Assembly'2002 party report
by Milan Kolarovic (a.k.a. Acumen)
Email: milan@milankolarovic.com
http://www.milankolarovic.com
|
'Page 1' - Page 2
Assembly'2002, the 4 day event for the 4th time in a row for me. Unlike last year,
this year I was able to make it to the scene on day one, thursday. This article
views the event from my point of view, based on my notes and recollections.
Assembly was held in 01.-04. August 2002, and like any other year it had grown in size, every way. During these four sleepless days Assembly was visited by 4600 whole weekend participants (including VIPs and oldskool) and over 2000 single day participants. The total number of visitors goes well over 6600 altogether, an alltime record. This makes this year's Assembly the biggest demoparty held so far. The largest Nordic demo-scene event was here for the 11th time. • Competitions in general
• Music competitions As I predicted in my last year's Assembly party report, the future of multichannel competitions would be at stake. An inside view and feeling of this back then as a music jury member was too fortokening to be false and sadly I was right. This year the music competitions were divided in two categories, the vocal music and instrumental music. Both accepted MP3 and OGG as formats, instrumental competition even accepted module formats, but the clear tendency was towards "mainstream" formats amongst the entries. Only a small number of them were in module formats. Eventhough you could tell that many of the songs were definetly made with trackers, they were still converted in to MP3 or OGG format for the competition. The only justification for this would be a thorough post-processing and mixing phase, which the majority of these spesific entries lacked. These two main music competitions gathered well over 300 entries before the deadline. It was going to be a long night for the jury again. The good things about being part of a jury is to be able to really influence, meet all these terrific people again and the possibility to hear all the songs before anyone else. This year's music jury's most known participant was Peter "Skaven" Hajba.
The music competitions could very well be called "Panu-shows", later on you'll find out why. The vocal music competition was a really tight contest. I'm sure the amount of professional vocal songs amazed many of us. I had a very strong and firm feeling of the winner, and as it turned out I was right. As a jury member I had heard all the songs before the competition and there were many which could do well. Let's start from those. • Vocal music competition One of the most polished entries was definetly "A Nice Day" by Captain (Maturefurk). It's no suprise that this song sounds as professional as it does. This harmonic and exceedingly smooth song sounds as if the amount of finishing touches were infinite. The real name behind "Captain" is Markus Kaarlonen, who has worked in the music business on many different fields. For example, before his current occupation at MadOnion.com as a web designer & programmer, he had made arrangements for such commercial finnish dance/pop bands like Aikakone. Even last year's combined demo compo winner, Lapsuus by MatureFurk, featured his music. All this makes it hard to believe his song didn't even get in the top 10 this year (it finished 11th). A totally different approach was heard in a song called "Sano mua rehtoriks" by MjN (Cow-productions). The song features horny woman moans with finnish rap in a modern-ish dance song format. It unleashed probably the best laughs of the night amongst the tired music jury. This song would undoubtedly make an excellent party song, but in this competition it had to settle for 6th position. Any higher placement in this companion would have been unjustifiable. Another song which would have ranked right on the top if the placements would've been given out on quality bases was "Four Lines" by Aisth. These kind of songs done by professionals with professional equiptment have everything, but yet lack something in order to capture the average Assembly visitor's favour. Now Aisth had to satisfy to 5th place. A song which definetly stand out from the mass was "Tyttö tuli herättämään minut" by Dizzy (CNCD). This slightly over 2 minute song brings out subtle woman vocals accompanied with a refined piano. A righteous 3rd place with only a 54 point margin to the second. The winner of the vocal music competition was an ethereal and heavenly beautiful "Valley of the Past" by Firestorm. This song has to have one of the most impressive and heart-stirring themes I've ever heard. Just by listening to this you can hear distinct influences of Hans Zimmer, who's one of the most admired and respected film composers of our time. The comparison to film music is also rightful, cause in my opinion the real potential in a sond of this kind lies in a strong combination with visual events and story. We certainly haven't heard the last from this guy I'm sure. Here's a little background information of the author. The man behind Firestorm is Panu Aaltio. The most interesting point of him and his winning song is that his cousin sang the opera style vocals and his mother played the piano parts. A really musical family I must say. An intrigueing little detail of Panu is that he's studying at the Sibelius Academy, Centre for Music & Technology, and one of his classmates just happens to be Vesa Norilo, also known as "Warder". Small world, isn't it. • Instrumental music competition The overall quality of the instrumental music competition wasn't quite as high as the vocal, yet the best songs were able to distinguish from the rest. I had entered a song called "Kerosene" to the competition. It was going to compete in the animation contest also, serving as a soundtrack for an animation called "Project Kerosene". To my unfortunate it didn't manage in to the final. The second place in the competition went to the winner of the vocal serie, Firestorm, with a song called "Conflict". Firestorm had already won the MP3 music competition back in 2001 with "When Time Slips Away". Certain characteristic similarities between these two songs could be heard. The winner came as a suprise in the form of "The Goblin Returns" by Skaven (Future Crew). This song relied a lot on nostalgia upon its precedent, "Catch That Goblin", which also achieved 1st place at Assembly in 1995 (multichannel competition). The Goblins had made a successful comeback, and to those who are interested more, Skaven released the final version of the song in MP3 and OGG formats on his website just recently. Also as a nice little extra he has posted the original IT version of the song aswell. A more rare MO3 encoded version is available aswell. MO3 is a special technique which maintains the song in tracker/module format, but allows you to use MP3/OGG encoded samples. XMPlay is required to play MO3 files. • Oldskool music competition All the oldskool competitions were excellent this year. The oldskool music competition approved mod, s3m and xm formats addition to the "real" oldskool platforms like C64. There was some criticism concerning the newer PC format's involvement in the competition, but in the end everything was well organized. A lot of familiar names are seen on the results list. There are many songs worth mentioning, but the two best raised above others. "Would You?" by Britelite (Decadence) was on C64 platform and had those classical Britelite elements. Britelite finished 2nd in the competition. He has also provided his song in C64 prg format. The winner of the oldskool music competition was also made on C64. "Balls Of Steel" by Jammic won with double the amount points to second. A rare exception to other songs was "Child's Play Music" by Heatbeat (CNCD) which was made on a Game Boy. Heatbeat finished nicely on 3rd position. I also took part in the competition with a song called "Lunch Hour Automat". My song was in s3m format and it finished 14th. Altogether 6 songs out of 15 were in PC formats. All the rest without the exception of one Game Boy song were on C64 platform. |
The number and diversity of competitions was larger than on any other year so far.
The same went to the amount of given prizes, altogether over 40.000 € / $.
There were actually so many competitions held that the organizers had seen
best to give out the prizes in two different ceremonies. A wise decision in my
opinion, cause the ceremonies still took a lot of time to complete. One downside
this year was that never in the Assembly history had there been so many
disqualifications after the actual event. By now the results have gone through
changes in four different competitions. Hopefully the
