Rendezvous avec
Melomaniac

___I was asked to do a interview with Melomaniac... I called him up and arranged a meeting. This is what he told me...

- So Melo, could you tell me your real name and handle?
- My real name is Simon Ravn, and in the scene I'm known as MeloManiac.
- (For the girls) What is your height and weight?
- Height: 1.80, weight: Too much.
- Current/ex-group(s)?
- I've only been in one group, the famous VANITY! After they died in 1995, I haven't joined any other group.
- What do you do for a living?
- I'm unemployed, but work at a small video- and multimedia-production company, where we mostly use Amigas!!
- Do you have a favorite beer?
- Beer tastes like shit! So I mostly drink Faxe Kondi (soft drink), or
maybe wine/a little booze.
___Relief looks at Melomaniac with a strange feeling; most people in Denmark
loves beer. Guess that means that Melo must be a bit strange.
- So...when did you do your first tune?
- My first self-composed tune was in MED in late '93 or beginning of '94 I think.
- Can I hear it? (Melo looks scared, and tries to avoid this question)
- Sure :)
(He sort of forgot to play it for me. He's probably not too proud of it)
- Who's your heroes? (Scene related and in real-life)
- Of course (?) my ultimate scene hero has to be Jogeir Liljedahl, and game-composers on Amiga and C64, Rob Hubbard, Maniacs of Noise and Chris Huelsbeck and all those games-music composers.
___In 'real life' I mostly listen to movie-scores by John Williams, and in the
totally opposite music-style, Jean-Michel Jarre.
- How does your mom look like?
- Hmmm difficult to describe:-) Like Claudia Schiffer in 20 years??!
(Hehe. I'd love to meet her then :)
- Do think people who use some kind of psychedelic-material or substance, are crazy?
- Not crazy. Of course it depends of what kind of psychedelic materials
or substances you have in mind?
___I was thinking about weed and mushrooms ;]
___Hehe! No. As long as we're not talking about weird chemical drugs, I don't think those people are crazy - I just don't, 'cause it doesn't really appeal to me.
- Fair enough Melo, So you don't mind I just light this one then?
- Ahh! okay lets do some more questions.
- What are your feelings about all those music groups coming out these days?
- Well... There are so many computer-musicians today, so joining forces in groups might be a good idea, if you don't want your name to drown in the scene. So making a group which concentrates on particular style(s) is a good idea. On the other hand, I think it makes it - that might sound a bit arrogant - but too easy for people who aren't very good at music, to think they're really cool, because they're in PHD, MONO, or whatever.
- The scene today... any thoughts?
- The scene has obviously gotten smaller, because more Amiga-people leaves for the PC, and because nearly nobody are buying Amigas as their first choice any more
(=no newcomers). Luckily the Amiga scene is still a lot better than the PC scene
(You're so right) As far as I know - Amiga people who'd changed to the PC scene, have even come back, because the PC-scene is so sucky. So I don't think the Amiga scene will die just yet. But it's a bit boring, it's basically the same 5-10 groups competing for the top prizes at parties, 3LE, TBL, ATW etc. I think most people has found out that the PC scene isn't as attractive as they thought, just because you have 130Mhz Pentiums with speedy gfx-cards (which requires could make coders lazy), 32-channel 16-bit sound etc. The bottom line is that it isn't the equipment, but your imagination that's important for a production.
- What about the danish scene then?
- It's like the rest of the scene, getting smaller, with only a few 'top
groups. Impact DK has abandoned the Amiga scene and turned to the Dark Side, sadly, because this was one of the best and most famous Danish groups. Puzzle has survived its 'now-all-we-coders-wants-a-PC' illness, and found some new coders, namely Blueberry and Lemmus from Efreet (TP6 4k intro winners). Another group with a lot of potential is Ambrosia (who has to borrow music from other
groups, like Unison from Impact DK) Then we have spoof-groups like Depth and Fnuque, and Iris who also tries to be productive.
- Which party do you think was the best you ever attended?
- Hehe I've only been to five I think, TP4-6 and South Sealand 2 and 3. I probably enjoyed TP6 and SSP3 the most, because I got to meet some nice people there.
IRC is great for meeting people, you then want to meet in real life.
(I guess we all know this)
- BUFF!! -
Argh!! What's this??.
