TW #40 — Interview with Blackwolf (Psibelius)

psibelius revisits blackwolf — "last interviewed in TraxWeekly #6, back when Populus was still running the show" — for "the last TW interview for 1995", after what Psibelius calls "a very long time since we've had some interviews in TraxWeekly". A percussionist's view of the scene at the end of 1995: bigger, more demanding, drifting toward commercialism.

Key claims#

• Bobby Tamburrino, 18, from Atlanta, a first-year student at the University of Georgia in Athens. Member of epinicion; formerly Defiance and UNiON ("3 days before it folded").
• Output: five songs finished in his first quarter at UGA — one released, four for a solo musicdisk, "9x10", hoped for "by the end of January" 1996 with a coder building the interface.
• On the scene as a "veteran" (MC4 would not let him enter as a rookie again): "It's gotten bigger since I started. Also more demanding. … Something I write now might rock the scene a year ago, but only be mediocre now."
• His recent "Last of the Omnipotent" (LOTO) ends drum-and-bugle-corps style, which listeners find merely "interesting"; the ending is lifted from the UGA marching band's Spanish show, "cut in half and changed keys". He plays pit percussion in the UGA band — usually timpani, but for the Peach Bowl show the pit was four MalletKATs, and "I'm the only one who knows enuff MIDI to be able to do neato things with 'em". Psibelius had tried marching-band-style tracking in early 1994.
• Direction of the scene: "Towards commercialism. Not just with the parties, but the people too" — "Guys like Straylight have already taken the lead with beating Origin over the head with their music, I think others will follow." Bad for parties, but "if people can make money doing what they love doing, more power to them."
• Fame: "Everybody wants to get in on the 15 minutes of fame they're allotted. I got mine back in May with Goodbye to a Good Thing." Psibelius: his own came in March 1995 "when Epinicion's 'Timeline' disk got ** from DemoNews" — Blackwolf was on that disk.
• Imphobia #11's bashing of the US is "half right" — the demos, yes; but NAID'96 will bring "some great productions", and North American music (Canada included) is "a lot more enjoyable (to me) than some of the euro stuff". The North American scene is "the last underground music scene where you can get things free and actually there's some decent stuff coming out".
• Website http://www.dave-world.net/~bwolf; "I love comments, good or bad".

Practical takeaways#

• Borrow structure from ensemble music you actually play: the drum-corps ending, transposed and cut, became the coda of a tracked song (see arrangement).

Notable quotes#

• "Something I write now might rock the scene a year ago, but only be mediocre now." — Blackwolf.
• "We're the last underground music scene where you can get things free." — Blackwolf.

Relevance#

An end-of-1995 statement of rising standards and of the commercial drift (commercial-tracking) with a named case (Straylight and Origin); a date for Epinicion's "Timeline" disk (March 1995) and Psibelius's account of TraxWeekly #6. Blackwolf later wrote "Tracking as an Olympic Sport" (source: s-tw065-tracking-as-an-olympic-sport).

Pages touched#

blackwolf, psibelius, epinicion, traxweekly, commercial-tracking, compos, tracker-scene-history, arrangement, populus, defiance.