TW #4 — Interview with Stalker (Zer0)
Zer0's first interview ("bare with me"), with stalker of OTM, who had joined Zer0's own group defiance two days earlier. Half banter; the facts are the tracker lineage and OTM's story.
Key claims#
- Ariel Gross, 15; in OTM ("some o' the coolest people I know") and, as of two days before, Defiance — "aside from the President being a weeny, it's a cool group" (Zer0: "I happen to know the president of Defiance quite personally").
- Tracking since December 1993: Composer 669, then MultiTracker about two months later, then scream-tracker-3 from "the second st3 came out", "and have been ever since".
- OTM: Zilym Limms found his first 669s on The Sun State Fun BBS (his uncle's board) and recruited him — he had distributed those songs precisely "to attract a demo group". The group was called Gentilezza then; members added over time: Supreme (graphics), Hurricane (coder), Tek (musician), Volt (coder), Nameshift (graphics), Phred (out-of-state coder). Renamed OTM while Zilym was on holiday. Their demo, promising "actual NEW effects", was days from release; his music for it was done.
- Writing music for a game planned for PC, 3DO, Jaguar and "possibly" PlayStation; a CD of his own music "by the end of this year" (prospective).
- Favourite trackers: necros above all ("His chords, his beats, his everything. He's what I aspire to be"), the renaissance musicians (lv, cc, rc and Mosaic), everyone in FM, and Tek of OTM.
- Tropical Beans grew out of a friend playing with a "sonic belljam" sample — a loop he sampled from Sonic CD on the Sega CD ("play it in your regular cd player, it's INCREDIBLE").
- Tastes: everything but country, "from Tchaikovsky to Lords of Acid to Enya to Erasure to Coolio". Inspiration: "females, friends, and cookies". Hangs out on #vampire and #trax; asks people to bring "a good name to the demo scene … without mass deopping or flaming".
Practical takeaways#
- The 1993–95 beginner's ladder on the PC: Composer 669 → MultiTracker → ST3 (tracker-scene-history).
- Spreading early songs on a BBS is how a musician found a group in 1993–94.
- A game soundtrack CD is a legitimate sample source — one loop can seed a whole song (sample-ripping, sample-looping).
Notable quotes#
- "Everything he does is just awesome. His chords, his beats, his everything." — Stalker on Necros
Relevance#
A 15-year-old ST3 user's path and group history; adds Stalker (Basehead's intended partner on the Modernize-1 disk, see s-tw027-interview-basehead-lotus-position) and the Defiance presidency of Zer0 to the record.
To verify#
- (unverified) The abbreviations "lv, cc, rc" for Renaissance's musicians stand for Leviathan, C.C.Catch and Ryan Cramer — all three appear as Renaissance musicians in neighbouring issues (leviathan, s-tw007-interview-ryan-cramer).
Pages touched#
stalker, defiance, scream-tracker-3, necros, renaissance, five-musicians, tracker-scene-history, sample-ripping, traxweekly.