Infofile by Cthulu
Infofile by Cthulu
This infofile was composed mainly as a personal essay to exorcise nostalgic
ghosts premature shades of the Mistigris May Music Madness spree of 2015,
where I not only share written recollections of my teenage soundtrack, but
also re-release the music shared publicly on everything2.com my post-
artscene creative focus for a few years nearly 12 years ago down to the week,
Mon May 05 2003. Though there is much empty speculation and scholarship
within that is dubious, its bones are good and as an outside overview on its
subject, it will likely never be surpassed. So without further ado, I
present: the past, reflecting upon the still further distant past. And soon
this re-release and yea, this updated infofile will become part of someones
memories as well. But Im digressing even before I begin...
Euphonics can be considered from the Greek euphony, meaning beautiful
sound. Disagree with my armchair etymology? To my critics I respond only:
You Phony! I dont know how appropriately that translation is retained with
its early-90s phonetic restyling, but there was certainly something beautiful
about what they were doing with sounds.
/ A New Electric Dimension! / /
About a year ago Ed. -- 2002 I inadvertently offended a foxy lady DJ at an
event shed been kind enough to invite me to when I shared with her my
roommates view on drum n bass: to wit, that it sounds like an archaic,
outmoded conception of what someone in 89 thought the music of the future
would sound like... outmoded not only because we are not that future, but
because -- as with the pairing of Wendy Carlos classical-Moog soundtrack to A
Clockwork Orange -- that future will never come to pass.
But who listens to dnb? For me, the anarchic outsider techno stylings of
EuphoniX will forever be that falsely prophetic clairaudience, sounds
clambering back up the ages widdershins to my pubescent crossroads of
potentiality from an anticipated millennial shift that was a bit more William
Gibson and a bit less Irvine Welsh.
The details are not well known. Despite an historical passing acquaintance
with some of its onetime members, my primary research sources are comments
crammed into sample name fields - a medium marginally less useful in its
comprehensibility than liner note in-jokes and yearbook picture captions. The
story begins and finishes well, goes on still and still, still! with one
Jovian Francey, at various times aka Luminance, dust, Sentience, Yohimbe and
Math Genius. By age 15, in 1991, he had begun releasing to the general online
public 4-channel ProTracker .MODules - original compositions and remixes -
created on his Amiga, a vital multimedia stepping-stone platform carrying
through the irrepressibly devious and creative traditions of the earlier C64
scene on to the nascent PC demoscene.
Somewhere along the line, presumably thanks to contact information contained
among the song releases, he found himself part of a close community of local
and international new music enthusiasts whose activities hub seemed to be the
Wizard On-Line BBS run by Roger and Sarah Earl - coincidentally itself well-
connected with the good folks at Wimsy, area code 604s first real taste of
non-academic InterNet access. Over the course of the fateful year 1992 Jovian
began associating the word EuphoniX with his releases - and whether intended
as description, aesthetic aspiration, to denote affiliation or to suggest
release by some nebulous sole-proprietor non-physical record company, by the
end of 1992 two more Amiga-tracking locals were also to be found namechecking
each other and namedropping EuphoniX membership1 in their releases: Op of
Tekna Darren Grant, aka /3eaver and later fingers, and Tomasz Szymanski, aka
Marauder and now going just under his first name.
If Jovians early tunes could be considered a baseline midpoint of musicality,
Darrens style pulled strongly towards more consummately crafted conventional,
melody/harmony interplay the partnership with Tomasz which long outlasted
the viability of the EuphoniX entity instead plumbed the then-underexplored
possibilities of gradual rhythmic complexity in loop-based composition. By
1993, The Year It All Came Together, this tripartite continuum had been all
shot to shit and back by the introduction of the DArtagnan to these musical
Musketeers, Jason Johannson aka JaZz, whose geeky chaotic Atari Teenage
Riotous technique cant be adequately summed up in words - suffice it to say
that when I stormed down into the basement computer room in an occasional
adolescent foul mood it was invariably his songs I would blast up through the
floorboards cranked up to 11, not only because they - like my hormone-fogged
life - seemed unpredictable and making no sense, but because here at last was
something that was guaranteed to irritate my parents no matter how open-minded
a face they put on. Jason must have had a sound in mind and worked towards it,
because what he produced cant be easily considered derivative of anything
thats come before beyond a wild, intense Fauvist techno sensibility.
