-tw010-interview-jugi · s-tw002-interview-leinad · s-tw004-interview-nemesis · s-tw040-interview-blackwolf