Depth

Ah yes … You will of course all know that Depth turned 25 years old this summer/autumn (in 2018). Some members in the Copenhagen area (that would be Curt Cool, Nightsight, Bakerman, Gizmoduck, Trip, Folcka and our former member LPN. Of the founding members (Curt, Nightsight, Gizmoduck, Folcka, Quedax), only Quedax was missing.) had a little meeting where they basically played a few old games, discussed some of their new creations, including the above remix of the 25 year old traditional Depth picture. And afterwards, there was beer. And then … More beer. Of course, it was the idea to make a 25 year celebration intro of sort, but that (as usual ?) hit the rocks. Photo and sound footage from the event not available due to the behaviour and conversation of the individuals involved. We think of the children, you know. And the mothers.

On another note, should you not have had enough of christmas, you can listen to the annual musical christmas card from Curt Cool. He and Cytron also contributed to the two latest issues of Chiperia – that would be no. 9 and 10 which were released simultaneously at Compusphere 2018 due to delays which – for once – had nothing to do with us. Really! Earlier on, in August, Curt had already made the music for a Greetztro by Nah-Kolor, released at Datastorm 2018.

And finally, a little release: Apparently, Paithan has been working on a Pico-8 game which was missing some music, and so, we decided to make it a Depth production. So go on and Ski or Die.

Or just merry xmas and a massively delayed TRSAC update. Because Mr. Cool and Mr. Presence attended TRSAC again this year. In fact, they went straight to hell. And had fun. And beer. As usual, Curt released some tunes. And wasn’t particularly succesful, regarding achieving golden, silver or even bronze ducks in the competitions. And thus is a victim of racial and musical bias. And is allowed to cry and complain about it on social media.

I mean, competing against all these other white males who does much more modern electronic music. It’s so hard these days, being old and out of fashion. A good kick in the balls would probably suit him.

But of course, you like these tunes. Or maybe you don’t, but depth.org provides you with the opportunity:

Skanxx Loucid (made at TRSAC, disqualified for the acid competition)

Technologueology (actually made for Revision but released at TRSAC streaming music competition – came dead last)

Hell Well Hidden (came 4th in the tracked music competition)

This aside, Curt also managed to contribute to Chiperia 8, with the tune The Sickening. And says merry christmas with this conversion from a mod from 2001.

Same procedure as every year? Could be, though Revision is not quite Groundhog Day as of yet. People even seem to be getting older and nobler, at least judging by looks, though we can’t be quite sure regarding their behaviour and mentality. Anyway, once again, Mr. Cool visited Revision 2017 during Easter (yes, Easter tradition it is) and even brought some releases himself. In the close races of the music competitions, he made 7th place in the 32k Newschool Executable Music Competition with “Quaint Love” (which is really 3k, using Oidos VST by Blueberry/Loonies – and Renoise), 9th in the 32k Oldschool Executable Music Competition with “Cintustrial” (which is really a 2.4k Amiga exe, using Cinter VST by Blueberry/Loonies – and Protracker) and 7th in the Tracked Music Competition with “Firerider” (Protracker module). Not to forget, him & Cytron also contributed to Chiperia #7, the latest issue of the fine and all-Amiga-scene-dominating chippack, you all love. As the sole member attending, some greetings to my Swedish, Dutch, Croatian, German, Norwegian, Danish, Belgian, French, Finnish, British, Hungarian, Swiss and Polish friends. The demoscene is really way less bureaucratic than the EU, you know. And you can have beer and even give away beer there and people might even like it. So who cares about the rest? Ah, wait …

Oh my… It’s been a while, though not a while of total inactivity on our Amiga scene behalf. To take your mind off America going mad (or being haxxored), here’s some impressions of TRSAC 2016, from the dear Mr. Cool who (in the company of Presence and many other friends) attended this very traditional Danish autumn demoscene event as usual held in the beautiful city of Århus. Which he as usual did not see much of, being caught up with a bunch of farting, drunken nerds who seem to be very good at producing children these days – not at the actual party though. He also had the pleasure of being part of the winning oldskool demo, Badabing by Focus Design (Amiga AGA) though with a module (that’s a piece of music in Amiga 4 channel format, ed.) that Corial had dug up from the most deep, dark and faraway basements of a shady past. He also released a module in the tracked music competition, entitled Scared Shitless, which came 4th in the competition. Not too sad, considering his general inability to stand up (caused by heavy vodka inebriation) set in right before the prize ceremony. On another note, he and Cytron had chiptunes in Chiperia #5 and Chiperia #6, working with Amiga scene legends as Dan, Facet and Blueberry. So get watching and take your mind off the orange haired mushroom cloud, some fools have elected. Or alternatively, just have some pepperschnaps.