Influencing and directly collaborating with each other, these years were
tremendously fruitful for the musicians, seeming in a sense to tap into a
legacy as inheritors of the Nettwerk-nurtured Vancouver electronic music
zeitgeist that produced Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, Delerium, Download,
Perfume Tree and Tinmen the latter with whom they formed close ties - remixes
were and to this day continue to be profligate among the ensembles onetime
crews. But something about the sample-heavy but vocal-free synthesis
dense, fast and a little naive of inspiration they drew from industrial,
new wave, techno and burgeoning rave2 styles engendered a community unto
their own of early and longtime adherents, fans, imitators and disciples,
including locals:
* Adrienne Prat aka Voi the Analogue Cat: onetime SysOp of Transient Lunacy
and formerly musico-romantically entangled with Jovian, she now produces and
releases electronic Mineral Music under the abbreviated moniker Adri at
mineralmusic.com
* David Riley: originator of EuphoniXs tradition of smoov ascii art logos -
though his enthusiastic Amiga style isnt represented here, all ascii in this
node from the keyboard of Jovian himself - and also seemingly the sole
solitary uploader of every existent in 2003 remaining EuphoniX .MOD on
neglected and forgotten FTP sites worldwide, seemingly the only man online
besides myself to remember that these musicians ever existed
* Shawn Thomas aka Lofwyr: a man whose own compositions at times Elvis is
Dead, 5th Dimension suggested that hed been indeed drinking deep of the same
draught ... and at other times Brain Blues suggested that hed fatally
spiked his punch with goofball juice
* and the often-greeted David Toews of Trideja, what EuphoniX might well have
been had they been based on Atari hardware rather than Amiga.
Period .MODs by Voi and Lofwyr have been included in this collection in the
bonus subdirectory.
Retroactively boasting somewhat bogus-ly of having been one of the first
exclusively computer-based in terms of sound generation and distribution
music groups, the ensemble not only enjoyed an international fan base among
stubborn Amiga-clingers what they like, they like A LOT courtesy of the
inclusion of their music on an AmiNet CD distribution, but like any demo or
ansi art group they also enjoyed a small network of BBS distribution sites, at
its greatest extent including:
Corrosion BBS : 604 324-9168 14.4
Depeche Node BBS : 604 874-2986 14.4
Cyber Dome BBS : 604 534-7387 14.4
Tekna BBS : 604 857-8871 2400MNP5
Transient Lunacy : 604 261-2797 2400
Wizard On-Line 2400 : 604 322-3232
2400 : 604 322-3266
v.32bis: 604 322-3972
and despite my greatest ankle-biting efforts conspicuously not The Screaming
Tomato. A pretty unnecessary disclaimer follows: dont bother calling the
above phone numbers since despite the bizarre longevity of 604s dialup BBS
community all of these nonetheless are long since defunct and their numbers
since recycled and reassigned - please keeping in mind this all was by now
TWO decades ago 8
The bounty of 1993 lay rotting in the fields as EuphoniX made a very uneasy
transition in the mid-90s from stride-finding tracking group - contemporary
to the perihelia of the likes of u4ia, Dr. Awesome, Maelcum and Future Crew -
to abortive compilation-appearing demotape-distributing studio band to lean,
mean live PA musicians. In September of 1993, still over a year prior to
Mistigris first release, EuphoniX performs at Vancouvers legendary
Commodore Ballroom as part of the release party for the Synaesthesia
compilation of Vancouver techno they appear on, followed by an appearance on
MuchWest TV. Tempers flared to punctuate these growing pains halting to re-
tune drum samples in the studio while the meters running is fine after youve
got the record contract, the technology that brought them together stripped
away as revolutionary electronic music tools grew more available and
affordable... and by the end of it two of the members had parted ways from the
new core of Jovian and Tomasz - re-branded first as Urban Shade then Drop
Modulation, performing sets with the TeamLounge crew and eventually releasing
a criminally-underpromoted album, Elementary. For the time being, Jovian and
Tomasz seem to have split ways - Mr. Francey now as of 2003 producing
dubtech material under the name Dyscotopia, and later, a solo release --
apparently lost forever -- entitled PLUR My Ass
The years seem to have been happy enough to wear the marks EuphoniX made to
dust, illegibility and obscurity, as a result of which their songs are
somewhat tricky to find. But the holes they punched in my musical
sensibilities are still weeping serum, if no longer bleeding, and as far as I
can tell my hard drive is the single largest remaining repository of this
material anywhere in the world. THIS CLEARLY IS UNSUSTAINABLE IN THE LONG
TERM, AND SO I SHARE IT ALL WITH THE WORLD ONCE MORE. EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW
AGAIN! Im reluctant, after all this, to do so for fear of revelation that
the reason EuphoniX was the soundtrack to my growing up was more to do with my
growing up and less to do with any quality intrinsic to its soundtrack, that
what Ive chosen to interpret as a refreshing and glorious eschewing of
clichs might more be more straightforwardly understood as dissonance, and
that anyone post-Rebirth might not appreciate that any occasionally-uninspired
loops they may have employed in their mixes they had to laboriously arrange
and deliberately, manually paste in time and again! But without letting you
hear the sounds of this past-future that was never to be, all these writings
would be nothing more than directionless, introverted and incomprehensible
nostalgic meanderings.
