0:00

Find Find your perfect fit with a

0:02

custom suit from Indochino. From timeless classics

0:04

to bold statements, you can express your

0:06

style exactly how you want. Get 10% Get 10% off

0:09

any purchase of $3.99

0:11

or more at indochino.com

0:13

with code PODCAST. And

0:35

the Retro Hour podcast is brought to you

0:37

each and every Friday with our sponsor and

0:40

of course great friends at Bitmap Books.

0:42

Now have you seen the book that everyone

0:44

is talking about recently? N64, a visual compendium

0:46

which tells a story of the console

0:48

that changed the gaming world and of course

0:50

covers all the big titles more than 150

0:53

that define the N64. They're all in

0:55

there Super Mario

0:57

64, GoldenEye 007, Ocarina of Time, Banjo

0:59

Kazooie and lots more. Have a look

1:01

at that and check out the rest

1:03

of their retro gaming collection at bitmapbooks.com.

1:08

Hello and welcome to the Retro

1:10

Hour podcast episode number 431, your weekly

1:13

dose of retro gaming and technology news

1:15

with me Dan Wood, me Ravi Abbott

1:17

and me Joe Fox. And

1:20

great to be joining us for the podcast every

1:22

single Friday. Just a bit of

1:24

a timeout from the world isn't it? You

1:26

know we take time off working hard and

1:28

all the stresses of life to enjoy

1:30

our favorite hobby. The wonderful world of retro

1:32

video games. So

1:36

that's what we do every single Friday. Bring you up

1:38

to speed on all the big happenings in the world

1:41

of retro from over the last week and of

1:43

course bringing you a very special guest on the

1:45

show as well. Now speaking about things that we

1:47

do outside of retro gaming,

1:49

you know all us three are big music fans aren't

1:51

we? Oh yeah yeah I

1:53

love to DJ, I love to dance

1:56

well badly. Yeah

2:00

parties and raves and I know Joe is

2:02

a heavy metal legend as

2:04

well. I can't talk about legend but

2:06

yeah I'm into the the heavier side

2:09

of things as well as some synth

2:11

waves and a little bit of I've

2:17

been a DJ for over 20 years as well back in my day there was all these night clubs every

2:19

night of the week and I think that's definitely one thing

2:21

that kind of goes hand in hand with video games. You

2:24

know the fact that music is

2:26

such a big part of them isn't it and there

2:28

was definitely that period from I'd say that at the

2:30

mid 1990s onwards when kind of the two cultures joined

2:32

didn't they? You

2:35

know we got into the PlayStation era in

2:37

particular and it felt like in a dance

2:39

music and club culture really had a big

2:42

influence on the soundtracks of video games. Yeah

2:45

and also computers as well so you know

2:47

you had the PlayStation you had the kind

2:49

of game soundtracks as well but then you

2:51

had the development of a lot of this

2:53

music was done on you know like

2:55

Amigas, Taaris, later went on to the

2:57

Macs people were doing them on the

2:59

PCs as well. So I always love

3:02

having these kind of huge

3:04

musical acts on and it's

3:07

really cool actually because we discussed retro

3:09

technology as well on this podcast and

3:11

previously we've had some pretty cool acts

3:13

on as well. We've had DJ Yoda,

3:16

Aphrodite, Pete Cannon and

3:19

Utah Saints as well but

3:21

this week we have Orbital

3:23

and it's absolutely mad because

3:25

Orbital are a huge pioneering

3:27

rave group and we've got Paul Houghton,

3:29

we've got Paul Hartnell from them it's two

3:32

brothers Paul and Phil if you don't

3:34

know Orbital you should know

3:36

Orbital because I remember

3:38

watching them on television when it was

3:40

at Glastonbury and

3:42

it was one of the kind of first ones

3:45

where they have extended footage of Glastonbury and it

3:47

was like a really long one and

3:49

Orbital's set was one of the

3:52

biggest audiences I've ever

3:54

seen and that whole kind of rave

3:56

group was born from the idea of the raves on the

3:58

outside. The raves on the outside. M25 which

4:00

yeah would would

4:03

be on the circular orbital motorway. That's

4:05

kind of Where the

4:07

name came from? Yeah, interesting Yeah Because all the

4:09

time I remember when chime came out and that

4:12

was like a game changer I mean for those

4:14

maybe outside the UK might not be familiar with

4:16

it, but definitely look this stuff up I mean

4:18

they were pioneers like instead of the rave scene

4:21

and formed in 1989 but

4:23

the reason we're talking to Paul from orbiter lives

4:25

because their songs actually featured on

4:28

Quite a few video games back in the day.