Ahem, yeah, that headline is a load of b*ll*cks, isn’t it? But the truth remains still. A very small part of it to be revealed here is however that Curt & Cytron was at Revision 2016. For Mr. Cool, this was quite usual, whereas it was splendid to see Cytrons comeback (says Mr. Curt, who benefitted from Cytron keeping fairly sober and being able to escort Mr. Cool to wherever he can’t remember now due to some intake of something). Naturally, we met with our good demoscene friends in Insane, Chiperia, Loonies, Moods Plateau, TRSI, Traktor, BooZombies, Pacific and surely plenty of others – even had one or two beers with them (each person). We also RELEASED something, as this party saw the long awaited release of Coolism 2, featuring code by Skurk, music by Curt Cool, graphics by Corel/Insane (cough, cough, Sprock) and text by various Depth members. As if that wasn’t enough, Cytron decided to release a new celebration of our love for the dear Darkhawk/IRIS, “I Still Love Darkhawk” – it didn’t fare too well in the streaming music competition and neither did Curt’s “Ghost City Street” (in the tracked music competition) or “Back in Space” (in the old school music competition using Blueberrys Cinter VST Softsynth). But we think they’re mostly awesome anyway. Though the authors will be guillotined shortly. Although Curt had a little success as he did the music for “Revolution” by Nah-Kolor which came 2nd in the Amiga intro competition. Anyway, thanks to the organizers and everyone for yet another great party. Stay in Awesome, don’t join Tired.

It has been that time again, as in TRSAC time, which means that Curt Cool  & Presence went to TRSAC in Aarhus. This year, the party had grown a bit, which means that about 150 people from all over Europe were present. Curt was awarded silver and bronze ducks for his efforts “Underpants Funk” and “Sail Ho, Spaceship” (executable music with sounds created with Blueberry’s Cinter resulting in a 1972 bytes amiga exe) and was also in the GERP spinoff chippack from The Chiperia Project. Once again a well organized party with a friendly atmosphere, nice meeting you again friends and leek aficionados. Stay off the chili-schnapps, it will burn your brain (if all the other stuff doesn’t).

And check out Mr. Cool’s Youtube where you can find some mods and other stuff from past years – not necessarily put up there by the man himself.

As it did not seem possible to transport our dignified luxury middleeaged bodies to Sweden this time around, we had to participate some other way – so Mr. Curt composed the music (using Cinter, Blueberrys VST softsynth) for the Loonies 20-year slideshow “Painted Memories” which came third in a rather long Amiga demo competition – and participated in chipmusic competition with “Hip Skip’s Hip Chips” (try and say that quickly after 15 beers). Thus, I (Curt) was there in spirit – hopefully next time, Blueberry, Corial and the rest!

Ah yes, there was this demoparty back in april … It was called Revision and was held in Falling… Bing…. ah no, Saarbrücken (prostitution capital of Europe). Curt Cool is a regular at these things, and this time chose to fly to Luxembourg (which is quite close to Saarbrücken) and meet up with a certain Crown/Cryptoburners who he is involved in making AMP with. So, him & Psycho/Loonies went to Luxembourg on a cheap flight with a very small jet with room for 50 people, and later on Crown drove them to Saarbrücken.

At the party place, there was … beer! And women! And thus ends the party report … No, wait:

As such, Curt wasn’t really planning anything, but had brought a 4 channel mod, which came 7th in a very tight competition with some quite awesome people. He also found time to make a shitty oldskool executable module using Blueberrys quite fabulous Amiga OCS/ECS VST synth and another one for this 4k intro by BooZombies – thanks Adellan & Super-Hans for letting me in on it, because, regardless of its position in the compo, it was actually pretty fine. Always a pleasure!

Also, of course, greets to the Amiga table – Bonefish & Psycho, Blueberry, Triace, Novel & the Moods band, Santa, Virgill, DJ Joge, Hoffman and all of those (most) I forgot to mention or was too drunk to remember now.