We are happy to announce that our dear old Folcka have finally broken a terrible spell of only being able to draw heads of ducks for the past twenty-odd years. We have been telling him over and over that duck heads are not the most prolific way to win graphics competitions at demoparties, and we are extremely pleased that he finally managed to break the spell and take first place in the pixel graphics competition at Black Valley 2024 with “Fury in Fur” as seen above. For the technically interested, it’s Amiga lo-res which is 320×256, 16 colours.
It also seems one of our good ol’ Norwegian members who goes by the moniker Slumgud released a few tunes there. We may have to recontact him since Curt Cool obviously forgot any organisational skills he might (or indeed, might not?) have possessed back in the day.
Folcka is also due to receive a wonderful, black trophy from the party (as seen below), as well as plenty of big kisses and traditional Depth abuse whenever we meet up again.
So, you’re saying Curt Cool was at Revision? And did not bother to write anything for this site that nobody ever reads anyway – until now, some three months later? That’s just totally unacceptable. Busy with his job and his family? No, that’s not an excuse. At all.
Well, neverthless, he was, representing Depth and participating with a tune in the oldschool executable music competition, Wigged, which came a puny 10th. The preselected mod, Devilhopping (yeah, his music has become so bad no one will ever play it) later came in 5th (out of 7) in the tracked music competition at 68k Inside in Finland (remote entry) .
That aside, he also tracked music and wrote an article or two for the absolutely splendid Amiga diskmagazine Jurassic Pack 20 – with big thanks to Ghandy and Novel for making it happen and to all contributors.
And then there’s chippacks, that lazy way that so-called musicians tend to put out their droning, squeaky warbles. Of course, he had to contribute to those instead of organizing something for this dear group. So, he had a tune in Knight Chips II by The Electronic Knights (thanks Okeanos), Chiperia 11 (thanks Bonefish – finally!) and Chip Chop 17 by Desire (thanks Ramon B5).
And Revision… Well, these days the scene consists mainly of drunken uncles, but unlike us, they seem to be quite active drunken uncles. In other words, a ton of demos, tracks, games and graphics (some of it was even impressive) were released at Revision, on and off our dear old Amiga computer, so there were plenty of competitions to follow on the big screen.
Depth greetings follow: Spreadpoint (thanks for the sendings, Tilt), Moods Plateau, Brainwave, Loonies, DUB, Nah-Kolor, Darkage, Offence, Unstable Label, Desire and possibly a ton of other people who managed to disappear into beer. Let’s try and see if we can make it once more next year!
Oh my… Can it really be that these guys have been around for 30 years… They look so young! Or just immature? (photo: hund.’s camera (as he is in the picture somewhere))
Right before being admitted to the demoscene home for the lazy and elderly, we managed to celebrate our 30th birthday – mainly the Danish division – at the somewhat luxurious surroundings known as Bakerman’s house and (as the photo indeed shows) garden. Followers are of course welcome to wonder who is who on the photo – and who sadly missed out on the event, which provided plenty of entertainment – a music competition, a concert (featuring Trip and Folcka), a rather difficult Depth quiz (courtesy of Curt Cool) an online meeting with the Norwegians, abundant oldschool gaming and plenty of french toast, burgers and of course beer, not to forget butter, traktor and puost. In other words, Take on Me (Coma’s 6 second .mod version) was played on repeat for quite sometime, and both Darkhawk and Frankofonen were tributed in new jazz arrangements of the well known tunes found in the good old Amiga demos from 1996-97.
In other words, everyone brought their best mood, old hardware and, thankfully, totally unupdated senses of humour straight from the 90’s. So it was indeed a sweet and nostalgic time, with much crying of happiness. Or mostly just happiness.
Another sweet time came only a few weeks later when Curt Cool and Presence made it to TRSAC which took place – hopefully not for the last time though Puryx said so – in Mexico, err, Aarhus, starting on a very windy friday where ferries were cancelled and everybody (some 110 people or so) just made it in time to avoid fallen trees. Yes, though it was in Aarhus, it had a Mexican theme, and of course such cultural appropriation should be honoured, and seemingly, the audience agreed.
Thus, management is almost pleased that Curt Cool managed to win the tracked music competition with “Mexican Standoff” which, according to them, at least has or is a mock-xican theme. Trip had also made very fine classical arrangement of Curt Cool’s chiptune “Unsuspected <P>” from 1996 as a surprise for the aforementioned 30th anniversary (and Curt Cool who seemed oddly touched), which, as “Unsuspected Puost” won the streaming music competition. The management are confident that this is just an anormality and that the TRSAC audience still prefers hard, monotone techno and will try to look for replacement musicians as soon as possible, or turn to artificial intelligence which (as they say) probably won’t cause as much trouble by complaining and general grumpiness.
