Commodore Free 40/Commodore_Free_Issue_40_2010_Commodore_Computer_Club.d64/iv mib

Text File | 2023-02-26 | 10KB | 400 lines

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    INTERVIEW WITH MIND.IN.A.BOX
          By Commodore Free
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http://www.mindinabox.com/

Q - Please introduce yourselves to
our readers

Stefan:
Hi Nigel. We are mind.in.a.box. The
project itself consists of Markus
and myself. Markus writes all the
lyrics and works on the background
concept, and I compose and produce
the music and sing the vocals. We
are both from Vienna, Austria, and
R.E.T.R.O is our fourth album.

Q - Can you explain to our readers
what sort of music you produce?

Markus:
Our first three albums were quite
different from R.E.T.R.O. They have
a kind of science fiction story
behind them, which actually connects
all of the albums, and is told in
the lyrics and additional text in
each CD booklet. We try to
interweave the emotions that we want
to convey with the music itself,
with this additional background,
where characters in the world of
mind.in.a.box experience something
that evokes certain feelings in
them. A lot of this is meant as a
metaphor for aspects of the real
world. We really like this duality
-- pure emotions evoked through
music, and an additional science
fiction background. The name
mind.in.a.box itself is a metaphor
for not truly being free in your
mind, not being able to do what your
heart desires to do.

Stefan:
Musically, people often say that we
are doing technopop or maybe
futurepop, but we are not big fans
of genre classifications. Our music
is definitely quite electronic,
which of course is even more
pronounced on R.E.T.R.O. Our latest
album is a homage to the golden
times of home computer and video
games music, especially the
Commodore 64 and its SID chip, as
well as the amazing composers of
those times. We wanted to transform
some of our most favourite tunes
into the present, releasing this
"special" album as a tribute to some
of our C64 heroes.

Q - What makes you unique?

Stefan:
It's hard to say that about
ourselves, but a lot of people have
said, or written in the past that we
have a very unique sound, which at
the same time has a lot of variety,
for example very different vocal
styles, but that also always has a
recognizable signature sound that
people often recognize instantly.

Markus:
We are probably also one of just a
few bands who try to integrate a
larger story background of some kind
into their albums, especially where
not only each album is a kind of
concept by itself, but several
albums are connected together and
you can always look forward to the
next album from a story perspective
as well as the music.

Q - So do you use retro machines in
all your music?

Stefan:
I used to do that, but not anymore.
Markus even designed a SID soundcard
for PCs at school many years ago,
together with a colleague (Mr. SID,
who is well known in the SID music
scene). We thought about using it in
our own music, but nowadays we like
to work as integrated and easy as
possible, instead of integrating too
many different devices that tend to
make everything too complicated.

Markus:
The sound card also needed an ISA
slot, which you cannot find anymore
in PCs that you can buy today.

Q - do you feel emulation or the
real hardware is better,

Stefan:
In general I think real hardware is
always better. Not so much because
of the sound, but I think the main
goal is that you have something in
your hands that you can actually
touch and turn some knobs and
switches; physically play around
with, and of course that you can
also throw at the floor :) I'm
joking! But I really think it is
always better when you can directly
control the sound, without fiddling
with a mouse. When you compare the
real SID chip to emulations, it is
more difficult because without a
physical user interface to begin
with, the only thing you can compare
is the sound, where it used to be
that real hardware always sounded
better but today it's really hard to
hear much difference.

Q - can you list the hardware you
would use to create a " usual Mind
in a box" song

Stefan:
My main Synthesizers are the Roland
JV880, JP8080, Waldorf Pulse,
MicrowaveXT, and a Korg Wavestation
SR.

Q - what hardware did you use to
produce the Album-R.E.T.R.O

Stefan:
In general the same items that are
listed above. For the SID sounds I
have also used the Quadrasid Plugin.

Q - Do you use any real Commodore
equipment in your composing/writing?

Stefan:
Nowadays no, sorry :) I think it
would be too difficult to include in
my music setup. From that
perspective, I can only work when I
can be as efficient and seamless as
possible. For me the production
setup is very important, and I still
try to make it better all the time.
If something isn't working I throw
it away... like an Access Virus TI,
for example, which had so many
amazing bugs that I never could
never get it to work properly even
after numerous firmware updates.

Q - Do you still own any old
Commodores?

Stefan:
No, but Markus has all of them :)

Markus:
I only have a few, but I kept all my
equipment I had in the eighties, and
got some additional stuff over the
years since then. I still like to
put them up from time to time and
play around for a while. There is
nothing better than playing a few
rounds of Winter Games on a real C64.

Q - I presume you are retro gamers?

Markus:
I buy and play; or I should say look
at, a lot of games, and download
retro games. And the new game
console retro download venues like
the Wii Virtual Console will make me
poor one day ;) I love retro gamer
magazines, I was really happy when
more of those started to be produced.

