News

Latest News
 The latest handwritten news from the ExoticA site. For a breakdown of recent wiki edits, please see the Recent Changes page.

8-Bit Symphony - Live


This is a one-night-only chance to experience classic C64 music re-performed by a live orchestra!

Presented by Hull College Group, Hull Philharmonic Orchestra, Rob Hubbard and C64Audio.com, the concert will be split into two halves and features the following classic C64 game soundtracks: -


 * First half: Imagine Ocean (Comic Bakery, Ocean Loader, Rambo), Green Beret/Rush 'n' Attack, W.A.R., William Wobbler, Forbidden Forest and Beyond, Kentilla, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Flash Gordon, Barbarillax (Barbarian 2/Parallax High Score)
 * Second Half: International Karate, Aztec Challenge, Last Ninja(R) Wastelands, Monty on the Run High Score, Firelord, Trap, Monty on the Run, Stifflip and Co.

The venue, hosted at Hull City Hall, Queen Victoria Square, Carr Lane, Hull, HU1 3RQ, United Kingdom, is scheduled to take place at 7 p.m. on 15th June, 2019.

"Being there is like being at C64’s Woodstock without the mushrooms…" (Chris Abbott)

/ XtC

Link: https://www.8-bit-symphony.com/

"Benn" Daglish, RiP


Not wanting to turn the news section into an obituary section, but again it's our sad duty to report another untimely passing. This time, it our musical hero Ben Daglish.

Regardless of your choice of home computer in the 80s and 90s, if you played computer games then you have definitely heard Ben's performances.

Quite the showman, Ben could also be found acting as MC at various retro music gatherings, including Back in Time Live 2002, where we were grateful to get the chance to meet him.

Bob Wakelin, RiP


Still with a feeling of utter disbelief, it is our sad duty to report the untimely passing of Bob Wakelin.

Bob played a large part during what is now regarded as the golden age of video gaming with his instantly memorable artwork.

Our thoughts are with his family.

A Temporal Shift album by Uncle Art


Just two weeks left to back this new Kickstarter funded album by Dave Lowe, which is to feature remakes of classic Amiga, Atari ST and C64 soundtracks. The highlight of the project will be a full orchestral performance of the Frontier soundtrack by the Chamber Orchestra Of London at the famous Abbey Road studios.

Links:
 * https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/124468523/uncle-art-a-temporal-shift
 * http://uncleartmusic.com/

Insert Disk 2 album by Instant Remedy


Seven years in the making, the latest album Insert Disk 2 by Instant Remedy is now available to pre-order from Dutch label 010101 Music (of "Paula Agnus Denise" fame). The album features 12 remixes of Amiga game and demo music, expertly mastered by Holger Lagerfeldt and will premiere June 20th, 2015 at the Back in Time Brighton party.

Links:
 * http://www.irsounds.com
 * http://www.010101-music.nl/insert-disk-2-preorder.html
 * http://www.010101-music.nl/release/insert-disk-2.html
 * http://www.irsounds.com/page.php?25
 * https://www.megafounder.com/back-in-time-brighton-15
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUSIRBJ7mOw

ZX Spectrum: a visual compendium / The Spectrum Works album on Kickstarter


It's the final week of this latest venture by Bitmap Books. This Kickstarter has several stretch goals, the highlight of which has to be The Spectrum Works album by veteran musician Allister Brimble. Tracks on the CD will include modern remixes of classic ZX Spectrum tracks such as Robocop (Jonathan Dunn), Agent X (Tim Follin) and Glider Rider (David Whittaker). This CD will only be available to Kickstarter backers and not available afterwards.

Links: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2146199819/zx-spectrum-a-visual-compendium-by-bitmap-books

Dave Lowe / Uncle Art on Kickstarter (reboot)


The original project by Dave Lowe and Holly Jazz Lowe has been rebooted to a new Kickstarter project which includes orchestral recordings of the Frontier - Elite II themes.

Links: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/278860000/uncle-art-elite-ii-orchestral-and-retrogaming-musi

Dave Lowe / Uncle Art on Kickstarter


Dave Lowe aka Uncle Art and his daughter Holly Jazz Lowe have started a Kickstarter project to create a double album called "A Temporal Shift" - with originals and remakes of Dave Lowe's Amiga, Atari and C64 Music - Link to project. Well worth backing in our opinion!

Apologies (again) for lack of news updates here. There have been some changes around the site though. Changes since the last update include:

Versions 61 & 62 of the High Voltage SID Collection were released by the HVSC Team. Our mirror and search interface has been updated with v62. The collection now contains more than 46,000 SIDs!