Also, we must send our congratulations and greetings to Presence and his Fnuque-crew who won the combined intro competition with “Second Rodeo“, and our greetings to Danish Underpants Brigade (or whatever they call themselves these days), Loonies, Moods Plateau, Darklite, Desire, Focus Design, No Name, TBC, RBBS and The Black Lotus and whoever weren’t drunk enough to be remembered or perhaps we were too drunk to remember. It’s one of those things, or maybe there’s a third option, we haven’t figured out yet. Well, it was fun anyway, so keep it up!
As Easter and spring is upon us, there’s usually an Easter demoparty in Germany. Unfortunately, it has been three years of Corona but during this very Easter, the identified scening object was back and landed at the usual E-Werk campsite, bringing plenty of beer and an amazing amount of scene productions with it. Or rather, the participants did.
Curt Cool and Presence made their way there via trains, cars, planes and unfortunately no boats, along with a friendly (and not quite rowdy, more like … old … or at least middleaged) band of Danish sceners. Curt was involved in various productions of a scenic nature, most notably contributing music to the 2nd place Amiga intro called “Griffin” by Nah-Kolor and Offence, and also music for “Visor Beams” by Nah-Kolor which came a measly 7th in Amiga demo, a tune for “Chipo Django 2” chip pack which was released in the wild competition and a little tune in the oldschool music competition entitled “Inconvenience Store” which placed very close to dead last.
His tracked music, “Spring is on me” was preselected and later released as a remote entry at 68k Inside in Finland, where everybody also hated it, it seems. The management tried to have a serious chat with him about this, but he kept making strange facial expressions and making random noises until he shouted something about the demosceners having no taste in music and that chamber pop is the next big demoscene thing. We strongly doubt that.
However, we will allow him to send his greetings to all of the friendly people we met at Revision – and especially to Loonies, Fnuque, Nah-Kolor & Moods Plateau who provided a friendly table neighbour environment. “And to everyone else, I talked to” he says. We are not sure he even has a clue who and send our apologies. Both for what he said and what he doesn’t remember.
…and so it’s time for an update about … mainly … 2022 ? Well, that’s obvious. Still, in 2022, Presence and Curt Cool, along with other friendly danes, went into a drunken haze at TRSAC and somehow returned. Presence released no less than two nice intros, River Snake and Copper Trouble Fnuque (and won the compo), and Curt managed to win the tracked music competition with The Jettison Approach. In other news, Depth will turn a whopping 30 years old in 2023, this very year. So, with present delays in mind, expect some release or party to celebrate this in 2029 or so. Curt also competed in some silly C64 crack intro music competition, and Folcka managed to come 7th in the graphics competition at GERP 2023 with Staggered, his first pixelled full screen picture in about 25 years (!). RESPECT! On the way to TRSAC, Curt Cool also did a little lecture on the demoscene at Retro Gaming days in Vejle, DK – and it was so successful that you might see more of him doing about the same thing this summer… So, things seem to be going nicely. Zzzzzzz … Wake up, it’s soon time for another instance of Presence’s ongoing Demostue meetings. Bakerman has beer and football and whatnot, Trip has food and game music, Gizmoduck has a new floor on his house coming up, hund. has a game company, Cytron lives in London, the Norwegians are mainly in Norway (as far as this editor knows, some could possibly be in space) and Revision 2023 is coming up in April! Woohoo!
As the world reopened, some of us may have chosen to stay at home for GERP and Revision 2022. Or rather, our own Presence went to GERP and we didn’t really choose to stay home for Revision which was mainly a virtual demoparty. We would probably have attended it if it wasn’t.
However, this did not keep a certain Mr. Cool from flooding these parties with his strange Amiga music releases, making 5th in the GERP (unoffcial) Amiga executable music competition with Inspiracer (pretracker), and 7th in the cover music competition with Microdosage Mario (mod), kindly delivered to the party by Magic/Nah-Kolor.
He also reached abysmal (well, OK, fair) positions at Revision, with Scant Fabric which came 7th in the oldskool executable music competition and Diskthief which made 8th in tracked music.
An honourable mention should also go to our friends at Fnuque – Presence, Blueberry and Swaxi who made a very respectable 4th place in a rather tough and difficult oldskool intro competition with Hex Junkie. As for the party, well, beer can be consumed at home as well, the Amiga Demo competition (our highlight) was fairly disappointing – but still, excellent to see som many releases across all platforms.
Hopefully the world will soon provide us with demoparties which we will attempt to attend, even at our old age. In the mean time, watch demos, have fun, archive your disks and give peace a chance. No, it is highly unlikely that a certain Mr. P/Russia (superpower eli7e group in their own mind) is reading this. He is, after all, seemingly living in a bubble when no one had even thought about internet. And wants to stay in it by all means necessary. Sad times indeed.
Ah yes, this should have been done a while ago, during the Corona lockdown, while we were all sitting cosily in our little houses, minding our own little businesses. But no. Obviously procrastination and numbness set in, but now, as the world has returned, we might as well return to the world and you, dear reader (as our expectations for readership is about 1 reader).