Q - obviously this is a Commodore
dedicated magazine, however some
readers are fond of other machines
to have you any machine related
memories to share with our readers

Markus:
I remember times when I read the
German game magazine ASM almost from
cover to cover, which covered all
the major games machines like the
Spectrum and CPC in addition to
Commodore computers, and later I
always wanted to get an Acorn
Archimedes. But actually, I never
got any of those myself. Nowadays
I'm a big fine of game consoles, and
a big part of that is downloadable
retro content. The Virtual Console
is great, although did I mention
that it is really outrageously
expensive? ;)

Q - How did your music end up on the
soundtrack of the Xbox games?

Stefan:
Someone from the studio who
developed the games asked our label
to include some of our tracks. It
was a real pleasure for us, because
we spent a lot of time in our past
making music for computer games.
Maybe a major part of our childhood
:)

Q - What do you feel was unique
about the SID chip and its sound?

Stefan:
Maybe most of all it's the analogue
filters, which were very unusual for
that time. The sound from this chip
really had something magic, and I
think there were just no computers
out there at that time that could
even remotely compare. It was a true
masterpiece of chip design.

Q - Have you been keeping track of
the C64 remix scene?

Stefan:
Yes, sometimes I'm listening to
remixes on remix.kwed.org or the
great online radio slayradio.org. I
enjoy listening to this kind of
music a lot. Sometimes I listen to
the original SID files, until
someone around me says that I should
turn off this shit... but i love
this shit :)

Q - Have you been inspired by any of
the famous C64 composers?

Stefan:
Of course! I think the musicians
from this area were my first
electronical music heroes. They were
incredible. Rob Hubbard, Reyn
Ouwehand, Chris Hlsbeck, and so
on... they were incredible. Of
course you can notice a certain
correlation to the artists whose
songs we selected for R.E.T.R.O.

Q - What were your favourite C64
games?

Stefan:
Maybe you can see it when you take a
look at the track list of R.E.T.R.O.
I think it was the Last Ninja
series. :)

Markus:
Did I mention Winter Games? Yeah,
the Last Ninja games were terrific.
For me, there are two periods you
could say. When Winter Games came
out, I was just a kid, and so this
is pure nostalgia for me. Starting
with the first Last Ninja, I was at
least feeling much older :)

Q - What apart from the SID chip was
special about the Commodore 64

Stefan:
Everything... ! it was such an
incredibly great machine. It was
like an old car which you could
tune/modify easily. Put a reset
button into it, make the load times
shorter with FastDOS / DolphinDOS.
Lots of people left the floppy drive
case open. Sometimes you loaded
something that had a disk read error
and when you put your fingers on the
drive head you could make it
continue! I think this computer was
one of the last ones where DIY guys
could get by with easy tricks.
Today, if you have a computer
problem you can update your drivers,
software etc. but the connection to
the computer and its problems is
just not there. Everything is much
more complicated today.

Markus:
The photos in the booklet of
R.E.T.R.O, where you can see a C64c
with lots of additional buttons,
LEDs, etc., this is my old C64 that
I modified as a kid, including
putting in a second SID for stereo
sound. The ease with which you could
something like that was amazing. I
even did this crazy potentiometer
that's sticking out at the
back, where you could reduce the
clock frequency smoothly from just
below 1Mhz to zero while it was on.
Or the LEDs on top, they light up
when different memory banks are
accessed. Ha, great :) It was a
machine where you could have the
feeling that you really understand
the hardware down to the smallest
detail, read ROM listings and know
every bit of every register. That's
a feeling I really miss in today's
computers.

Album-R.E.T.R.O
Special album, a tribute to the old
Commodore 64 days.
http://www.mindinabox.com/sounds/main
.php

Release date: 2010-02-26
Tracks: 11
Total play time: 00:53:45

Onlinestores
http://www.mindinabox.com/orderpage/o
rderpage.php
Germany  Amazon.de
Germany  InfraRot
Germany  Poponaut
Germany  Indietective
Germany  Dependent
Spain, France  fnac
Sweden  Hotstuff
Switzerland  ex libris
United Kingdom  MusicNonStop
http://www.musicnonstop.co.uk/product
-view.php?productid=23183 Has MP3
Previews of the tracks
Russia  Popmarket
Russia  Plegion
USA  Amazon.com
USA  Metropolis Mailorder
Canada  Storming The Base
Germany-DownloadStore  Musicload.de
Net  iTunes

Tracklisting
01. Last Ninja 3
02. Lightforce
03. The Last V8
04. Supremacy
05. Shades
06. 8 Bits
07. Mindkiller
08. The Last Ninja
09. I Love 64
10. We Cannot Go Back to the Past
11. Whatever Mattered

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