The standard .MOD-playing disclaimer follows: while WinAmp 2014: try VLC
will play some acceptable interpreted abstraction of the music information to
some medium degree of precision and accuracy, it is highly recommended
listeners make some effort to play the tunes through Impulse Tracker or
SchismTracker or ModPlug, assuming they cant find an Amiga in working order
and fire up ProTracker 8
Streams of more recent offerings from Jovian and Tom and a healthy slice of
their subdued sense of humor could be found through respective websites
dedicated to their projects and CBC 3s New Music Canada initiative also dig
on the links there to Fidgital and Adri:
but the only one that appears to be working in 2015 is
Drop Modulation - http://members.tripod.com/dropmodulation/
And now for a fond look back...
/ / O
// - / - dus.
DISCOGRAPHY:
Pre-EuphoniX, 91 to mid 92: release dates largely unknown but sequence
known due to a sequential up-to-that-point release listing in Altitude.
Unfortunately that listing directly contradicts some embedded release dates,
making for some confusion.
??.07.92 - Journey, by Jovian. Date given is its release date sample message
claims it was composed in 01.91 This was my first module. Not too
exciting, is it?
??.??.?? - Pribbles.lha, by Jovian. Song name unknown, all we have to go on
here is the filename. location unknown, presumed extinct.
??.??.?? - Radio-Ex.mod, by Jovian. No known copies, but judging from the
filename we can speculate that this finds itself remixed at least
twice later on.
??.??.?? - Final Exam, by Jovian. No internal mention anywhere yet of EuphoniX.
21.06.92 - Extatic Acid, by Jovian.
??.??.?? - Parkmix.mod, by Jovian. Apologies for the bass-ackward filename
convention, Commodore zealots I understand that native Amigastyle
would have these presented as mod.Parkmix, but in the contemporary
era I am expecting file access on PCs and invert the filename and
extension to fit. location unknown, presumed extinct.
??.??.?? - FTL.mod, by Jovian. location unknown, presumed extinct.
??.09.92 - Decay, by Jovian. An okay tune, I suppose. Composed seven
months prior to release.
??.??.?? - DReality.mod, by Jovian. location unknown, presumed extinct.
Proto-Euphonic miasma - coagulating in 92:
14.02.92 - Altitude, by Jovian with credit extended to Karen Cheung. Self-
filed under Detroit ambience or Transce a synthesis of the words
Dance, Trance and Transcend. First recorded appearance of
the name EuphoniX Jovian, Darren and Tom listed as members in
embedded text file. Nothing is ever heard from Karen again. 2015:
Jovian clarifies -- An interesting fact is that Karen Cheung was
non-existent, at least as far as that mod goes. She was a girl at
Churchill I had a brief discussion about music with and a mild
crush on. I wasnt aware of any female trackers at the time so
thought breaking the gender barrier would be cool and encourage
other women to get involved. Neither me nor my girly alter ego were
aware that transce sic was actually a thing.
??.03.92 - ModulectriX, by Tomasz. File under energetic dance. Makes mention
of the EuphoniX name, unlike the next several releases, suggesting
a certain revisionism in Altitude or lackadaisically self-promoting
attitude among members until 93.
??.07.92 - 1 by 1, by Jovian, credited to Luminance of Triclone with no
mention of EuphoniX, having been sat on for 10 months prior to
release. Dedicated to the Legacy Lords.
11.07.92 - Trip On This, by Jovian as Luminance, again with no mention of
EuphoniX.
29.12.92 - Domin8R, by Jovian, taking 9 days to re-remix a version of Modan
and Maelcum of KLFs 3 remix of the tune by Human Resource. Still
no mention of EuphoniX.
??.??.92 - Clockwork Dreams, by Darren. Still mum on affiliation.