4:30

Well, well Paul's a secret gamer

4:35

He tells us about like his gaming history and

4:38

How you know he was meant to

4:40

be making albums and editing and he

4:43

would also have games installed on his

4:45

machines and that would distract him and

4:47

you know put back a few a

4:50

few weeks when he should have been doing other stuff,

4:52

but Also, he tells

4:54

us about you know his work with the

4:56

Atari and He

4:58

was using c-lab. He wasn't using Cubase,

5:00

which is a popular piece of software

5:03

that People were using at

5:05

the time, but his love for Atari as well

5:07

But then going into the max stuff

5:10

then later on of course, you

5:12

know wipe out What a huge type of

5:14

wipe out was petrel was on

5:16

there that truck petrol on the PlayStation version of

5:18

wipe out I remember yes. Yes, and there was

5:20

huge overbounds as well. You know you had the

5:23

chemical brothers involved Left field

5:25

a progedy as well with some of the later

5:28

Wipe out games and also his

5:30

music went on to soundtracks of

5:33

some of the most iconic Like 90s

5:35

kind of video game music as well Yes, I think

5:37

as Joe like you said you're more of a rock

5:40

kind of guy Aren't you Joe you knew the name

5:42

orbiter as soon as you're like I recognize that song

5:44

healthier. Yes. I'm more combat at

5:46

the end. Yes Hackers as

5:48

well. Yeah, you guys just told me it's in hackers,

5:51

which I didn't know but yes in Mortal Kombat the

5:53

movie The decent one

5:55

the first one which is

5:57

cool. Yeah, so it's a really interesting

5:59

interview and actually it's not

6:01

any of you guys with me. No,

6:04

we didn't want it on. Yeah, yeah.

6:06

We got Pete and Pete basically hooked

6:08

us up with Paul, which was great

6:11

because they met. He tells

6:13

us the story of it in a video

6:15

game shop when Paul was

6:17

looking for a copy of Silent Hill for

6:19

the PS1. Nice. So,

6:22

yeah, it's really interesting.

6:24

And, you know, we've had

6:26

Pete on the podcast before. He's one

6:28

of our patrons and he's our kind

6:30

of resident orbital expert. So it was

6:33

great to have him on because they

6:35

hang around at gigs at the end

6:37

of it. And I think you just sort him out with a

6:39

PlayStation 2 as well. So that's

6:42

pretty cool. All fully loaded with tons

6:44

of games on there and he's been enjoying

6:46

that. So that's awesome.

6:49

So you and Pete are going to

6:51

be interviewing the orbital legend Paul Hartnell

6:53

talking about, of course, his love for

6:55

all things gaming, the video games that

6:57

the orbital tracks appeared on and

6:59

much more as well. Producing music as well. I

7:01

always find that interesting. You know, we hear about

7:03

how the tracks are, you know, kind of shaped

7:05

our childhoods. Yeah. You know,

7:07

we talk about raves a little bit and

7:09

how, you know, phone numbers

7:12

and like pirate radio and the

7:14

old technology was used to

7:16

do these big gatherings before social media.

7:18

It's a really interesting interview. So

7:21

Paul Hartnell from orbital is going to be our special guest on

7:23

this week's show and he'll be coming up in around 40 minutes

7:26

from now. But of course, you know,

7:28

the way the podcast works first off of the show. That

7:30

is when we have a little bit of a retro roundtable

7:33

and bring you up to speed on what's been

7:35

happening in the world of retro gaming and technology

7:37

from over the last seven days. And this

7:40

has been the big headline that

7:42

I've seen everywhere this week that Atari

7:45

have finally purchased their old rival.

7:47

Well, actually, the oldest rival Atari

7:50

now own the Intellivision brand. I

7:53

just I feel like I'm repeating myself whenever we

7:56

talk about kind of modern Atari at the moment.