During the past years, we have seen our dear Presence host several Demostue events at his house and found it a pleasure to attend them with other demosceners such as our own Folcka (creator of the above logo – and a whole lot of unused pixel graphics). So we (hey, Pressy) will work towards that that the future will hold some productions featuring some of these unused pixel graphics.
Also, Curt has been contributing a bit to Jurassic Pack 18 with a bit of music and text, and of course contributed to the once again to the music competitions at the online stay-at-home Revision with Agent Paula (10th) and Indecisive, and also with a few patterns to On Fire by Nah-Kolor (4th in 64k Amiga intro competition. As if that wasn’t enough, just recently, PreAmp II by the demoscene radio station Nectarine, features another two tunes from him.
So, guess some stuff is after all sort-of-happening at its own random (going towards slow) pace. Faster, faster, they say, but can we deliver something? Time will tell, if not forgotten.
But, in the future, we hope to once again be able to meet you, drink with you and see your (man-)boobs live and well at a nice, real life demoparty. Boy, that would really be something – and an opportunity to find out if we have become the antisocial bastards we feared we would one day become.
Revision 2020, which, due to Corona worries, was held as a streaming event with old men sitting in their homely sofas and mancaves in underpants drinking beer, took place during Easter. Very appropriate given that (already before Corona) this year’s slogan was “Welcome home”. Curt Cool had been busy writing music for the Nah-Kolor intro “Crashing Bitplanes” which came 4th in the Amiga 64k Intro competition, and also participated in two of the music competition though not with as much luck (or quality?) as say, last year. Splattergas managed a puny 12th position in the tracked music competition for which the Depth management will indeed whip his sorry ass – and hear none of his excuses that he misunderstood whether or not instruments such as gong and theremin are generally loved and appreciated by all people. Bring the Spring fared a bit better, coming in at 8th position in the oldschool music competition.
Another important matter is that you – if you are in possession of any old demoscene material – should remember to have it archived, safeguarded and generally kept from the infinite forgotten of data rot, mould, plastic deterioration, leaky capacitors and all the other sorry things that damages and destroys ancient data. In other words, get your old floppies, hard drives and backup media copied to modern computers in some way and archived for public consumption on the various demoscene archives. Yes, Mr. Cool did a seminar on just that – and how to do it – for Revision (my, he was busy, wasn’t he?). Feel free to write him for any help or assistance.
Lastly, we salute our Finnish and German friends for having the demoscene accepted for UNESCOS list of intangible cultural heritage. Congratulations, and if someone here in Denmark would be interested in helping to get the Danish demoscene on this list as well (as part of the international effort) feel free to write.
Looks so awesome you just gotta check it out, right?
Our Australian (former Swiss) division and talented one man band, The Hardliner, has created a fine AdLib-musicdisk with music created a while ago in his very own tracker. You can check out the musicdisk straight from your browser of choice, and it’s available right here. So, without further ado, MAKE PIS NOT LOVE!
Datastorm 2019: The real party is outside – photo: Pad / Kristian Tjessem
Time for the bi-yearly update of depth.org. As summer was coming close to its demise, Curt Cool took a little improvised trip to Datastorm in Gothenburg, celebrating the Amiga and C64 and spending fine time at this excellent party at the fabulous (or just very punk-esque) Truckstop Alaska where dolls are hanged from the trees, Volvos appear out of nowhere – and in early August, the weather was still fine so that the real party could be, yes, outside. Outside the prize ceremony was also where the tunes from Mr. Cool went in the music competitions which were pretty close, coming in 9th in the tracked music competition with “Mount Rushwave” and 4th in the chipmusic competition with “Why, Rachel, Why?“.
Unfortunately the bulldozers are moving in on the fabulous venue (beer was also served), but hopefully future Datastorms can be arranged at a similar kind of place. Datastorm-Datastorm-Datastorm! Greetings from Curt to Phreed, Hedning, Magic, Magnar, Blueberry, Cheesy, Alpa, Vedder, Ca$h, Wasp, Florist, Slash, Mr. Pleasence, Hoffman, Booger, Dlx, Photon, Notorious and a bunch of other old drunken men living in the past (and enjoying it tremendously).
On another matter, TRSAC took place in Aarhus only mere days ago, and we are happy that our own (or rather, Fnuque’s) good young Presence managed to win the oldskool demo competition with his comeback “Tunnel Vision“, a 4k intro for AGA Amigas. Congratulations Presence. Also with finishing something. Also, dear organizers, hope to return to Aarhus in 2020.
And, not to forget, maybe there’s something YOU can do to get the demoscene on UNESCOs list of intangible cultural heritage?! Sounds crazy? Well, maybe it is, but that does not mean it is a bad idea – read more about it at demoscene-the-art-of-coding.net. And also, remember to support Versus.
Datastorm 2019: Compo watching – photo: Pad / Kristian Tjessem
