preromanbritain release #1
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First the hard sell:

We split the release in half. As my name is gwEm I had the E side. We made the other side the K side because kingKas has a K in it. There is no other reason for this - no siree. None at all.

The rest of the page is a description of the music and artwork, we consider both as being equally important.

The Tracks

E Side
All the tracks on side E are by me (gwem)

1 - FYMW
Think punk rock, but with rave beats and a 1980s synth bassline.

I wrote this jolly little opus in honour of my former boss, but I hope all office workers should see where I'm coming from. This is the real reason for putting the record out - revenge!!

Happily, but unexpectedly, an MP3 of this track got uploaded to the micromusic database - so you can try before you buy!

2 - Tune 4 My Broken Atari (authentic mix)
Imagine an early 90s rave track, made using the sounds from an Atari ST.

This track has a bit of a history... I wrote it on my PC using FastTracker with 4 tracks. I took the samples from XLR8 running on the AtariST emulator WinSTon. I basically wrote it as a hardcore rave track, and I called it '8Bit Hardcore'. I tried uploading it to the cool community of micromusic in March 2001 but this failed ;-< Later I got talking to the crew on the site and Komatrohn (from the Dead Guys) suggested it might be because my MP3s were not encoded correctly and gave me the link for an alternative tool - which hasn't given me any problems, so big up Komatrohn! I uploaded it again just after the London micro_festival, re-encoded using the other coder and under the title of 'tune 4 my broken atari' to get a sympathy vote (my Atari had actually just broken, but I fixed it later). It got uploaded into their database and became a number 2 smash hit!

My other Atari chiptune 'full on!' did better than 'tune 4...', but I think that this was because 'full on!' was written and recorded on a real Atari, where as 'tune 4...' was done using fake_style samples and made full use of 4 tracks. Frankly as an Atari geek this was embarrasing, and I hated having to explain this to everyone. So to regain my personal integrity I wrote down every note of the tune on to paper and transferred it to one of my Ataris, running the MusicMon2 software that drx (from Bodenstandig 2000) had swapped with me. I had to do some tricky shit to get it down to 3 tracks let me tell you! Of course my first release had to have some Atari stuff on, so when we decided to do it I selected the my authentic mix of 'tune 4...', that I think is the best chip tune I've done (which isn't saying much I know). You can download the original version from micromusic in MP3 format. The authentic mix is not that different, only the sounds and tempo have changed.

K Side
All the tracks on side K are by KingKas. He thought it would be really cool to be mysterious about his songs, so he censored what I wrote.

1 - EuroBlast
Kas describes ---- ----- -- ----- '--- --- -------'... ----- it --, --- --- ---- ---- ------ up.

KingKas goes to me 'I only care about the artwork, we'll put any old crap on to the record - how about this...' --- ---- ------ -- --- -----. -- immediate -------- --- - '-- --- --- --------- ----!' --- ----- was - ----- ---- ------, ------ ------- --- ---- ------- ---------. - ----- --- -------- --- ------, -------- --- KingKas, ------------ --- ------ ---- --- ---- ---- --------- ------. --- ---- - ------ -- ------- --- ----- -- -- --, -- -- --- -- --- --- ----- -- ---- ---- ------ -- --------------. -- ---- --- everyone was happy with the result, --- ----- ---- ------.

The title of this track comes from ---- ------- - --- -- -- --- - --- -- ----- --- - '------- Euro ---' -- --, --- --- ----- --- --- '----Blast' -- ---- --- ---- Kas redid the vocals to say 'Euro City' to fit in with the title.

2 - Hulk
A- ------ ----------- track.

---- --- --- ----- ---- ------- -- ------- -- --- ------- --- ------- ----- ------. It took about 20 minutes. --- -------- --- ---- -- -- -------- ----- 2 ----- ---, --- recently from the tape ---- -------- --- -- -- --- -- --. --- ------- --- ------ ----- --- -- ----- --------'- ------ -------- - --- ---- -- ----- -- -- - - ---, --- you ----'- really tell.

The Art
I've got to admit, KingKas really knows how to PhotoShop.... "I'm really into bad PhotoShopping", he told me, "Its really easy to make it look good, but it actually takes alot of effort to make it look like you don't know what your doing. Alot of people's images have blatantly been PhotoShopped, I really like that effect - so I make it even more blatant".

K Side
Cover
I think KingKas used all his PhotoShop skillz to make this... From the number of layers the image has it certainly looks like it.

Label
This label design is KingKas' hand which he wrote on and scanned in. Then it was PhotoShopped. He did explain to me how this was done, but I didn't really understand. It has to do with lots of colour changes and lens flares.

E Side
Cover
The artwork on my side of the record was created using my Atari ST and a text editor which allowed VT52 terminal codes to be encoded in the text. When you view the text file from the Atari desktop it is passed though the Atari STs built-in VT52 emulator - and you get the full BBS effect! I grabbed the screen and converted it to a 2 colour GIF. It took me about 3 hours to make the file - so appreciate it!

KingKas then created the wicked glowing effect in minutes - using his PhotoShop skillz!

Label
I drew out on to paper what I wanted Kas to photoshop for my label, and actually it looked quite good. So I drew several versions. The Atari logo was actually Kas's idea so bigup! We scanned it in and did some PhotoShop stuff to it. By chance we realised it actually looks quite punk rock, we didn't mean it to.

(c)gwem 2002
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