There has been some work on the wiki too - recently updated pages include List of games and demos with studio CD versions, and Lost In Translation/Shadow Of The Beast which now has platform screenshots and audio comparisons. The Shadow of the Beast page has also been updated with screenshots - thanks XtC.

Links:
 * https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/278860000/uncle-art-amiga-atari-st-etcgame-music-original-an
 * http://www.hvsc.de

Music Collection Updates


At the end of last year http://asma.atari.org/ released v3.7 of its Atari SAP Music Archive bringing the collection to a total of 5016 tunes! ExoticA provides a mirror of the archive as well as a web interface for searching and browsing. This has now been updated, and can be used to stream the music as ogg or mp3 without the need for a specialised player.

We also run a mirror of the Modland music collection. Our mirror is now up to date again after Modland moved home, and some changes have been made to the web interface we offer for it, including switching to XMP for playback of some of the multichannel module formats. With this change some additional (mostly PC) tracker formats can now be streamed as ogg/mp3 including - Digibooster Pro, Digitrakker, Epic Megagames MASI, Farandole Composer, Graoumf Tracker, Imago Orpheus, Liquid Tracker, Multitracker, Octalyser, Polytracker, TCB Tracker, Ultratracker and X-Tracker. Note the support and accuracy of this can vary between tracker - further information regarding XMP can be found at http://xmp.sourceforge.net/. These changes also affect the XBMC frontend - http://addons.xbmc.org/show/plugin.audio.modland/ - which allows streaming of tunes from Modland direct to your HTPC. The Modland addon for XBMC is available from the official XBMC Repository.

UnExoticA had a small update back in January with the addition of the music from two recent Amiga games - Solid Gold and Putty Squad. Thanks to Codetapper for providing these rips.

Finally I would like to thank Ronaldvd for his many contributions to the wiki over the past couple of years, including important corrections, structural cleanups and improvements. You have made a massive difference, and your help is always appreciated. Cheers :)

Links:
 * http://asma.atari.org/ - Official ASMA site
 * http://xmp.sourceforge.net/ - Extended Module Player website.
 * http://www.xbmc.org - XBMC Media Center - Open Source Home Theatre Software

Putty Squad is released and HVSC Update


After 20 years, Putty Squad by System 3 is released for the Amiga and can be downloaded for free from their website. Huge thanks to them for making this possible, and to Galahad for his work in restoring the game from the original development files. Further information regarding the story can be found on Codetapper's Amiga Retro Site.

The HVSC Team has released v60 of their C64 Music Collection. The collection now contains more than 44,000 SID tunes. You can download from our mirror as well as using the web based search interface to stream the music as mp3/ogg. Big thanks to the HVSC Team, and to the C64 scene for continuing to produce excellent C64 music.

Happy Xmas everyone :)

Links:
 * http://www.system3.com/promotional-download/puttysquadamiga/ - Putty Squad page on System 3.
 * http://www.codetapper.com/amiga/interviews/galahad-masters-amiga-putty-squad/ - How the Amiga version of Putty Squad finally ended up being released.
 * http://www.hvsc.de/ - Official HVSC site.

Turrican Soundtrack Anthology early download version


Emails have gone out to backers of Chris Hülsbeck's Turrican Soundtrack Anthology Kickstarter project, with download links for all 4 CD's as FLAC, mp3 and other formats. The email contained the message: ""Surprise! Winners Save The Planet! :) Finally it is done - as promised, here's your advance backer / supporter download of the entire Turrican Soundtrack Anthology! Even though this project has been a long and hard journey and it all took longer than anticipated, the entire team is very proud at what we have accomplished and we hope you'll enjoy the result! :) And we're again thanking you with all our hearts that you made this project possible! Also, we will have a shipping date for the physical goodies very soon too.""

- Chris Hülsbeck

A lot of work has gone into this, and the music is excellent. Hopefully backers will also receive the hard copies soon, but it's great to be able to listen to the music in the meantime. Thanks Chris :)

The Amiga Works is now shipping


Those that backed Allister Brimble's Kickstarter campaign for his new Album "The Amiga Works" are now receiving their CD's and USB Sticks. For those that missed the opportunity to back the project during the campaign, the album and USB stick as well as the poster (with artwork from Rico Holmes) will be available to purchase from the new official website http://www.amigaworks.com from the 21st October 2013. Received my copy in the post today, and have been listening to it non-stop. You can tell the massive amount of work that has gone into it - it is superb! Thanks Allister :)

/ BuZz

Links:
 * http://www.amigaworks.com - Official site for "The Amiga Works"

High Voltage SID Collection #59


On the 28th June, v59 of the High Voltage SID Collection was released by the HVSC Team. The Exotica mirror and search is now updated to the latest version (A few weeks late). The collection now contains 43,856 SIDs. You can download the complete collection or use the web based search interface to browse and search the collection, as well as stream mp3/ogg recordings on demand. Note that the official page for the HVSC is at http://www.hvsc.de.

