TW #9 — Interview with Maelcum (k8to)
k8to interviews maelcum, founder of the kosmic Free Music Foundation — "a little more 'maelcum' oriented as opposed to 'trax' oriented".
Key claims#
- Groups: Kosmic, Epinicion, Underground Gabber Source; coordinator of Exceedingly Great Grooves (EGG), a musicdisk-releasing label.
- Kosmic history: started as the "Kosmic Loader Foundation" in the fall of 1992, founded by Maelcum and one other person as a VGA-loader/ANSI group like ACiD or iCE; the release of ModEdit 1.0 turned it into a music group. Inspekdah Deck (then Venom) joined around the start of 1993; until late spring 1994 the line-up was essentially Venom, Lurch and Maelcum, with Venom and Maelcum responsible for most releases.
- k8to credits him with "a thousand mods or so". Inspiration comes from the music he listens to (The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Depeche Mode, New Order, Ministry, Front 242; later The Orb, William Orbit, Autechre, Irresistible Force); had used samplers in a studio in high school but an 8-bit sampling keyboard cost about $3000 then.
- Tools: Goldwave 2.1 and CoolEdit to make samples ("usually from compact discs I own, or from videotapes"), then MMEDIT, "the infamous tracker from Renaissance" — chosen because "the most important function of the software is to stay out of my way". Composing is mostly "doodling" until something works, sometimes triggered by a single sound.
- Projects in May 1995: EGG 3 Feelin' Groovy; the musicdisk Half Baked; the demo Flight (3rd at NAID 1995, coded by Gooroo); the FTZ CD Nothing Is True with Riku Nuottajärvi (IQ of Kosmic), released on their own label Area 51 Records (kosmic.wit.com).
- On the industry: a CD "opened my eyes" to why artists sign with labels, but he rejects the "necessary costs" of the mainstream (his brother's label spent over $20,000 on radio promotion alone); wants to be "the Robert Rodriguez of music" — proving that money does not make good music.
Practical takeaways#
- Sample from your own CDs and videotapes with a wave editor, then let the tracker "stay out of your way".
- Kosmic's dates for kosmic: founded fall 1992 (as KLF), music group from ModEdit 1.0 onward, NAID 1995 demo placing.
Notable quotes#
- "the most important function of the software is to stay out of my way and give me as direct a path to the music itself as possible." — Maelcum.
Relevance#
The primary source for Kosmic's founding and early line-up, Maelcum's tools, and the Area 51 / FTZ CD venture that Basehead describes from the outside in #18.