??.??.?? - Akira Rave - Apocalyptic NeoTokyo Mix, by Tomasz. No mention of
EuphoniX, and clearly pre-dating Akira Rave II -- I could make up a
date, but wheres the fun in that? Of all EuphoniX songs it should
be noted this and its remix can be reasonably predicted to persist
in circulation the longest, thanks to continuing and ongoing fandom
of the manga and its anime adaptation.
19.02.93 - Gemini part I, by Jason, greeting his future collaborators but not
yet naming their group.
EuphoniX the .MOD group, 93 to 94 and on:
16.01.93 - Narcosis, by Tomasz. File under ambient techno.
??.02.93 - Akira Rave II - the Pray for a Sequel remix, by Tomasz. File
under hardcore.
??.02.93 - Naked After Dark, by Jason. File under kinda trashy, mostly mellow.
EuphoniX named, if not credited.
21.02.93 - Mystic Valour, by Darren. File under medieval new age.
28.02.93 - Stroll Thru New York, by Darren. File under humourous new age theme
music.
??.04.93 - Incognite, by Darren - on a bit of a spree. File under new age.
03.04.93 - Radio Exorcist II - Heretic mix, by Jovian. File under house
ambient.
26.05.93 - Welcome to the Future - Brazil mix, by Jovian, remixing Eskimos in
Egypt. File under hardcore.
??.05.93 - Pandemic Predator, by Tomasz. File under violent hardcore.
03.06.93 - Synesthesia, by Tomasz. File under very experimental techno.
06.06.93 - What is Love?, by Tomasz. File under deep core techno.
09.06.93 - Digital Distress, by Jason in his first appearance as EuphoniX
member. File under hardcore techno.
07.08.93 - NUMB-r14, collaborated between Jason, Jovian and Tomasz. File under
solemn ambience.
26.08.93 - Temporal Modulus, by Tomasz. File under acid house, or as his
sample message would have it - CRAZY acid tEchno from thE wEst
coast!
23.09.93 - Thursday Night in the City, by Jovian. File under fast hard cyber.
In the sample messages he points out that the date of this release
was, in fact, a Thursday.
15.10.93 - Inherit the Stars, by Jason. File under experimental industrial
ambient techno, and find that the description only barely scratches
the surface.
10.11.93 - Runaway, by Tomasz. File under hardcore cyber.
08.12.93 - Pandemix Predator - extended revenge mix, remix by Tom and Jovian
of Toms earlier Pandemic Predator. File under extended hardcore
experimental.
??.??.93 - Visitors, by Jason, sampling the Lawnmower Man and Vampire Hunter D
a decade before it might be taken to be fashionable. File under
dark hardcore breakbeat.
08.01.94 - Dionysia, by Tomasz. File under deep house.
15.02.94 - Entropy, by Jovian. File under chaotic techno industrial.
26.04.94 - Night of the Living Hoovers, by Jason, in an attempt to reclaim
the overused and oft-abused Belgian hoover. File under experimental
acid.
29.07.94 - Oracle I or its full name: Oracle within sun rising... elements
of sky, by Tomasz. File under minimal ambience.
26.08.94 - Future Chakra, by Jovian. File under murky experimental hardcore.
17.09.94 - otesnpyneneidells, by Darren - and the last and IMHO best we hear
out of him. File under smooth moody techno.
03.10.94 - Hoi Polloi, by Tomasz. File under care-free bouncey beat.
05.10.94 - Modulus 2, by Tomasz, remixing his earlier Temporal Modulus theme.
File under hardcore acid techno or, if you prefer further detail,
Tom notes mixed with a little Force Mass Motion and a little
classic Sven Vath.
25.10.94 - Dormez-Vous?, by Jovian. File under tribal industrial ambient
techno.
??.??.94 - Coming of Wisdom - A Lapse of Momentum, by Jason. File under
hardcore techno house.
03.03.95 - Modulus 3 - African Shadow Mix, by Tomasz further remixing Temporal
Modulus. File under fast tribal acid. This track was one of two
EuphoniX tunes representing them on the 604 Music Disk presented at
NAiD 96.
03.03.95 - Vinyl 1 - Girl called Party mix, by Tomasz. File under sweet
chippy, lotsa beats.
14.10.95 - Rave95 - EuphoniX mix, by Tomasz, improbably remixing local Admiral
Skuttlebutt of Digitallusions.
??.??.95 - Night of the Living Hoovers - better late than chia remix, - by
Sidewinder of Jasons earlier tune. File under experimental acid,
not being by an actual member this is not considered an official
release. It is, however, wicked awesome.