8:00

know what they're doing like

8:02

you know what degree the V to a

8:04

degree but

8:06

like it just feels like you know when

8:08

we first started the podcast it was you

8:10

know like I say broken record or ataria

8:12

trying to make a hotel they're trying to

8:15

make casinos it was just really stupid

8:17

bizarre things whereas now they

8:20

really are concentrating on what

8:23

they know the people love and it

8:25

might not be as like grand

8:27

and like as money making as a

8:29

casino but the casino stuff was just

8:31

it was just nonsense whereas this is

8:33

like yeah you know let's look

8:36

back at our heritage looks like in the

8:38

last 50 years of ataria and we'll do

8:40

a game about that or we'll buy you

8:42

know this company and or we'll you know

8:44

release the atari vcs 2600 plus like it

8:46

all makes sense and uh is it wade

8:48

rosen like i just feel like he knows

8:51

what he's doing but i do i

8:53

did love their statement when they said that they'd

8:55

bought the in television uh

8:57

and how the amico will remain

9:00

a separate brand yeah

9:03

they did make that very clear didn't they yeah they

9:05

did make that very clear that the amico is not

9:07

part of their plans so yeah probably a good thing

9:09

to get that out there i think yeah

9:11

not a lot of people know what the

9:13

amico was it was the previous owners of

9:15

in television wasn't it and it's so me

9:17

salarico yeah and it's kind of a new

9:19

take on it as well so i guess

9:21

they were just kind of like we want

9:23

the old brand and the new stuff you

9:26

guys can kind of keep i

9:28

don't know if they'd be able to have in

9:30

television amico on there or just

9:32

amico yeah to be honest

9:34

i don't know enough about it i know it is a

9:36

big a big uh who

9:38

are in a big kind of um a

9:40

mess at the moment it is probably

9:43

the biggest piece of vaporware you know

9:45

since the uh the vega plus probably

9:47

so yeah i don't think there's any

9:49

danger that's the thing about atari you

9:51

know they've actually released things and even

9:54

the vcs you know it did come out and

9:56

it wasn't vapor and that's that's

9:58

a good thing but also So having

10:01

all these brands under

10:03

one roof means if

10:05

that collapses, then

10:07

what happens? That's

10:09

one of my worries. I kind of like

10:11

having stuff separately and

10:14

rivals and competition spurs each other

10:16

on. Once they've released

10:19

a certain amount of stuff, are they just going

10:22

to go, right, we're done with that, move on

10:24

to the next purchase, another brand, and kind of

10:26

turn into this huge, huge group? Well,

10:29

to me, it sounds like the reason

10:31

that they've... Because basically what they've bought

10:33

is the Intellivision brand, and

10:36

the rights to more than

10:38

200 games from the Intellivision

10:40

portfolio. They haven't released a list

10:43

of the games, because I've seen a lot of people

10:45

kind of getting excited about the fact that it might

10:47

be, you know, all the classics, like

10:49

Astro Smash was like a big game on the

10:51

Intellivision, you had Tron Deadly Discs, Nightstalker,

10:55

Burger Time was on there as well.

10:57

The only thing is, it was, as

10:59

we mentioned before briefly, it was Tommy

11:01

Canarico, who most recently owned

11:04

the Intellivision brand. But actually it

11:06

turns out there are certain IPs

11:08

that he actually sold off to other companies, including

11:11

some of the most famous ones like Astro

11:13

Smash, which Intellivision sold off a couple

11:15

of years ago. So I imagine that

11:18

is not going to be part of their plans, unless

11:20

somehow Atari can maybe buy the rights back,

11:22

because that is going to be a bit

11:25

of an oversight. In the catalogue, I think, if they're

11:27

going to be releasing, for example, maybe a

11:29

mini Intellivision console or something like that, and they want

11:31

to have the big games on there. Yeah,

11:34

I was wondering why they will

11:36

go with this. You know

11:38

what, mini consoles didn't cross my mind, and now you

11:41

say that. I do feel like that will be the

11:43

obvious choice. I was thinking

11:45

they might have done an Intellivision 50, you know,

11:47

like a compilation of games

11:49

and stuff, you know, on consoles. I can't

11:51

fix releases like that. Yeah, sorry. Yeah,

11:53

like you say like that. But yeah, now

11:56

I'm thinking maybe they will do an Intellivision

11:58

mini. Or

12:00

both. Yeah, true. Yeah, Atari. The

12:03

amount of Atari consoles that they've

12:05

released or, you know, different versions

12:07

of it. Has been insane recently.

12:10

Yeah. So, you know,

12:12

they've had all these arcade units as well

12:14

and stuff and home units as well. It's

12:16

been interesting to see if you do go

12:18

on the Atari site, check out the amount

12:20

of products. It's mad. Yeah, the

12:23

fact that Atari have also been releasing and

12:25

as we've covered on this podcast, you know,

12:27

games for the original systems as well. And

12:29

even those arcade boards that they were putting

12:31

out there as well, it does definitely feel

12:33

like they would respect the legacy of these

12:35

ideas and the systems recently, which is

12:37

nice to see. So, I mean, in my mind, yeah,

12:39

I think you're right, Joe. I've got a feeling there

12:42

will be probably a very nice, you know, maybe in

12:44

television, 50 celebrations, something

12:46

like that. You know,

12:48

it feels a bit like a game collector's

12:50

in charge of Atari. You know, it's someone

12:53

that kind of collects it and has

12:55

a passion for it. Well, they've got

12:57

close relationship with digital eclipse. So, something like

12:59

that would be amazing to see like a,

13:01

you know, documentary style collection of the biggest

13:03

in television brands and, you know, as we

13:05

know, they're not adverse to making new systems

13:07

as well with the, you know, the Atari

13:10

2600 plus. So, I think, you know, having

13:12

in television under their banner, I

13:14

think that the big headlines that everybody in the retro

13:16

gaming world has been that these systems when they were

13:18

released back in the late 70s, they were arch rivals.

13:24

And now, you know, they've kind of gone out there

13:26

with a headline of the longest running console war in

13:28

history is finally over. It seems to be like the

13:30

OG systems that were competing against each other are now

13:33

the part of the same company. So, that is

13:35

kind of quite nice to see. And I think

13:37

like, you know, stuff like the Atari 400, when

13:41

they released that one, you know, that was

13:43

something that I didn't think would be

13:45

that big because it appeals to a certain

13:47

audience like America. And I've

13:49

seen that loads of people have gone for

13:51

it in Europe and, you know, it's sold

13:54

really well. And I think in

13:56

televisions, an area that they need to explore

13:58

in Europe as well. I think that might

14:00

appeal, as you said, with the Mini, putting that

14:03

out and then suddenly people going, oh, I never

14:05

had one of those, let's have a look. With

14:07

the Mini, all of us guys, the Intellivision

14:09

and the Atari 2600, before our

14:12

gaming years, but I think it's always

14:14

interesting to look back on where it

14:16

all started. Even though, you know, Atari 2600

14:18

games don't hold my attention,

14:21

for all that loggus I'm honest, but I

14:23

do like booting them up and having a quick 10

14:25

minute play on it, just to kind of see where

14:27

it all started really. So I think from that perspective,

14:29

I think there'll be quite a lot of interest. And, you

14:32

know, like the Intellivision, not a system that I've ever really

14:34

played on. So I think if they

14:36

do release a Mini system or a modern version

14:38

of it for an affordable price, it could be

14:40

something I'm interested in, just to kind of see

14:42

those first generation consoles in all of their glory.

