Finally! pro.tect is a lovingly prepared collection of Syphus’ work from 2007 to 2011 – almost entirely unheard, outside of his live shows. Though the tracks have been mastered for more ear-friendly and mp3-friendly listening, they were all made using AHX (Amiga), HivelyTracker (Amiga), Protracker (Amiga) and FastTracker2/MilkyTracker (PC).
(Dull bit coming up - no need to read this)
This album’s a fairly long time in coming. Since Greatest Bits, which saw a very limited physical CD release (until the box of CDs was stolen from the merch table on the second Chiptune Alliance tour – which made it even more limited!), I’ve somewhat wound down the number of live Syphus gigs I do. That’s for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is that I’m a gigging musician by profession and I find it harder and harder to get the time for Syphus gigs the way I used to. Also, I feel strongly that Syphus as a live act existed in a certain heady moment of UK live chipmusic frenzy and while whipping out the electric violin/electric guitar/keytar was a lot of fun and very popular with audiences, it also runs quite contrary to the mood I wanted for this album.
I got my first Amiga at the age of 9 and chipmusic has always been about finding a wider creative connectedness through a solitary and hermetic mode of practice; namely, spending rainy Sunday afternoons lost in the worlds and galaxies thrown open to me by my Amiga, its games, the demoscene and Protracker.
I have no doubt I’ll continue to give live Syphus performances in the future, and while I could easily have laced this album with extraneous instrumentation, I know deep down that those performative gimmicks don’t have a place in a work which needed to be all about musing on those lost moments of youthful optimism and imaginative hope, forged under the burning CRT glow of my heroes’ cracktro pixels.
I hope you enjoy this album, which can be previewed for free on Bandcamp and then downloaded for £5 if you like it. If you buy the full album, as well as getting high quality mp3/FLAC/etc files and the full-size cover art, you’ll also get 3 bonus tracks! Purists will notice that I’ve done some post-production on these modules: I’ve taken some care to ensure that the average listener gets the most pleasing balance of frequencies and dynamic range without compromising the unique characteristics of the software techniques used to create them. That’s why, although replayer interpolation is still strictly off-limits, the overall sound is less grating on the ear when played through an mp3 player or on a big sound system.
Also: keep an eye out over the next few months for a remastered re-release of Greatest Bits!
Thanks for reading!
Last edited by syphus (May 13, 2011 4:14 pm)
I wrote my Hively stuff when I had an 060 (I sold it not long ago), and Hively needs the 060 mainly to run its GUI and large screen resolution - the multichannel software mixing probably doesn't need quite as much power, but there's little point running Hively on anything less. Actually, even with an 060 there's a lot of lag on the keys, etc. But consider that it was originally coded for AmigaOS, running on 233mhz+ PPCs with video cards etc. - the version for classic Amiga is a port that buzz^exotica made after I nagged xeron for aaaages to give him the sourcecode ;D