TW #54 — Interview with Injekted & Subhuman (Ultrabeat)
Cerulean talks to the two founders of ultrabeat, injekted and subhuman, just after the group's first release Lucid: a music-only, five-member "tribe" for ravers and techno heads, structurally modelled on the five-musicians and explicitly not a kosmic-style empire.
Key claims#
- Injekted: Brandon Douglas Balliett, 16, "legal enlisted raver and general techno head"; older #trax people knew him as Zer0 of defiance, where he did not track much. Subhuman: Seth Miller, 17, "I love goa"; the Oregon rave scene "just isn't hopping yet". Both e-mail addresses are printed (
host.yab.com,teleport.com). - Ultrabeat: the name and conception were Injekted's, the support Subhuman's — "a 50/50 thing"; conceived "roughly a month or so ago" (about March 1996) on "the idea of music being the most important thing… no coding, no graphics". Injekted's faith in tracked music was restored by Earthtones by Mentalfloss and acid/breakbeat from Cybie.
- Lucid was rushed out; 60–70 people had it overnight by XDCC on #trax, "so far no negative feedback". Sybaris — Subhuman's schoolmate, "not in the 'scene'", a big raver — wrote Higher and Higher two months earlier; Subhuman's track was his attempt at a companion piece and his first release; Injekted's contribution was unfinished.
- Members in April 1996: Sybaris, Injekted, Subhuman, Canned Ice, Cubik (about to start his own Norwegian group, Beam) and, recently joined, balrog ("Balrog.Ca"). A five-member limit was proposed; "structurally based on FM: limited membership, music only"; "too many groups want to be big too quick" (Cerulean). Co-op disks planned with the Swedish group dr3amsource and with Beam.
- Next: an all-acid disk, Happiness is a 303, and a two-song single by Sybaris; Balrog "wants to destroy the earth with reverbed 303 sounds".
- Why techno fits tracking: "with good samples, you can make stuff that sounds like real vinyl" (Injekted); the main problem with scene techno is "lots of bad samples" (Subhuman). Respects Radical Rhythms and HBE. FM "caters to mainstream tracking"; Kosmic "is an empire, wanting to appeal to everyone" — Ultrabeat wants listeners to "know what they're getting when they download".
- NAID: Subhuman cannot afford it; Injekted imagines "the stack of 400 disks labeled 'my techno tune'… an annoying bleepy song with a rock drum and bass line" and finds compo winners too predictable.
- Web:
www.open.org/seth/ultrabeat.
Practical takeaways#
- The 1996 recipe for a small group: a style, a member cap, music only, co-ops instead of growth.
- Sample quality decides whether tracked techno sounds like vinyl or like a demo tune.
Notable quotes#
- "With good samples, you can make stuff that sounds like real vinyl." — Injekted.
Relevance#
Documents Ultrabeat's founding and roster (explaining why s-tw080-trax-mass-interview lists Balrog as Ultrabeat), the FM-as-template idea for small groups, and the rave/techno faction's view of samples, compos and the big groups.
Pages touched#
ultrabeat, injekted, subhuman, balrog, defiance, five-musicians, kosmic, compos, tracker-scene-history, instrument-design, traxweekly.