TW #52 — Interview with Ganja Man (LoK)
zinc interviews ganja-man, a 15-year-old from the UK who founded LoK to give Britain a music group and to spread jungle; four months later he would write the "Potted Tracking History" (s-tw064-potted-tracking-history). The article header credits Zinc; the wiki's TOC lists Daedalus by mistake.
Key claims#
- Sam Bashton, 15, member of LoK, "currently doing the music for a game".
- Tracks "all UK club styles": loves happy hardcore and jungle but is "not too great at tracking them"; prefers handbag house "'cos it lets me experiment with pianos a lot".
- LoK: "in the UK (where I live) there weren't really any demo/music groups (at least not that I knew of). So I decided to set one up", also "to educate people about Jungle" — a style with a huge UK club following and pirate radio, still unknown to most of #trax.
- Influences: maelcum early on; Sonic Ecstasy, "a little-known Canadian house group"; in real life the Happy Clappers, LTJ Bukem, Goldie and Photek. On IRC for almost a year (since spring 1995); impressed by Maelcum's "we're not anybody" attitude.
- What bugs him: the hornet reviewers — fine "if you like demo-style music", useless for "us 'normal' people"; he would keep the ratings if the music were sorted by style.
- Inspiration: "I'll be listening to a CD, hear a sample I like, sample it", or ideas after clubbing; happy accidents from hitting the wrong key.
- Format: XM, "because I can't stand the text interface of ST3. I started with TCB tracker on the ST, so using a tracker without mouse support is alien territory."
- Files at
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/square/ad021/andftp://tillbm.rpi.stu.edu/LoK/; thanks Snakey7 for samples; ambition: to be "the next Liam Howlett (of the Prodigy)". - Parting advice: "however good you are at tracking, there will always be someone who thinks someone else is better."
Practical takeaways#
- Sort-by-style is the recurring fix proposed for Hornet's ratings (again in #80).
- Start a tune from one sampled sound you like.
Notable quotes#
- "Using a tracker without mouse support is alien territory." — Ganja Man, on choosing FT2 over ST3.
Relevance#
Backs the ganja-man page (author of the #64 history and a #80 respondent), documents LoK's founding purpose, and adds a UK club-music perspective to the ratings debate and to the FT2-vs-ST3 interface argument.
Pages touched#
ganja-man, lok, fasttracker-2, scream-tracker-3, hornet, maelcum, tracking-workflow, tracker-scene-history, acidfrog.