14:45

So yeah, it looks like, you know, Atari

14:47

haven't obviously bought this for no reason, so there

14:49

is going to be something happening with Intellivision

14:51

and the games that they now

14:53

own at some point in the near future, I imagine. So

14:55

that's the story, we'll keep an eye on it. If you

14:57

want to read more, I will link up that story in

15:00

this week's show notes. Now

15:02

moving forward in time to something a bit

15:04

more recent, but still 20 plus

15:06

years old, you know, it is the retro hour after

15:08

all. Let's talk about the Sega

15:10

Dreamcast. Now again, now this is a system

15:13

that, you know, all three of us have got a lot of affection

15:15

for. I love the Dreamcast, but this

15:17

has got me a little bit worried. So

15:19

what we're talking about here is a

15:21

new PSU for

15:23

the Dreamcast, which actually looks pretty cool,

15:26

but costs as much as a Dreamcast

15:28

does. Is there, maybe

15:30

Ravi knows, are the PSUs in the

15:32

Dreamcast are dying? I think there's

15:34

lots of issues with the PSUs in

15:37

the Dreamcast. Stuff

15:40

like GDMU, you know, where

15:42

you're basically putting in

15:44

an SD card replacement, that

15:47

requires some heavy modding with

15:49

Dreamcast PSUs. I know there was

15:51

a PicoPSU, there was a DreamPSU,

15:55

which is cheap, but I know there's

15:57

been lots of problems with, I think...

16:00

the dream one, lots

16:02

of problems with overheating. There's

16:05

kind of been problems with getting the

16:08

correct voltages as well, I think. You

16:10

can end up damaging the

16:12

Dreamcast with some of the PSUs

16:14

that are out there at the

16:16

moment. I know there's

16:18

like a scale of them, but I haven't gone

16:20

through and checked every single

16:22

one. But this one looks like it's

16:25

a real high-end one that's going to try

16:27

and solve a lot of the problems at

16:29

the moment, and it requires no soldering

16:32

or anything like that. Yeah, well

16:34

that's where it caught my attention

16:36

as well. So this is called

16:38

the Funder Dream, and

16:40

according to the manufacturers who made it, it's going to

16:42

be plug and play

16:44

universal. So you can just

16:47

plug it into any Dreamcast, and it's professionally

16:49

made, but it does look a lot higher.

16:51

Well, it's internal, so you just drop it

16:53

inside the Dreamcast. Yeah, yeah. You

16:56

clip it in, don't you? But it does come at

16:58

a price of $95. Now,

17:02

I would say the average cost of a Dreamcast

17:04

in the UK at least is probably between £70

17:07

and £100, depending on the quality

17:10

of it and stuff like that. So

17:13

it's kind of a case of whether you think it's

17:15

worth it, or if the PSU on your old Dreamcast

17:17

has died. As far as I know, mine's still working.

17:19

I've never had any issues with it. But

17:21

the idea of this is it does

17:24

have things you've just mentioned there. The

17:26

overheat and the voltage are incorrect and stuff like

17:29

this. On the Funder Dream, apparently

17:31

it will detect the voltage automatically, and

17:33

it will change. It just knows what

17:35

to do. It will change to whatever

17:37

voltage it needs to be, what's going

17:39

through it, and it will adapt,

17:42

as well as very low heat generation,

17:44

so it shouldn't overheat. That's your solution

17:47

there. Because the Dreamcast is packed very

17:49

tight, isn't it? Yeah, and then also

17:52

very low noise, so it's going to

17:54

be 30 mVpp. I'm not

17:56

too sure. Which I think is

17:59

like... I don't know if you've got

18:01

the CD run drive in there. It's

18:03

pretty noisy, other fans. But

18:06

I think they're all dying off, yeah. I've

18:09

got a feeling by very low noise, they mean electrical

18:11

noise. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, you know, you've

18:13

got like an old power supply and the caps are kind

18:15

of failing. I had it on my CD32 and you kind

18:18

of get like interference on the screen. And

18:20

I can't think of a power supply around. Oh,

18:22

yeah, and that's it. Yeah, okay, I wasn't sure.

18:24

Actual audio. I actually thought the actual, because

18:27

the Dreamcast is quite loud, I thought it was going

18:29

to reduce that, but I see what you're saying now.

