TW #19 — Interview with Quarex (Maelcum)

maelcum's "complete and UNEDITED" IRC log with quarex of kosmic — some 7,000 words, half of them pre-interview chatter in which Maelcum vents about Kosmic's lost FTP site, credit for samples and the "Necros is my biggest influence" cliché, then a proper question-and-answer interview. Only the facts are kept here; the banter (movies, operating systems, a learning AI shell for DOS, porcupines) is not.

Key claims — Quarex#

• "My real name is supposedly Drew Hunt"; 16; in Kosmic, epinicion and TFX, "my own group that's existed since the beginning of time" (Maelcum: "aren't you the only person IN TFX?"). Claim to fame: PORK.MOD, "the most overplayed humourous song in history". An .mtm named after "the love of my life" was rated ****+ "in o1"; it was first submitted to CCI under another title, then re-released in 1995 with the original name; his defiance musicdisk D-HMTRCH (Hamsterchant) on cdrom.com contains it.
• Background: six years of school-band percussion (quit over marching); his drum teacher made him learn the marimba because he preferred melody to rhythm; keyboards "pretty poor" but fast. In a space-rock band, VÜG, whose early songs include a cover of the Amiga .mod Xenophobe. Prefers DOS but "I like fasttracker for some reason" (see fasttracker-2). Entering MC3 (see compos).
• Influences vs favourites: writes "avant-garde music, with the occasional normal song"; does not attempt realistic-sounding music; biggest influences War Pig and Sketch; got interested in tracking after Maelcum's The Bugz Deal (he thought Maelcum was in the band The KLF); LizardKing changed his idea of what four channels can do. Favourite tracker musicians: War Pig, Lizardking, stalker, Capricorn, Ranger Rick "pre-Defiance", Maelcum. Favourite songs: the Amiga four-channellers Dungeonquest, Labyrint-sfx, Monstrous, Jolie Bedouine, The Last Sun; newer: The Dawn (Dark Wolf), Crystal Gate (Ranger Rick), Persian Starfall (scirocco), songs by Liam the Lemming. Off the computer: about half metal and death metal (Carcass "actually has real melody"), Michael Jackson, They Might Be Giants, Weird Al, Spinal Tap, Moody Blues, a-ha.
• On the flame wars and the "big plagiarism thing": treat other musicians with the respect you want; but nitewynd "continually rips songs, comes back, asks for forgiveness, then rips more songs", and Muzikman is "almost the same deal" — forgivable if he never rips again (see sample-ripping).
• On beginners and group admission: everyone sucked once — quoting psibelius, "then they're a prodigy, and what are they doing making .mods in the first place?"; groups should still require "some amount of skill or originality", not "moronic affirmative action". "Don't claim that people with strange ideas have no talent."

Key claims — Maelcum (the chatter)#

• Kosmic had lost its FTP site: "our whole distribution relies on the ftp site now", "bbses suck now"; the host had switched server software mid-way; Defiance had two sites, so Kosmic "could get at least one other stable one" (Quarex).
• Sample credit: "chances are, mr. average tracking joe, you're a lot more influenced by Major Tom and ME than necros. after all, WE MADE ALL YOUR … SAMPLES!"; the "rezonant bassy sounds floating around nowadays" are his; people who complain about ripping have half their sample collection from samples he "sat around for hours making", and he is "the only person that people never credit samples from". He is tired of every interviewee naming necros as the biggest influence.
• Self-assessment: "i am NOT that good … i just hit keys and rearrange notes"; the one thing he knows is drum tracks — "JEEZ GUYS IT'S CALLED A 4/4 BEAT … BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM"; "there are people who don't know the difference between your bass drum and your snare drum". He calls himself "a pioneer of this scene", suffers "Future Crew-syndrome" (people like his worst tunes because of the name) while his best and most different work is overlooked, and signed shirts at NAID. Quarex has about 15 of Maelcum's old mods on a mod CD-ROM. "I'd like to make kosmic as big as microsoft, but for free."
• Jokes not to be taken as fact: "nitewynd is just me in my spare time"; "just one of the 96 in epinicion" (compare Basehead's "90 member group" on epinicion).
• Logged with a VT100 IRC client in Procomm ("logging SUCKS").

Practical takeaways#

• Maelcum's drum lesson, the shortest in the archive: a 4/4 kick on every beat, and know your bass drum from your snare.
• Samples travel without their makers' names; when you know whose they are, say so (see sample-ripping).

Notable quotes#

• "JEEZ GUYS IT'S CALLED A 4/4 BEAT … is it THAT hard?" — Maelcum.
• "Don't just float through life, throw someone overboard." — Quarex.

Relevance#

Maelcum in his own words on samples, credit and reputation (a supplement to maelcum); Kosmic's FTP-dependent distribution in July 1995; the admission-standards question; Quarex's Amiga canon.

Pages touched#

quarex, maelcum, kosmic, epinicion, defiance, necros, stalker, scirocco, sample-ripping, tracker-scene-history, fasttracker-2, psibelius, compos.