Every once in a while, Mr. Spiral gets a glimpse into a world of music he knows very little about but finds fascinating. One such technological platform is tracker music, where simple computer code is combined with sound libraries – usually those burned into the chips on old computer sound cards, or downloadable equivalents – to create full songs from very small files. (I probably got that definition wrong, so tracker experts are free to jump onto Discord chat tonight and correct me.)
On tonight’s show, I am going to feature the music of a tracker artist called Necros, who released tracker music on the Five Musicians netlabel in the heyday of tracker music. This stuff is pretty amazing – far from the computer bleeps and bloips you might expect, it ranges from jazz to prog and back again, and is terribly cool stuff all around. I was quite surprised and pleased to discover it, and I am happy to share it with you.
If the Necros catalog doesn’t fill out the entire show, I might do a Live Ambient Rant in the remaining time, but it’s more likely that I’ll feature music from some other tracker artists to fill the gaps… including music from an artist who went on to become one of the most respected ambient/New Age artists in the entire RadioSpiral library. You’ll have to tune in to find out who it is, but I’ll give you a hint – as a tracker artist, they performed under the names Obtuse Idiom and Goon.
The fun begins at 6 PM PDT/SLT. We’ll be in the brand new holodeck in Second Life, featuring Gypsy Witch’s reimagining of one of our favorite old venues. There will also be chat in Discord, or you can just listen along. Either way, prepare to be pleasantly surprised by what you can do with an ancient computer, a few lines of code, and the right set of chips…
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