Friday Cheese: From someone's bedroom to your ears August 10, 2012
One of the things that I really loved when I got into techno in the early 90's was the DIY aesthetic. It was the anti-overproduced, yet not dischordant like other DIY music that had come before it.
During this time, my other big love was the online world. And we're not talking about the world wide web, this was before that - we're talking the world of the BBS. Most of us, if we actually had a sound card, were rocking an 8-bit soundblaster. It was better than a tinny PC speaker, but compared to today, it was crackly and creaky.
This was the time when I first came across MOD files. Think of it as MIDI's baby brother - MOD tracker files were 4 channel scripts that played various audio bits and plinks that were stored in the file. These MOD files would get shared out bit by bit, as folks would download from one BBS, and upload it to another, and these files would slowly make their way across the globe.
There were... a lot of not at all good MOD files out there. It was still exciting to be able to listen to music made by strangers this way, but I ended up listening to a lot of crap MOD tracker files. But there were a few out there that were absolutely amazing and golden. One guy in particular who called himself Maelcum (under a group called KLF - no, not THAT KLF), had a reputation for making some amazing songs.
In 1993, Orbital put out their album "Orbital 2". I'd heard some of their music, but it didn't really do anything for me at the time. But I heard a MOD file by this fella Maelcum, and it was his version of a song off of that album called "Lush":
And while I came to love it, I never forgot that tinny version I heard first, and was amazed by.
Nowadays, anyone can put out an MP3 of what they've done. But back then, these little tiny self-contained files that were small orchestras and conductors, all packed into one format... it was amazing.