18:31

So I guess it's just whether you think it's worth it or

18:33

not, if you've got a Dreamcast that needs this, you

18:36

know, $95. I don't

18:38

know, it feels a little bit steep for me, but I

18:40

also am aware of what it is doing

18:42

for you as well. I think

18:44

it's, in terms of value, it's well

18:46

made, which by the looks of the

18:48

specifications and words that has gone

18:50

into this, it doesn't seem unreasonable

18:52

to me because, you know, I've bought power

18:54

supplies for other systems with a

18:56

highly rated like, you know, Commodore 64 replacement one,

18:58

I've got a few for my Amiga as well.

19:02

So I think the power supply is the

19:04

one thing that is most likely

19:06

to damage your system as it fails. Yeah.

19:10

Particularly, I mean, either Commodore 64 power supply wants to fill off the

19:12

table, one of the older really

19:14

awful Commodore ones, and it fried the RAM chips.

19:17

There's no like inbuilt protection or anything like that. And

19:20

that was quite common. And the thing is, when you've

19:22

got systems like, you know, the Amiga CD32, my power

19:24

supply was failing on that, and I had that weird

19:26

interference on my screen. I replaced that with a third

19:28

party one of eBay. But

19:31

the thing about the CD32 is, their

19:33

external power supplies, it's a lot easier just to kind

19:35

of find one and, you know, get the right plug

19:37

and plug it in. With stuff like systems where it's,

19:39

it's an internal power supply, I do think

19:41

it's more of a concern. For

19:43

example, you know, we've got like the Sega Saturn would

19:45

be another console that probably would need looking at as

19:47

well. But you get into that age now where, you

19:49

know, I've got consoles that have internal

19:51

power supplies that are only a few years older than the

19:53

Dreamcast, where the capacitors are starting to

19:55

fail in the power supplies. For example,

19:57

my 3DO failed a couple of years ago. So

20:00

I had to like recap that the power supply inside there. So

20:03

it kind of feels like you know now that they are like 25

20:05

years old It probably is something that is going

20:07

to become a you know bigger issue is

20:13

Yeah, yeah, I also think like, you

20:16

know Dreamcast there's a lot of those

20:18

limited edition ones like that become

20:20

really rare and Yeah, quite

20:22

expensive ones. Maybe it would be good to You

20:26

know if you're gonna fork out on one of those

20:28

you'd fork out on one of these at this price

20:30

But um, you know, it's the first

20:32

one. Maybe it will get reduced later on Yeah,

20:35

I'm asked to think if you buy a decent power supply

20:37

for your PC I mean you probably talking a similar

20:39

kind of price, you know for a high in power supply So

20:42

if you want to keep your dream cost going for many

20:45

more years to come and like you said I think the

20:47

good thing about this is it is literally plug-and-play So, you

20:49

know, there's no soldering required, you know I have to cut

20:51

up the case or anything like that as you often do

20:54

with third party ones So, um,

20:56

yeah, they've actually said it's built

20:58

for a perfection rather than budget

21:00

So if you want a decent power supply for

21:02

your dreamcast and a bit of peace of mind

21:04

as well You know keep these systems going then

21:06

I'll link that up in the show notes as

21:08

well Now I thought this story

21:11

was really interesting this is

21:13

a unreleased

21:15

iPod Tetris clone that

21:17

has recently been discovered on a beta

21:20

firmware from an iPod

21:23

third generation Now must

21:25

admit this was something I didn't even know

21:27

this was a thing but watching this

21:29

video I think this plays

21:31

quite well. Yeah, it looks quite

21:33

nice I do remember brick which was the

21:36

original one on the iPod and like a bright

21:39

breakout collate which makes sense because Steve wasn't and

21:41

Steve Jobs made that game didn't they? At

21:43

Atari back in the day. Yeah, and I

21:46

remember later on they they introduced a

21:48

few ones I was like solitaire on

21:50

there and paris you is and

21:52

yeah stuff like that and I

21:55

really enjoyed the interface of the wheel and You

21:59

know I didn't have an

22:01

OG iPod, but some of

22:03

my friends did. I had a creative

22:06

audio player, which was huge. It

22:09

was kind of just a hard drive with

22:11

buttons on it. But yeah,

22:13

I absolutely think this would

22:15

have worked really well. You

22:17

know, if they release it, I wonder why they didn't.

22:20

Well, this is a video that

22:23

we'll link up that you can check out

22:25

on YouTube. And it's by a YouTuber called

22:27

who calls himself Apple Demo, which makes sense.

