TW #90 — Interview with Cosmic/RR (Pizza Head)

Pizza Head interviews cosmic of Radical Rhythms, "one of the reasons that I got me into tracking" — his songs "were all over the bbs's i called". A short IRC log.

Key claims#

• Matthias Ksoll, "about 26", Germany; never interviewed by TraxWeekly before. On the German scene in 1997: "sucks for the moment. a lot of people laming around and doing nothing except of talking shit"; "the artware scene is to public, means everybody can join and contribut"; styles in the tracking scene rave, hard trance and house, in "the real scene" only house — "rave is out - back to roots - house and 130bpm"; "nearly 80% of the released stuff you can nuke".
• Output: "around 100 tracks (dmf and xm)" released plus old Amiga 4-channel work; more unreleased than released — "a lot of tracks didnt pass my own quality controll", "still 50dmfs in my hold dir". Best: "Son of a Bitch" and its remixes ("a lot of my friends luv this track and i dunno why"). Newest: "The Boy I Want" (club house, a BMP compo contribution — titled after a female vocal sample "i want you boy"); "Lost at Trancentral EP vol 4" (ambient) coming.
• Distribution: Radical Rhythms sites — http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/merrelli/rr, ftp://ftp.cyberbox.north.de — and his own Undercover BBS.
• Ratings: don't release to collect stars — "you should track musik for your own pleasure and if somebody luvs it to - fine and if not - who cares - its your musik - you need to luv it !" (hornet).
• Tracker: fasttracker-2 "since a couple of months - before ft2 it was xtracker"; FT2 is "somewhere a pt clone" with envelopes and panning "and a lot of more. best solution for musician on pc (imo)"; "i really hate the s3m interface" (scream-tracker-3).
• Samples: "yes ! i sample a lot (from cd/vinyl/keyboard/) but rip enuff from other mods"; editors: the FT2 sampler, GoldWave and Cool Edit, "sometimes rays k2000 sampler" — Ray of RR's Kurzweil K2000 (recording-samples, sample-ripping).
• Sound card: "Gravis Ultrasound V2.4 with 16bit daugtherboard" (gravis-ultrasound).
• No instrument ("i never learned to play piano"), no theory ("always a lamer in music lessons") — Pizza Head's theory "that most well known trackers learned violin is shattered"; inspiration from everything around you — "musik is a kind of selfrepresentation"; parties when work allows.
• Advice: "to improve and try to make your songs as good as possible - play it to friends".

Practical takeaways#

• Own quality control before release — half the output stays in the hold directory.
• A 1997 German house producer's toolset: FT2 + GoldWave / Cool Edit + a borrowed K2000 + a GUS with the 16-bit daughterboard.

Notable quotes#

• "you should track musik for your own pleasure and if somebody luvs it to - fine and if not - who cares" — Cosmic.

Relevance#

A German / Radical Rhythms data point for tracker-scene-history; FT2 chosen for its ProTracker lineage (protracker); a documented sample-editor chain and GUS configuration.

Pages touched#

cosmic, fasttracker-2, scream-tracker-3, protracker, gravis-ultrasound, recording-samples, sample-ripping, hornet, tracker-scene-history, traxweekly.

To verify#

• (unverified) .dmf is the format of X-Tracker (Delusion Digital Music Format), which would make the "xtracker" he used before FT2 the source of his DMF releases.