
by Mop of Alcatraz

Since the early 90s, ne7 has been steadily weaving tunes
on 4 different scene platforms.

His humble beginnings were that of a swapper, but ne7
still remembers his very first attempts to compose on a
friend's c64. His first proper modules were put together
in 1994, this time on a friend's Amiga. Thanks to
swapping, he came across the demo scene culture.

His very first demo group was the  console team Napalm
where his work was released in various PSX intros. 

He later joined Rebels and Scoopex, where his music even
saw a gameboy advanced release or two. Seeingt hat he was
quite active on the c64 scene, ne7 joined Creators, but
after a while he teamed up with Triad as he found himself
working more with TwoFlower and Iopop. Yet ne7 stayed
active in all these groups, as he saw no need to leave
any of them as they all covered different areas of the
scene culture.

ne7's interest in music started early. He is a
classically trained vocalist and toured the UK scene in
many different musical venues over the years when he was
still 18. These days he can be found gigging around the
London area as "techno value" playing his weird brand of
techno made with toys! He does all this as a side job,
because his main profession is in IT.

"I did pro music for about 9 years but i just got so sick
of getting paid late that I have gone back to IT and now
do music work in my spare time", he says. 

ne7 had some minor releases on a few UK labels, small runs
like 300-500 copies of his CDs, but this is how things are
in the commercial music world. ne7 says that his demo work
helped him make connections to areas of the creative
industry that he wouldn't have got a look at if it were not
for demos. In fact one of his very first payed jobs was in
developing game audio through a scene friend of his.

ne7 is mostly into cubase, renoise, fruity loops and impulse
tracker. "I hate VSTs as everyone is using the same damned
sounds, so I have moved back to using samples taken from
customised old synthesizers and making custom kits myself
and simply sampling it"

ne7 thinks that today's music software is more polished whe
it comes to game composing, but offers less playability
when compared to the c64/Amiga software from 10 years back.
"In terms of demo scene tools i would say that we have a lot
of quality tools available but perhaps with less diversity.
I found the Amiga had a LOT of great audio creation tools,
but the PC is a bit more boring" But music was always all
about fantasy and talent. ne7 says that he gets his
inspiration from life in general.

"sometimes I'll be walking down the street, i hear a noise
from a building site and that will be enough to start the
creative juices flowing. i also like to do as much work as
possible away from computers. computer music is too perfect
sounding. i think truly nice noises come out of the real kit.
I really enjoy circuit bending old toys and synths to do
things they were not meant to do. i also have a large
collection of stringed and folk instruments that i like to
use from time to time, even though this is more in my
commercial music than the demo scene stuff" ne7 normally
works alone when he composes, but lately he has been
working very closely with Linus and Dalezy on some
new projects.

ne7 has a wide taste when it comes to music and at the
moment he's quite into weird alternative folk, as well
as old school hiphop, and synthpop 80s. Groups like david
axelrod, goblin, gary numan, david bowie, moog cookbook,
boards of canada, matt sweeny, polyphonic spree, bonnie
prince billy, weavie stonder, autechre, inspire him greatly.

In the demo scene, ne7 follows the work of little bitchard
because of all the great style changes, reed, drax
(he actually made a cover of one of his old tunes -
it'll be hidden in a forthcoming c64 release), fanta and
gasman for being a chiptune genius, just to name a few names.

ne7 told us that he loves the current demo scene style.
"What i DON'T like is the constant referencing to Gantz
Graf/Autechre. I find all this so dull. It was great in the
beginning but its just getting a bit old seeing a big column
of something in the center of the screen vibrating to a
electro dance track. MFX were the last ones to do this well
on pc, but these days i think a demo, especially if its
bigger than 64k, needs to offer much more".

ne7 assures us without a glimpse of hesitation that he
will definitely be still in the scene over the next 10 years.
He is currently working on a C64 project, and his future plans
include doing more co-op music with Glittermouse,
for the fun of it!