22:29

He covers a lot of kind of

22:32

unreleased Apple products and prototypes. And

22:34

in this video, he's got a

22:36

third generation iPod from 2003. Now,

22:39

you know, that was a really weird one. That

22:41

was the one that had the those

22:43

illuminated four buttons. Yeah, we're

22:45

separate to the scroll wheel. So if you want to

22:47

play and skip tracks and everything, it wasn't around the

22:49

edge of the scroll wheel like it

22:51

was on the original and the later models. They

22:54

were separate on this. But

22:56

he's got this this basically demo

22:58

version of the iPod

23:00

third gen that dates from around

23:02

six weeks before the final product

23:04

shipped, so it's pretty close to

23:07

release. But the good thing about this is he's

23:09

actually got some beta firmware on there. And it

23:11

turns out there is a in-house

23:13

Tetris clone that is

23:15

called Stacker that you play on

23:17

the iPod's monochrome screen

23:21

using the scroll wheel to

23:23

control the Tetris pieces. And watching this

23:25

video, I agree with you, I think

23:27

this plays really well. Yeah, and

23:29

I think maybe he'll I

23:32

don't know about Apple and stuff, but maybe

23:34

he'll make it available to flash

23:36

their ones because I know there's a huge

23:38

modding scene where people are adding in flash

23:40

memory. They're adding in

23:43

new batteries and people

23:45

are modifying these iPods. And it's a

23:47

whole kind of collector group

23:49

around the iPods. Yeah,

23:52

it is quite good. And

23:55

I can imagine you've probably got Doom running on an

23:58

iPod somewhere as well. Well,

24:00

I think if this had been released, a lot

24:04

of productivity time would have been killed back

24:06

in the early to mid 2000s if

24:08

we all had a, you know, put all those new Tetris

24:10

in our pockets at that stage. Not

24:13

much work would have got done at colleges and universities.

24:16

But I think you asked why it

24:18

wasn't released. I've just got a feeling that it

24:21

was probably purely down to licensing. Yeah,

24:23

very expensive to get an

24:26

official license from the company

24:29

that owned Tetris, whoever they were at that

24:31

time, and there was various different people and

24:33

parts of it and different. But also, I

24:35

think there's a thing to be said about

24:37

having MP3 players as well still because, you

24:40

know, streaming music, if you don't pay

24:42

for it, you get adverts. It's relying

24:44

on connections and stuff. It's nice to

24:46

have something where you

24:48

can just plug it in and you're not

24:51

connected to the internet. Well,

24:53

I am you mentioned about there's quite a big iPod

24:56

collector's scene of which I am part of. I mean,

24:59

I've got my still my original first

25:01

generation iPod. And I've

25:03

got one of those iPod third gens in my collection as well.

25:06

So I would be interested to get this

25:08

working on there. You mentioned about whether we

25:10

could release this firmware so people could play

25:13

it on their own iPods. It's interesting because he

25:15

mentioned in the video that usually what happens is

25:17

when you buy an Apple

25:20

prototype, they wipe the

25:22

hard disks in them. So people

25:24

can't basically see these, you know, these beta

25:26

revisions of the firmware. But when he got

25:28

hold of this iPod, there was

25:31

a development unit, the disk wasn't

25:33

working in it. And it turned out

25:35

I think it was like the ribbon cable that connected it to the motherboard,

25:37

that basically was the failure. And when you replace

25:40

that, then the hard

25:42

disk contained that beta firmware

25:44

was accessible. It's

25:47

pretty much they must have looked into the hard disk dead, not

25:49

worried about it. And so it looks like you know,

25:52

I'm not sure how many other versions of this

25:54

are out there. But yeah, it would be cool

25:56

if if he has the nerve to release it.

25:58

I mean, personally, I can't. Apple being all

26:00

that bothered about something that didn't come out 21 years

26:02

ago. But I

26:04

also understand if he doesn't want to release it, I

26:06

would get his reasoning behind it too. But

26:09

it would be cool to play because I think, yeah,

26:11

it looks like the interface actually would

26:14

control pretty well using the

26:16

iPod scroll wheel and I'm

26:18

going on holiday soon. I generally do bring my, it's

26:20

not only my iPod classic that I take on holiday

26:22

with me. I've got

26:25

160 gigabyte iPod classic from like

26:27

2009. I used to have

26:29

a nano, I love that thing. Yeah, I've got

26:31

a few nanos in my collection. But as you said, then

26:33

it's having an offline device. And

26:36

also having, I've got loads of DJ mixes and albums

26:38

that I've ripped on there as well that are not

26:40

available on services like Spotify,

26:42

a lot of them on YouTube and stuff. But then

26:44

being reliant on hotel Wi-Fi and stuff like that is

26:46

a bit of a pain when you're relaxing around the

26:48

pool on holiday. So I do like to bring an

26:50

iPod with me for the hotel room and stuff as

26:53

well. So it would be nice to play a bit

26:55

of Tetris on there this year. So if

26:57

you want to check out that video, very cool.

26:59

I'll show that in this week's show notes as

27:01

well. Now you know, last week on the podcast, we

27:03

were talking about that amazing Mario

27:05

maker for Super Mario 64 that allows you

27:07

to make your own Mario levels on the

27:09

N64. And I did say on the podcast

27:12

last week, wouldn't it be amazing if someone

27:14

made some new levels or you can make

27:16

them for Mario Kart? You

27:18

did. And here we are seven

27:20

days later, and someone's only made

27:22

it happen. Your cries have been hurt. They

27:25

have. So this one admittedly

27:27

is for the Super Mario Kart version

27:29

for the SNES. But this

27:31

is I mean, looking at this, they're

27:33

calling this an expansion pack. But

27:35

to me, this almost looks like it could be a

27:38

sequel to it. This could have been like Mario Kart

27:40

2 for the SNES. Yeah, 100%

27:42

could have been Mario Kart 2.