??.??.95 - All That Serenity, by Jovian. Written for Mistigris, but also sat
on for Quite Some Time to represent EuphoniX in 1996s 604 Music
Disk.
??.??.?? - JungleModulus.MED, presumably by Tom, presumably the 4th mix of
Temporal Modulus, presumably given the advanced file format
released sometime in the late 90s. This advanced file format is
actually so rarified I cant figure out how to crack it open so as
to access its sweet nutmeat!
Euphonics in 3-D! 96-97:
A cassette demo, entitled -8-, had been plugged a few times as containing 45
minutes of sonic mayhem and mysticism and including 6 enhanced remixes of
some of our favorite module releases as well as an exclusive remix of a track
on our hopefully upcoming CD. Despite the most egregious excesses of my
slavish fanboy devotion I could find no evidence of such a tape or the CD.
Jovian, 2014: Im pretty sure 8 was a thing. I remember the cases art had
the euphonix logo skewed to look like an 8. Tomasz: Yeah, 8 was a thing.
In our New Media Productions project the 604 Music Disk, brought to the 1996
installment of the NAiD demoparty to represent the area code in all its sonic
glories, the EuphoniX group bio talks up an album the aforementioned CD?, A
Little Night Music, held up by a record label and hence being distributed by
the composers also on audiocassette through mail-order: a full-length album
spanning 72 minutes and 11 songs. ... While we like to think ourselves unique,
the 11 songs touch on aspects of techno, trance, ambient, trip-hop, house, and
even electro. During the reunion informing the Mistigris 20th anniversary
reunion artpack creation, Zinc of Radiance fame delivers Cthulu a copy of this
album -- literally dub 2 of a limited-release run of 100. Suddenly the
possibility of a re-master is back on the table, but not in time for this
collection today. Keep your ears open, true believers!
Still another cassette demo was compiled and released under the name Now More
Than Ever, featuring No Added Fat, Crustacean, a beefed-up mix of Radio
Exorcist and breakthrough college radio chart-topper Lets Get Out of These
Monkey Suits, placing in the 17th position on CiTRs weekly most-played
singles list the week of September 5, 1997 - below Miranda Julys 10 Million
Hours a Mile and Neko Cases The Virginian, but ahead of Millencolins For
Monkeys and the Planet Smashers Attack of the Planet Smashers. Included,
yknow, to lend a flavour of the musical context into which these tunes were
set free 8
With one exception4 the release of this tape seemed to mark a clean split of
Jovian and Tom, moving towards live music performance, from Darren and Jason,
who seemed content to compose in relative isolation abstracted from the
physical and realtime response of their audience. Was the split a matter of
rockstar egos? Perhaps a realisation that only live performance was where one
could also manage to make a living making the music one loved? Whatever was
ultimately the case, nothing further was released under the EuphoniX
imprint.
// // // // // / // // - Since 1992
Footnotes, really? Is there even a precedent for that in infofiles? What is
this, hypertext? Thats it, Im leaving!
1 N-FORCE-E, AxXaun Flight and AlchemiX appeared to be other, similar labels
or affiliations about which I know less than nothing breathlessly flung
around by the same parties in those heady times, but rarely making more than
one or two appearances each. The EuphoniX name persisted.
2 Though their early work doesnt share much of an audible tie to rave
musics of the time, awareness and exposure manifests in expressions of
solidarity in their sample name messages - from Rave 4 Peace, Peace and
XTC and Temporal Modulus missive entirely with the ExcEption of onE lEttEr
in lower case gradually maturing to more relatively profound dogmatic
hyperbole such as E equals MIND * CREATIVITY to the POWER of INFINITY to,
eventually, performing at the smaller parties North American raves had by then
turned into.
3 This is of course the notorious tracking group KLF - Krunchy Like Frogs,
not the Kopyright Liberating Ancients of Mumu.
4 04.25.97 - Promise.mmd3, by Jason. File under flowy, spacey, dark and
crazy. Comments included in the song notes have the feel of a message found in
a bottle, thrown into the tides by the castaway sole survivor of a shipwreck.
As you can tell, there really hasnt been any new material from us for quite
some time. Well this might be because as far as I can tell, Im the only one
left writing mods. Tis a shame but not surprising... EuphoniX has split into
basically 2 entities over the years. EuphoniX the Mod making group and
Euphonics the studio band if you will. Quite frankly I havent a clue as to