TW #30 — Faces in the Crowd: Interview with Paganus (Atlantic)
Atlantic interviews paganus of epinicion and Aim Higher (also printed as "Interview #7"; conducted 1995-10-10): a piano-centred Toronto-area tracker who came in through a local BBS and has strong views on scene snobbery. The same section carries a FITC song-reviews box, not summarised.
Key claims#
- Handle only; the printed contact is
andrew.crabtree@canrem.com. Releases with Epinicion and Aim Higher, "the only ones who'd take me without a resume". - Music: "I like the piano … consequently, I use it quite frequently. Most of my stuff is pretty heavy on chords and melody, light on percussion" — something he was trying to change ("lately I've even developed a marginal sense of rhythm"). Piano lessons at about ten "didn't pan out"; he can play chords and progressions, plays the flute, and does not play guitar. Running joke with Atlantic: the piano is surpassed only by "the PM SONIX-LEAD siner synth" — "everyone plays the sonix lead synth" (see purple-motion).
- How he started, about a year and a half earlier (≈ spring 1994): picked up ModEdit 2.0 ("worthy of a triple cringe") but did not use it; found an AToMIC module — Atomic was "a small, local [toronto] group, led by b0b, better known as the head of Mazurka" — whose zip advertised "bobby's World", a 416-area BBS "Dedicated to Helping New Composers"; got Scream Tracker 3.01b from the BBS "the twisted tower"; first "real" S3M: "wilting coliflower".
- Early influences: b0b's songs (later found to be "ripped in whole or in part from some pretty cool amiga 4-trax"), Jazzman of Atomic, purple-motion and skaven.
- On elitism: "I believe very strongly in breaking down the eliteness and snobbery in the scene" — unproductive, though not the scene's "greatest crisis". His diagnosis: snobs expect the "little guys" not to bother them, the little guys fear being ignored, and both are fuelled by hero-worship — "Joe nobody … hears Necros' music. His first thought (since he has only recently figured out the finer points of a manual volume slide in st3): THIS MAN IS GOD!" — the pop-star phenomenon. He faced "too much" snobbery himself and declines to detail it.
- Wanted to attend NAID 96 if it did not clash with finals.
- Releases: two songs on Aim Higher's newly released disk "Unification" and two on its first disk "Foundation"; "Heartbreak" — "one of his better songs to date", which he says "conveys a lot of emotion" — remixed for Unification; one Epinicion single, "Winter", in Epinicion's directory on peace.wit.com.
- His measure of a year's progress: compare Atlantic's "the Story of the Mermaid" (Neophyte) with Jazzman's "Percussive Pyromania" (Atomic).
- The FITC song-reviews box (skipped) recommends "Unification Disk VOLUME 1" by Aim Higher (XM/S3M/MTM,
unify1_1.zip–unify1_3.zip, released 1995-10-11, contactmaz@io.org), "Igsignif" by "Mik Rippon" (S3M, dance/techno, released 1995-10-08 — see mick-rippon), "Back To The Start" by Blurry (S3M) and "Blind Justice" by Scirocco (XM). FITC "will not actually rate the songs, but suggest the ones we think you'd like to hear most".
Practical takeaways#
- A chords-and-melody writer's self-diagnosis — rhythm and percussion as the weak side to work on deliberately (see tracking-workflow).
- The "manual volume slide in ST3" as the newbie milestone of 1995 (see volume-slides).
Notable quotes#
- "'Cause they were the only ones who'd take me without a resume." — Paganus, on joining Epinicion and Aim Higher.
- "No matter how good a musician he is, he is just a normal, average, human being in other respects." — Paganus, on Necros as "god".
Relevance#
The clearest statement of the newcomer-group ethos (epinicion, Aim Higher) from a member, plus a snapshot of the 1995 Toronto BBS scene (Atomic, Mazurka, bobby's World) that produced the FITC crew.
Pages touched#
paganus, epinicion, scream-tracker-3, purple-motion, skaven, necros, mick-rippon, tracker-scene-history, traxweekly, scirocco.