Depth

It seems our dear old Norwegian god of slum and scum is blowing music bubbles all over the place these days while the rest of us are resting, procrastinating or perhaps pondering on improbable productions of pretentious posture.

In other words, he managed make it to the first place at Black Valley 2025’s newschool music competition with Maskrosbarn in cooperation with the Swedish rapper diip. Congratulations on the fine trophy. At that party, he also managed 7th in the tracked music competition with Ingen start, ingen slutt.

Besides this, he has also been contributing to a bunch of productions on the good old Amiga, in particular in cooperation with Greippi/Zymosis etc., having made the music for Inside 68.0kHz at 68k Inside party in May and Sigil of Valhalla at the Assembly in August. And some more earlier which can be found via, among other things, checking out Slumgud on Demozoo.

…and also came second in the Oldschool Graphics competition at Revision 2025 with this fine effort, indeed called “Firmware Upgrade” of which no parts we have been able to spot resembles the face of a duck. Congratulations to him with this fine trophy.

At Revision, it was just Curt Cool representing Depth in person, and due to his total lack of commitment to making music that people actually want to hear, he just came a measly 14th in the oldschool music competition with Clubtown Hop. He also had a fine tune in the Offence & Nah-Kolor demo “Pegasus” – which came 7th in the Amiga demo competition which means that he won’t go to hell just yet, but we might have to imprison him in his basement with a lot of floppies and no beer.

He had a blast of a party and sends greetings to everyone he met – and special ones to sBeam, Novel, Psycho, Blueberry, Dwarf, Punqtured, Crown, Magic, Nosferatu, Norby, Steffest, Pellicus, Arcane, Steel, Jogeir, Magnar, Virgill, Zeronine, Facet & Nerdine – and all of the other fine folks he may have forgotten in a drunken haze.

The Amiga demo competition was absolutely splendid, so if you haven’t already seen the top-10 demos, you really should fire up your Amiga, UAE or whatever and watch them now.

Speaking of parties, he also made the 450 km. drive to GERP in Skövde in Sweden in January and returned from it in February. This was a nice, cosy and fairly small party organized by kind people, greets to them and . However, we will have to emphasize that the placings he received in the music competitions are quite unacceptable: 15th in Amiga music with “Rumpism“, 7th in chip music with “Bankers Wall” and just third in fast music with “Gerp ’em by the…“, maybe because he was so lame that he forgot saving the finished tune and delivered an unfinished preview. And, yes, party greetings to all he talked to.

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!

…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!