New Amiga video game music album - "Paula Agnus Denise"


"Paula Agnus Denise - Best of Amiga and CD32 Video Game Music" is a collaborative compilation album released on May 6th, 2013 in CD, download and streaming formats. The album includes a total of 19 tracks which are either remastered, studio versions or remixes of Amiga game music, with five of the recordings being previously unreleased. The album includes the catchy melodies from legendary games such as Speedball 2, Cannon Fodder, Turrican 2, Hired Guns, Battle Squadron and Pinball Dreams. The CD version comes in a Super Jewel Box with a 12-page booklet.

Links:
 * http://www.010101-music.nl/release/paula-agnus-denise.html - Official Site

Music Collection Updates


v58 of the High Voltage SID Collection has been released by the HVSC Team. The collection now contains 43,116 SIDs. You can download the complete collection or use the web based search interface to browse and search the collection, as well as stream mp3/ogg recordings on demand. Note that the official page for the HVSC is at http://www.hvsc.de.

The Atari SAP Music Archive was also recently updated to v3.6 with 315 new tunes (4630 in total). The main site for the Atari SAP Music archive is at http://asma.atari.org/, however we offer an alternative web interface at ExoticA that allows to search and download recordings from the collection (as ogg or mp3) over at the ASMA Search page. There was a v3.5 out previously that we missed, and it looks as though our download page got forgotten too, as it linked to a very old version. This is now all fixed.

The UnExoticA music collection got a small update with some composer and comment corrections. Thanks to those who submitted fixes. There is still lots of stuff outstanding, and the collection has not had much love over the last few years. Maybe XtC and Kyzer will come back to help in 2013 :)

Just under a week ago Allister Brimble's kickstarter album project The Amiga Works got funded, with 524 backers bringing in a total of £18,848. Congratulations Allister! It was also announced that Allister and Chris Huelsbeck would both be remixing one track on each others albums, which I look forward to hearing.

Links:
 * http://www.hvsc.de/ - High Voltage SID Collection
 * http://asma.atari.org/ - Atari SAP Music Archive
 * http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2059538678/the-amiga-works - "The Amiga Works" Kickstarter page
 * http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chris-huelsbeck/turrican-soundtrack-anthology-by-chris-huelsbeck - "Turrican Soundtrack Anthology" Kickstarter page

Bitfellas "Alien Breed vs Superfrog" podcast


To celebrate Allister Brimble's new album project "The Amiga Works" - This coming Sunday (16th December) Bitfellas will be releasing an Allister Brimble podcast entitled "Alien Breed vs Superfrog". It will contain a selection of his Amiga classics combined with some of his newer works. We hope this musical face-off will bring back some happy gaming memories for you! You will be able to download the podcast on the Bitfellas podcast page.

Allister's Kickstarter project has done very well and has already reached the £13,000 goal, with still a couple of weeks left. If you want to guarantee yourself a copy of this double album containing modern remakes of his Amiga classics, get over to the Kickstarter page now and make a pledge.

Big thanks to Allister and the Bitfellas team.



Scene Sat Radio - Special "On Air" broadcast


Tomorrow (7th November) at 20:00CET (19:00 GMT), there'll be a special edition of On Air with Ziphoid, featuring Allister Brimble and Chris Hülsbeck live via Skype. They'll be revealing more info surrounding their current music projects. Don't miss it! :)

Link: http://scenesat.com Source: Facebook.

"The Amiga Works" by Allister Brimble


Allister Brimble has just launched a Kickstarter project for his new double album "The Amiga Works". He will create up to date CD quality versions and remixes of his best musical works from the Commodore Amiga. The album artwork and an A2 poster will be designed by Rico Holmes who was the inspiration and artist behind the original Alien Breed series and other Team 17 games. Visit Allister's Kickstarter page.

"I have received many requests to create new versions of my tracks in the past, but I never felt I could improve on them.. until now. The technology exists to inspire me to create new versions of my tunes for these much loved games from the Commodore Amiga."

- Allister Brimble As big fans of his work over here at ExoticA we are very excited about this project. We recommend you get over to the project page now and make a pledge!

Link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2059538678/the-amiga-works

HVSC Update #57


v57 of the High Voltage SID Collection has been released by the HVSC Team. The collection now contains 42,212 SIDs. You can download the complete collection or use the web based search interface to browse and search the collection, as well as stream mp3/ogg recordings on demand. Note that we just run a mirror and search. The official page for the HVSC is at http://www.hvsc.de.

