TW #34 — Faces in the Crowd: Interview with Deus Ex (Master of Darkness)
The #34 Faces in the Crowd column — editorial by Kal Zakath, Master of Darkness's interview with deus-ex (printed as "Interview #11"), three song reviews by Atlantic (not summarised) and closing words. Deus Ex, 30, founded Chill Productions in Toronto because established groups would not take a techno/trance composer who used a GUS and FastTracker.
Key claims#
The column (Kal Zakath, "John Townsend, Kal Zakath / Inferno, FITC Editor")
- FITC missed the previous issue (#33). Kal Zakath started FITC "a few months ago" with "a limited vision … of just simply doing an interview a week for TraxWeekly"; "with the help of Master of Darkness, Atlantic, and DennisC, FITC has become a many-faceted production. We do interviews, tracking tips, reviews and scene commentary." He asks readers whether the interviews and reviews got them to check out composers they would have overlooked, and offers to print the letters.
- Closing words: next week's hopes were interviews with AmusiC and Mick Rippon; Atlantic was working on more tracking tips, and Kal planned an "intermediate" tips column — "some FT2 tricks, as well as some general composing techniques … not so insultingly simple as how to do echo tracks". An editor's note gives Mick Rippon's e-mail (
rip@hunterlink.net.au) and says Kal plans to interview him (it was DennisC who did, in #41: s-tw041-interview-mick-rippon).
The interview (Mdark; his server was down, so "another VSL member" — VSL's first musicdisk had just come out)
- Deus Ex (printed contact
john.taite@realm.tor250.org): "I'm 30 years old. I say this 'cuz most people freak out because I'm that old." Tracking about a year, writing synth music "for almost ten". Founder of Chill Productions, member of VSL. Older trackers exist — DefeX "is actually older than me, and I believe he's one of the better trackers out there". - Why Chill: "at the time [I] was getting flack for writing techno/trance/ambient stuff, for using a GUS and for using FastTracker. So I thought, since the other groups wouldn't look at me, why not start my own?" — with control over quality: "I just don't want tracks that aren't polished." Mdark agrees newbies "rush their work out … release something they made in two hours, rather than wait a month".
- Chill's structure: WHQ Sight & Sound BBS, Toronto; distros in the 416 and 905 area codes; a European HQ and distro in the Netherlands, obtained just before the interview; releases also via
ftp://ftp.uniserve.com/pub/gamesnet/Chill/. A week earlier Chill "was only myself" (DefeX had left when Deus Ex disappeared for a while); The Third Man had joined; a "mini disc" with unnamed Toronto guest artists was coming. "Anybody out there want to be a courier?" - Taste: not a fan of demo music — "I actually think it's sorta tired"; a demo would often be better served by something harder or more abstract like ambient. Influences acid jazz, funk, techno; dislikes labels even though his
.DIZfiles say "Trance" and "Techno". Sees "commercial quality even!" work in Toronto now. - Priorities: a university graduate starting a presentation-graphics business for interior-design and architecture firms; music is "a very passionate hobby"; a record contract would tempt him but he cannot give it more time.
- Releases "through both CHiLL and VSL": World1, Statik, "Symphone in" (printed truncated), Our Secret Place, Theme for a Desolate Place, Dirty to the Hardcore, Hydrochloric Wasteland, Accelerate, Trance Canada, Statik'95 (statikling mix), Harmonial.
- On FITC: "Finally, it gives us unknowns a chance at stardom." Mdark hoped to interview DefeX next.
Reviews (Atlantic; skipped, listed for the record) — "In Motion" by Warp of The Surrounders (MTM, "a full sound with only 12 sams"), "She Speaks to Me" by Ng Pei Sin (S3M), "Tea Cosy" by mick-rippon (S3M, "mellow and laidback with a very catchy and appealing theme", marked down only for "a badly looped organ sample and a little repetition"). Atlantic asks composers to put e-mail addresses in their songs.
Practical takeaways#
- Do not release what you made in two hours; polish is what a group's name should stand for (see tracking-workflow).
- Put a contact address in the module text — 1995's reviewers could not reach half the composers they liked.
Notable quotes#
- "I just don't want tracks that aren't polished." — Deus Ex.
- "Finally, it gives us unknowns a chance at stardom." — Deus Ex, on FITC.
Relevance#
The FITC editorial is the primary statement of who ran the series and why; the interview documents Chill Productions — the group zinc signed with by 1997 — at its 1995 founding, and the 1995 prejudice against GUS/FT2 techno composers in Toronto's demo-oriented groups.
Pages touched#
deus-ex, traxweekly, vicious, zinc, fasttracker-2, gravis-ultrasound, mick-rippon, tracking-workflow, tracker-scene-history, commercial-tracking, kal-zakath, master-of-darkness, amusic.