C=Lehti 4/89 — SIDin hollantilaiset valjastajat (Maniacs of Noise)

The only contemporary (1989) profile of maniacs-of-noise in this wiki — written by Jori Olkkonen while Tel was 16 and Deenen 19, with details no retrospective interview repeats: the driver's version number, a two-channel digi routine, and Tel composing on a PC cross-assembler. Finnish; quotes below are translated paraphrases except where marked.

Key claims#

• Origin, 1989 version: MoN grew out of demos — the Dutch group SCOOP was known for its polished C64 demos; "Charles Deenen" coded the top ones, "Jeroen Tel ja Marcel Donné" did the music (scoop-designs). One day Charles ("tunnettu kräkkeripiireissä nimellä TMC" — known in cracker circles as TMC) tired of demo coding and mailed a disk of demos to English software houses; a day later Hewson phoned — it "had a serious music shortage at the time" — and offered work; the first published music was in Battle Valley (hewson). Later Donné was dropped because he "couldn't inspire good enough melodies", leaving Deenen and Tel. (The retrospective accounts — Deenen 2010, VGMPF — instead have them presenting their work at the September 1987 PCW show; keep both.)
• The driver in early 1989 (musicfile): Deenen "kehittää jatkuvasti … musiikkirutiineitaan" — constantly develops his music routines for new, unheard sounds; "Tällä hetkellä Charles käyttää musiikkirutiinin versiota 78" (currently version 78 — as the OCR reads); the newest version has "monimutkaiset soundivääntö-rutiinit" (complex sound-bending routines) and "täydellinen kaksikanavainen digitoidun datan soittorutiini" — a complete two-channel digitized-data play routine (chip-samples).
• Workflow (tracking-workflow, turbo-assembler): "Säveltäminen tapahtuu täysin ilman minkäänlaista editoria" — composing happens entirely without an editor. Jeroen has a PC at home with cross-assembly software for the C64; the notes are written as numbers into the PC's memory and then assembled into ready code for the C64.
• Tel at 16: self-taught on guitar, piano, bass, drums and flute; first micro five years earlier; first music program in C64 BASIC at 12. His method, in his own words: strum the guitar a few moments to find chord progressions, "naputtelen soinnut lukuina koneeseen" (type the chords as numbers into the machine), doodle melodies on the synth over the C64's backing, and last add drums and a few special effects — "ja hoplaa: kappale on valmis". One to four days per composition; school exams could keep him off the machines for weeks; girlfriend Alice supplies "mahtavia inspiraatioita"; idols Toto, Kim Wilde and FunFun.
• Deenen at 19: got the inspiration for the music routine from "hyvältä ystävältään" Johannes Bjerregaardilta (his good friend); design goal in his own words: "speed as the starting point — the routine must be as fast as possible without compromising quality at all"; uses the turbo-assembler — "made by a German cracker, and in my opinion it beats all the commercial offerings"; credits Tel: without Jeroen's ideas "the routine would have sounded much flatter".
• The company in 1989: ~60 compositions so far; named games cybernoid, Hawkeye, Scorpion, Savage, Alloyrun, Out Run; Deenen out of school and full-time; planning a London office; MoN "ei enää ole vain käyttäjäryhmä, vaan firma" — no longer just a group but a company that also takes in other people's compositions, arranges them into its fast routines and offers them to software houses; an Amiga routine already finished, with a rumour that Iron Lord's Amiga version has Tel music; Spectrum and Atari ST music capabilities under study; Virgin Records interested — preliminary plans for a record, made not on C64/Amiga but on borrowed synths.
• Olkkonen's verdict: MoN "ehkä yksi parhaita kuusnelosen musiikintekijöitä kautta aikain" — perhaps among the best C64 music makers of all time, in the same series as Hubbard, Galway and Daglish.

Notable quotes#

"Säveltäminen tapahtuu täysin ilman minkäänlaista editoria." (Composing happens entirely without an editor.)

Relevance to the wiki#

A dated 1989 snapshot for musicfile (version count, digi routine, speed-first design goal) and maniacs-of-noise (the mailed-disk origin variant, the company plans); the PC-cross-assembler detail extends the turbo-assembler story; Tel's guitar-chords-first method joins the composer workflows on tracking-workflow; and the Bjerregaard-as-inspiration line is new for johannes-bjerregaard.

Pages touched#

maniacs-of-noise · charles-deenen · jeroen-tel · musicfile · scoop-designs · hewson · turbo-assembler · johannes-bjerregaard · tracking-workflow · chip-samples · cybernoid