All the lights went out! - We're sitting in complete darkness! Melo grabs my lighter and starts burning some paper. He's very scared! He really hates the dark. A few minutes later the lights came back on. Melo looks happy, and starts
putting out the small fire he made.
___Let's continue Daniel, Melo says, with a happy grin on his face. Relief is
looking for his joint, which he had dropped while Melo was playing with his lighter.
___What's the matter Daniel? Melo said, he could see that Relief was looking sad.
It almost looked like he was crying. Nothing, Relief said, I just can't find my joint... HELP ME SIMON!! After a few swift search, Melo found Relief's joint and the interview could continue.
- What do you think about the Amiga musicians which moves over to the PC?
- Well, for a musician to change platform isn't such a big change I think. Even I
would sometimes like a PC (Relief looks like he's seen a ghost!) for MIDI
(Bars'n'Pipes isn't that good!) and multi-channel composing (XM's mixed into 4
8-bit channels don't sound that good either). So I can at least UNDERSTAND them, and I don't think musicians who goes onto PC's leaves the Amiga-scene, unless they want to (And who does that). On the other hand, some PC-demo music is still made on Amiga! I also think that, generally, people who started on Amiga (or even C64) are better trackers than PC'ers, because they had bigger limitations and had to be more creative in the first place.
___Melo takes another zip of his coke, he looks like he needs it.
- Your music disk seems to be a hit to a lot of sceners... Any words about this?
- I was a bit surprised actually, about how many people have responded to it, but that's only nice, especially because the music on it isn't following todays
'musical trends'. You could call the piece Elements 'old-fashioned', musically, but it's the music I like to do. 
- How long have you spent making your music disk?
- I actually started on it in the beginning of '96, with big plans to release it
in April or so, but it didn't happen. Then I was doing a FANTASTIC demo for
SSP3, which occupied a couple of months where I didn't work on the music-disk. But after that, in august, I worked intensely on it, until December when it was
released.
- Is it true that you coded the whole thing yourself?
- Yes! I coded the whole thing, which wasn't such a big deal - no effects or anything, since I can't do that - and certainly not in Blitzbasic! Grins.
___Relief puts out his joint, he can't really focus any longer. Melomaniac looks confused, and tries to help Relief of the floor.
- Do you like Hong Kong action movies?
- Eh, actually no! I think they're exaggerated to a point where I can't take them
seriously (slow-motion etc.).
(Say, that's EXACTLY what I like about them, Reliefs grins)
- As I said, mostly movie-scores and Jarre, and synthpop/atmosphere tunes on computers.
- Do you like progressive music like the one from Yolk, Hillie, Splif Prods etc?
- Like as in listens to? No, not really. I don't have anything against good
music, no matter what kind it is. But 'weird music' (as I would call it), isn't
my fave - I'm very keen on melodies/themes, and that kind of music doesn't
have much of that - it's mostly based on beats and sounds.
- So I guess you don't enjoy lighting up a big fat joint, kicking back and listen to the beats?
- Erhm, no! (Damn you're weird, Daniel!)
- Do you have a favorite tune by someone? (Scene & real-life)
- Scene: Mixified by Jogeir, Real-life: The whole soundtrack of ET.
- Which demo have impressed you the most?
- I know it isn't that impressive by todays standards, but "Desert Dreams" is probably the demo I remember impressing me the most. Recently it's been "Tint",
"Muscules", "Closer" and "Darkside" - "Darkside" was very atmospheric (and I like
that! 3LE does some really funny stuff too.
- If I want to listen to some of your work, where can I then find it?
- You can get my musicdisk "Elements" from Aminet (PZL_ELE1-6.LHA) - other than that, it can be quite hard to find them, but I'm planning to upload it all to its own dir on Aminet.
- Any music projects going on/future plans?
- Well, I'm working on something for a slideshow from a Hungarian group. (Slideshow from Rendall of Impulse. -Ed) Then I'll maybe be involved in doing CD-music for an Amiga game:-).
- Now is your chance to say what ever you feel like:
- If you want to write to me, you can do it as this discount-email: melomaniac@hotmail.com (Yes! It's MeloManiac and not MelonManiac!).
- Thanks for spending your time with me, and helping me through the minor problems I had!
- N/p/a/a/a! (No problem at all actually! -Ed.)



X
by Relief/Puzzle (c) Insomnia'97