The very beginning August and the few weeks and even months prior to that, the time of sleepless nights and strain due to the upcoming event and competitions it hosts, all the above have become a very familiar to me after five years. Yes, it was time to get ready for another Assembly event, for the 5th consecutive time. I knew long before the event was even confirmed that year the 2003 and Assembly'03 along with it would act more as a sabbatical year for me. Due to extensive amount of hired work and active "real life" on top of that, I knew I wouldn't have much time to prepare material for the competitions this year. Also as time moves on and more ambitious projects are born and developed, the amount of time for one person to complete a project thoroughly naturally has increased aswell. My current main project(s) are most likely to see daylight at Assembly'2004, 2005 or even as late as 2006. I was however able to find enough time this year for one contribution. More of that later on. It was time to leave towards the party arena, more precisely to the oldskool area where I had obtained my "VIP" ticket this year aswell.

My video files:
Loading area on the first day 0.9mb
View of the dark party arena 1.2mb
Axes Denied at the concert 0.7mb
Purple Motion at the concert 1.5mb
Abyss jamming as PM performs 2.2mb
Some off-scene party activity 1.3mb

The four day event started at the Hartwall arena, in Helsinki city (Finland), on thursday 7th of August, and lasted until the weekend closed on sunday the 10th. This article views the event and competitions from my perspective and of those areas that I'm most interested in. I had brought my own digital camera, Sony Mavica CD500, with me to the event. Both the photo and videoclip amounts I took were huge, totaling to over 1GB of data.

Related links:
Assembly.org - official website
Assembly'2003 final results - mirror
Scene.org's Assembly'2003 directory
MBnet's Assembly'2003 pages Assemblytv.net

Like in every year before, the event had grown a bit from the previous year. This ment more party visitors, more new ideas and more scheduled events aimed to please every party visitor. The growth and changes in the event and what it holds in have been slow and steady each year, which in my opinion is only a good thing. The event's future financially and in all other ways appears to be on a rock solid basis and quaranteed for years ahead with the current table of contents. There is no need for radical changes besides every die-hard scener's wish to exclude gamers from the event competely, but as for now Assembly offered something for everyone.

Assembly'03 was visited by over 5000 party visitors, which doubtly includes single day participants, so the total number goes probably well over 6000 or even 7000. The amount of visitors each year has grown so that an alltime record has been broken each year. It's safe to say that Assembly is the Nordic's, perhaps even the world's, biggest demo-scene event, and it was here for the 12th time.

• Competitions in general

• Music competitions

The instrumental music competition was won by !Cube with an orchestral song called "Acula class". Quasian also now re-emerged after many years of silence to the top 3 by placing 2nd with a song called "Mist of deceit". Firestorm of Doomsday wasn't as successful with his this year's music entries, and placed "only" at 4th position with a song called "Betrayal". However I'd expect he'll be making a return to the top in the following years as he told me his time to prepare this year's entries was very limited. My song called "Residue of Desire" finished 8th, which is a decent result as I've never been victorious in pure music competitions in the past either.

If there was one uniting factor seen in the competition, it would have to be the amount of movie soundtrack type of approaches in the final's 15 songs. I would have enjoyed to hear more songs in "traditional styles", as this type of orchestral songs in my opinion require strong visual "stimulation" to reach their fullest strength and intensity. However the efforts seemed to pay off as many of these orchestral songs did well in the competition. The overall quality in the competition was quite good, but perhaps not as high as I would have thought.

The vocal music competition was a bit more even as the point margins between the finalists weren't as large as in the instrumental music compo. Ten songs were selected for the final instead of the usual fifteen (see the "music jury process" part of my report to learn why). The competition's victory went to Aisth with a song called "Pearls", which was no suprise. The mastermind behind Aisth is better known as "Jugi" in the demoscene. Firestorm's song "The Way of Peril" was to be found on the 8th place, which is quite a drop compared to his last year's achievements. The competition's overall quality was modest, and my guess is that if the quality nor the amount of entries won't increase in the following years, the future of the whole competition could be in jeopardy. Atleast the competition and rules might get reorganized. However on the positive side I must say that there was a delighting amount of more rock-ish songs with quality and effort than before. In my opinion the diversity of music styles in such competitions is only a positive thing.

The fast music competition presented 10 songs, out of which Ari "artz" Pulkkinen's song called "Back to Roots" won the game with a clear point margin. The author of the winning song has a history of victories in this particular competition. I actually visited Ari Pulkkinen's home studio on thursday, as his was working on his vocal music competition entry. The overall quality of the fast music competition has stayed somewhat on the same level from the beginning of the competition's history. The one and a half hour timelimit the competitors have can't understandably permit complex symphonies being made, but there's always been a clear favourite of the audience which has also won. The rules of the competition however could be tightened a bit, since it's rather easy to go around them. The sample set is released right before the competition's time starts, but it has always combined pretty much out of the same elements (few drum samples, few basses, etc). There's nothing stopping people from using pre-created melodies and patterns, and infact a whole song can be done by just assigning the given samples to their predicted places in a pre-arranged song made prior to the event. The fast music competition has never had many of entries, so if you're seeking the best way to get your work heard and winning chances maximized, this is the compo you should participate in.