TW #43 — Interview with Pariah (V.S.L)
Master of Darkness (Aim Higher; a Demonews reviewer) restarts "Faces In The Crowd" with a series on his local Toronto scene; the first guest is pariah of the dance-music group V.S.L (founded by vicious), logged under the nick <Ender> — not the ender of Foundation interviewed in #30. Conducted on IRC on 28 December 1995. Most of the piece is a two-way argument about why dance music is rated badly in a scene shaped by demo music.
Key claims#
- Edwin de la Vega, 19 in January 1996, composing "for almost a year". First group DDT (Digital Dream Tyrants) — "I didn't know anyone in that grp! No communication" and he was not allowed to release; Master of Darkness remembers DDT with Vicious and "Imagix (now paganus)". Then V.S.L, a Toronto-based dance-music group that "started off small, then we grew rapidly".
- Prefers starting in a small group with a common goal (less pressure); small groups make the scene "more welcoming to newbies" and help bring PC music to the public.
- Dance music: people say it "takes no talent … because it's so easy to make in FT2". Master of Darkness's theory: future-crew and Renaissance made demo music "the thing to do"; dance music, apart from kosmic, had no precedent and got bad Demonews ratings; FT2's sound quality then brought a wave of trance/ambient/dance, and the bad entries — "a beat, a hi-hat, and some weird sounding samples at different intervals" with a group name stuck on — give the style a bad name. "IT'S NOT THE STYLE. IT'S THE COMPOSER."
- Ratings: a Demonews mark is "a rating from ONE person" and not to be taken seriously; the reviewer admits he would have marked V.S.L half a point higher than his colleague, and cites deus-ex of Chill complaining that his work was marked unfairly. Pariah's creed: "There's no such thing as BAD music. Only music that some people aren't too FOND about."
- Background: over ten years of music — theory, piano, bass, guitar, drums, trumpet, recorder — and live bands; he composes by ear and has "matured into a good composer not just a tracker".
- Advice to newcomers: piano or guitar lessons if you have cash; if not, join a group like Aim Higher or epinicion; "if you're too lazy … examine other peoples' songs, but don't rip em". Borrowing a basic chord progression such as C–F–G (I–IV–V) is fine, "but don't carbon copy the WHOLE song"; examining how skaven handles instruments is fine; purple-motion rip-offs are not.
- Releases (MTM format, 1995):
v-hybrid.zip,v-moverr.zip,v-ncpush.zipunder/pub/demos/music/songs/1995/mtm/v/,vsl-xmas.zip, and the five VSL DJ's Dream Disks (vsl-dj-1.zip…vsl-dj-5.zip); locally on Da Club BBS in Toronto. Greets Radical Rhythms, who had just released their "chapter 8" disk.
Practical takeaways#
- Learn from other people's modules (instrument handling, progressions) without copying the song.
- Treat a Hornet/Demonews star as one listener's opinion.
Notable quotes#
- "There's no such thing as BAD music. Only music that some people aren't too FOND about." — Pariah.
- "IT'S NOT THE STYLE. IT'S THE COMPOSER." — Master of Darkness.
Relevance#
Evidence for the 1996 "dance vs demo music" prejudice and the ratings argument that runs through #43–#45 (s-tw044-hornet-ratings); a sourced "examine, don't rip" rule for sample-ripping; a snapshot of the Toronto scene (Aim Higher, V.S.L, DDT, Radical Rhythms) and of the MTM format still in release use in 1995.
Pages touched#
pariah, master-of-darkness, vicious, paganus, deus-ex, hornet, sample-ripping, chord-progressions, tracking-workflow, tracker-scene-history, fasttracker-2, epinicion, kosmic, future-crew, traxweekly.