TW #66 — Interview with Liam the Lemming (Kal Zakath)
Kal Zakath interviews liam-the-lemming, "a very accomplished musician and one of the most popular #trax personalities", in an IRC log with the interviewer's own remarks cut and "some rearrangement ... for clarity".
Key claims#
- Liam Hesse ("and I hate it"), 22, Liverpool, England, reading Software Engineering ("that and the free internet access from my uni account"); his father was in the Irish showbands of the 1960s; no formal training — "music in my blood".
- Groups: S!P (the interviewer calls it "surprise"; Liam was considering quitting — "their last project was the demo they entered at TP5") and Mach One, just founded with AmusiC after the two shut down Bass Productions "due to lack of activity" once Sirrus, Siren and Darkwolf had left. Mach One's first project: a musicdisk meant to mark his first year on the scene, delayed because some tracks are
.ITand "support for the format is... uh... sparse". Earlier he almost joined Defiance — "Perisoft got hold of loads of my stuff from May 95 and kept begging me to join" — but Defiance split and he joined Bass, S!P and moz[IC]art instead. Scorpik had left S!P for Absolute (Amiga) and Pulse (PC); Darkwolf went to Pure Resistance, then Terraformer. - History: MODs discovered in 1993 through a friend's Amiga 500 and Spaceballs' State of the Art ("TOTALLY blew me away"); started writing in December 1993 with ModEdit 2.00 ("completely confused me"), then tetraMed ("the playback was crap, the emulation was hopeless"), Composer 669, then scream-tracker-3 3.01; first upload only in May 1995, "about a year and a half after I started tracking"; some early uploads to ftp.brad.ac.uk's /incoming/mods have "somehow managed to get spread around" against his wishes.
- Influences: purple-motion "obviously"; SLL and Laxity of Kefrens (Guardian Dragon, one of the first MODs he heard); Yannis Brown ("Boing", "1234...Rock!" — "I phear competing against him in The Trackering"); Blackwolf's "Goodbye To A Good Thing" — "THAT'S the one that really started me off on the piano stuff".
- Strengths: catchy tunes — "everyone ... seems to just plain enjoy all of your tunes" (Kal Zakath) — and chord structures. basehead's critical breakdown of his disk AutoEmotive: percussion "isn't up to scratch", "work on my choice of samples", "a tendency toward cheeziness"; Basehead's favourite was "Wastelands". Kal Zakath: "cheesy" is "an excuse for disliking perfectly good pieces of music".
- Goals: to be famous or write game music; "bad nerves singing in front of others"; "I intend to work in the computing field until either dream comes true".
- Parties: The Party 5 was "okay... but only cos of the people there" — met ior, Mellow-D, Siren, khyron and necros ("Andy! Hi! Your tune, it was uh... number 13, wasn't it?"); "Organizing? BLAH". NAID '96: "the happiest three or four days of my life", the Hornet/FM room shouting his name; he will only attend NAID from now on.
- Underrated: Radix, rage, Elusive, Elwood ("but many ppl have been raving about them"), Sirrus, Darkwolf. Scene mood improving: "the euros don't seem to be attacking the americans as much", less bickering on #trax.
- Trends: guitar tunes at TP5, lyrics at NAID, and "realism in tracked music is more predominant now than ever... which can only be a good thing"; his planned vocal tune for NAID '97 would need the size limit stretched to 1.5 MB (realism-in-tracked-music).
- Music Contest 4: entering as a veteran and applying to judge; to entrants: "I pray they don't go all symphonic thinking that'll get a top ten placing" (compos).
Practical takeaways#
- A UK tracker's tool ladder 1993–96: ModEdit → tetraMed → Composer 669 → ST3 → IT; a year and a half of practice before the first upload.
- Peer critique from an established tracker named the usual weak spots — drums, sample choice, cheese (tracking-workflow).
- Party size limits shaped what could be attempted (a vocal tune needing 1.5 MB).
Notable quotes#
- "Becoming so well established - and respected! - in one year is, in my book, a MAJOR accomplishment." — Liam the Lemming.
Relevance#
Group history around Bass Productions, Mach One, S!P and Defiance; a first-hand account of TP5 and NAID '96; the "IT support is sparse" problem of mid-1996; ties to khyron, perisoft and AmusiC of the 20-minute-chip-compo.
Pages touched#
liam-the-lemming, 20-minute-chip-compo, compos, realism-in-tracked-music, tracking-workflow, scream-tracker-3, impulse-tracker, basehead, necros, purple-motion, khyron, perisoft, rage, tracker-scene-history, traxweekly.