27:45

This is Horizons expansion,

27:48

which looks absolutely fantastic. So this

27:50

has been created by Grid Attack.

27:52

And what it is is it's it

27:55

says it's an expansion to Mario Kart, but

27:57

I'm looking at it as more as it's

27:59

a new version. of Mario Kart, Super

28:01

Nintendo Mario Kart, because it comes with

28:03

eight custom worlds, which includes 20

28:06

different race tracks. And if I

28:09

remember rightly, there was only about 20 tracks on the

28:11

original game anyway. Like a replacement of

28:13

them all pretty much. Yeah, a replacement of them all.

28:16

And then they've, I really like the colour

28:18

palette that they've done here because of what

28:20

their aim was to do was not just make new

28:23

levels. They've done all new

28:25

backgrounds, all new styles, you know,

28:27

like Egyptian themes and like mind

28:30

train themes and stuff on here.

28:32

And obviously, you know, Super Mario Kart used

28:34

the mode seven. So it's that kind of flat

28:36

looking world. So there's only so much you can

28:38

do to make that look different. But I think

28:40

by changing the colour palette on this to

28:43

make it look more unique is what they're saying

28:45

has really, really worked. I think this looks really

28:47

beautiful. And then I did think I

28:49

was like graphically, this looks a little bit different as

28:51

well, but there's actually some upscaling on the pixel art

28:53

in here as well. So

28:56

they've redone some of the assets in the game, some

28:58

of the weapons, some of the characters, and just made

29:00

it all look a lot more polished and clean. But

29:03

what's really wonderful about this is you can

29:05

play this on your Super Nintendo on your

29:07

flash cart as well. So

29:09

it's not just online. It's not just, you know, on

29:11

the internet or whatever and on your computer is, you

29:14

know, download the ROM, put on your flash cart and

29:16

it will work on the Super Nintendo with

29:18

no modding or anything like that. And that's all

29:20

with all the revamp sprites and everything as well.

29:23

I really I think it looks beautiful. And

29:25

it is so frustrating that there's so much

29:27

cool stuff being done like this by the

29:29

fans. And Nintendo were just like,

29:31

Oh, yeah, Mario Kart 8 still. And you just

29:33

like to stick something like this on the switch.

29:35

It'd be people will buy it. It's fantastic. It

29:38

looks awesome. But also on

29:40

the switch like store, I would definitely. Yeah.

29:43

But also, I think this isn't just

29:45

like a ROM release where they've just chucked it

29:48

on. They've also put all this extra media on,

29:50

which is mad. They've got like a soundtrack

29:52

that you can download game

29:54

manual. They've got custom boxes as

29:56

well. They've done like NTSC and

29:59

PAL versions. And they've got

30:01

a cart label as well. So um, you

30:03

know, it's like the complete package this is

30:06

Yeah, and to me, I mean the calling me some romhack So

30:09

you do need the original rom for

30:11

Super Mario Kart? But to

30:14

me, yeah It does kind of feel like all they've

30:16

done is really taken the the engine Really

30:18

and kind of replaced everything else in the game by

30:20

the looks of it So you've got,

30:22

you know eight custom themes there as well new

30:25

locations Like you said the 20

30:27

racetracks you've got four battle tracks in there as well

30:29

All the color palettes have been remapped and changed as well

30:33

You've also got brand new soundtrack to the

30:35

game They were based all the tracks in

30:37

there the sprites have been changed the drivers

30:39

the vehicles the obstacles have all been given

30:41

a new Look the menu screens the new

30:43

content in there that you can unlock as

30:45

well There's even tweaked some of the mechanics

30:47

in there as well. So it

30:49

does seem like Yeah, this is

30:51

pretty much like I said, it's a

30:54

Super Mario Kart sequel, isn't it? Yeah, so

30:56

everyone in more more content for your Super

30:58

Nintendo And a new Mario

31:00

Kart game. This is called Super Mario Kart

31:02

horizons Of course, it

31:04

is completely free. No one ever

31:06

knows to charge for this it I think with the

31:09

threat of the dead They're looming but they

31:11

have already been nearly 2,000 downloads

31:13

at the time recording this I'm gonna check

31:15

it out that is available on their romhacks.org

31:17

and I'll put that link in the show notes as well now

31:21

this is sad news when I read it because

31:24

thinking about the Early

31:26

days have been online and those of us of

31:28

a certain age. I'm sure this

31:30

sound will bring back some memories You

31:32

know what that is? Yes, I

31:34

see cute. I think I was sent

31:36

a Christmas quiz one year and didn't you say it was a lemon Joe? Yeah,

31:39

I've got no idea what I seek us. I Thought

31:42

it was a lemon or a worm. Yeah, that should

31:44

be said does sound quite like a lemon I'm gonna

31:46

say but that was the

31:48

messaging sound for one of the

31:50

Internet's earliest Direct

31:52

messaging services I see

31:55

key that obviously stem stood for it was

31:57

a letter's I think you but it stood

31:59

for I seek You

32:01

know what I find it. I track you down Yeah,

32:03

which I must admit this story is

32:06

that the ICU service is Finally

32:09

closing down after almost 28

32:12

years now. It did start back in 1996

32:15

I think its peak was probably around 98

32:18

99 maybe I

32:21

think I signed up twice he probably around 97 Yeah,

32:24

he's dead probably until around 2000 when I changed

32:27

up to MSN and

32:29

Yahoo messenger kind of replaced it for

32:31

me. I used IRC before and

32:33

yes like Internet

32:35

relay chart and and

32:38

I CQ was my

32:40

first instant messaging experience and it

32:42

was really good It was

32:44

in the days when I wouldn't leave a computer

32:46

on 24 hours, you know I'd

32:49

turn it on and then you'd get loads

32:51

of messages That were

32:53

like left by people and stuff. Yeah,

32:55

man, there'd be a few who's online.

