TW #27 — Faces in the Crowd #1: Master of Darkness (Kal Zakath)
The first "Faces in the Crowd" interview (IRC, Friday 15 September 1995): kal-zakath talks with master-of-darkness, founder of the newcomer group AIM Higher, about starting out, techno and how #trax treats newbies; a release listing follows, and the note that Master of Darkness joins the column's staff.
Key claims#
- Todd Andlar, aka Master of Darkness; only in AIM Higher, "which is like epinicion". Started in February 1995 when Imagix of Epinicion gave him his Sound Blaster 16; "serious composing" for three months. Interested in the scene only since December 1994, through the Mazurka musicdisk and "b0bby of Mazurka, or rather his board — BIGTIME music board in Toronto". "No roots."
- Influences: Maral of KFMF (Spirit Realms) — the first scene music he heard (see kosmic); the TV dance club show Electric Circus, which introduced him to dance/techno; his friends Atlantic and Imagix, each composing for a year. Malakai of Neophyte inspired him to try demo music "because it seemed like anyone could do techno and I wanted a challenge". Kal Zakath objects that techno "takes certain other skills"; Master of Darkness refines: "similar techno is easy to do, but it's difficult to do techno that really stands out — like maelcum and Maral do."
- Why he tracks: "because it's fun, plain and simple" — synthesized music, drum beats and techno noises "all put together by me", from samples "you could get easily".
- Tool: scream-tracker-3. "I believe FastTracker is better, but my IRQs screw up" (see fasttracker-2).
- The scene from a newbie's view: "little support for new composers … some of the big-name people want nothing to do with newbies" — the reason he made AIM Higher; respect comes only after "a bunch of good tunes", and competition "is taking precedence over this unity"; people who say "Hi, I'm new" on #trax get kicked off; some big names ignore him (names edited out at his request) — C.C.Catch answers.
- Message: "Don't be composing for other people. Don't be composing for competitions. Don't compose to impress everybody. Just compose for yourself … POWER TO THE NEWBIES!"
- Releases on the hornet archive (confirmed 19 September 1995): Towards Happiness (
tohappy.zip), Out of Shadows (outofsha.zip), both S3M; the AIM Higher musicdiskfndation.zipwith two of his tunes; future AIM Higher disks in/pub/demos/incoming/music/disks. - Column business: Master of Darkness volunteers to download and screen unknown composers' music for the column; future columns will list "notable tunes" that people overlook "because they don't have a 'k_' or 'fm-' in the filename"; next week Mesonyx (the XIXIT tunes); Kal Zakath asks readers whether the length is right. Signed John Townsend.
Practical takeaways#
- Tracker choice by hardware in 1995: ST3 when FT2 will not run on your card's IRQ setting.
- Compose for yourself, not for the compo — the beginner's antidote to the competition culture described on compos.
Notable quotes#
- "Just compose for yourself. Compose for the fun of composing." — Master of Darkness.
- "POWER TO THE NEWBIES!" — Master of Darkness.
Relevance#
The newcomer's view of #trax in autumn 1995 and the founding idea of AIM Higher; the Kosmic techno lineage (Maral, Maelcum) as heard by a beginner; an ST3-versus-FT2 compatibility note; the mechanics of the FITC column for traxweekly.
Pages touched#
master-of-darkness, kal-zakath, traxweekly, epinicion, kosmic, maelcum, scream-tracker-3, fasttracker-2, hornet, tracker-scene-history, compos.