32:57

They'd be like free people You

33:01

know, you could you could chat to them but also it

33:04

had this kind of a weird Thing

33:07

which is probably pretty dodgy nowadays Which

33:09

is you can look up like local

33:11

ICU numbers and it would just match

33:13

you with someone totally random If

33:16

you didn't have that many people and you could just be like,

33:18

hey, how are you doing?

33:21

Like, where are you? Yeah, yeah,

33:23

yeah exactly and it didn't don't

33:25

know if he even had emojis

33:27

but I Remember

33:29

smiling on there. I think

33:31

smiley. Yeah, and it

33:33

was it was like obviously MSM Messenger

33:36

was when it got huge but that was

33:38

years after I see you I see you

33:41

I was a lot of hackers

33:43

were using I see you back in the day said

33:45

it was a it was kind of used

33:47

for a lot of Trading of

33:50

software and stuff like that as well

33:52

and being able to contact people directly

33:54

and It was when the internet

33:56

was a lot of a smaller place,

33:58

you know, yeah I enjoyed ICQ.

34:00

I was trying to remember my number because

34:02

he had a number rather than a username. I've got a feeling mine was 905216.

34:08

Yeah, yeah, I can remember mine. Can't

34:13

remember my wife's birthday, but I remember my ICQ number from

34:15

25 years ago. But

34:18

it was, I mean, it was, you know, a

34:20

revolution when that came out, being able to direct

34:22

message people across the internet. And

34:25

then obviously paved the way for, you know, stuff

34:27

like AOL messenger was massive in America. Not so

34:29

much over here. I mean, generally it was more

34:32

MSN and Yahoo, that me and

34:34

my friends used as we got into the 21st century. But

34:37

I must admit, I wasn't even aware that

34:39

ICQ was still going. Yeah,

34:41

that's, I'm amazed by that. Yeah, I'm just

34:43

remembering some of the things now. Remember, it

34:46

had like an answering message,

34:48

like an answer phone kind of, people

34:51

would leave messages and voicemails. Vaguely.

34:54

I remember that, like later versions,

34:56

she'd get like just random voicemails.

34:58

Like, hey, how are you doing?

35:01

Yeah, it was quite good. But

35:04

yeah, I can't believe it's still going. I'm

35:06

amazed. And I reckon the moods of its

35:08

death will probably add more

35:11

interest. Like a lot of people

35:13

saying that like just said one final message to my

35:15

number. Here it is. I've seen like a lot of

35:17

comments and tweets and that this week. But

35:19

it turns out, I mean, obviously, IKEA was

35:21

started by a company called Mirabless in 1996,

35:23

an Israeli company. And

35:26

then AOL bought them in 1998. So

35:29

they, yeah, they took over it. And then

35:31

obviously there was the Time

35:34

Warner acquisition. So

35:36

that kind of, obviously, that was

35:39

a famously bad merger back in the early 2000s as

35:41

well. Then it

35:43

turns out, I mean, that the timeline after that,

35:45

because a little bit murky. Apparently AOL sold it

35:47

to a company called Digital Sky Technologies. And

35:50

then there's a company called VK. So basically

35:52

got sold to a Russian company who've owned it

35:54

since 2010. But apparently

35:56

it turns out that ICQ Was

35:58

actually still quite. Popular. In

36:01

parts of Eastern Europe and Russia. Silent.

36:04

On his way they it was a

36:06

solid system. It works well as it

36:08

did his job in a an oxy

36:10

the Us and I think. There's.

36:12

A escargot. Thing

36:15

which is basically. Msn Messenger

36:17

and Live Messenger this been returned.

36:19

Pl. Change in the service

36:22

and stuff and that still a services used

36:24

in recent years that locally on alarm or

36:26

you can kind of use online swaths. I

36:28

same as going to be a fun. Fun!

36:31

As I see kids that have come

36:33

out and has nothing to let it

36:35

die. Nine our current not a cosmonaut

36:37

I'm gonna start using it and trying

36:39

to find some friends. A

36:42

fee for every like late as up. To

36:44

decide your I guess they did bring back

36:46

Msn Messenger didn't die. With that said, I

36:48

serve as a couple years yeah of which

36:50

I don't know about the security on that.

36:53

I don't know whether. It's as

36:55

underway. Looked into how it works in Athena

36:57

sending me messages and stuff through with a

36:59

said by he says he not really sure

37:01

he's looking at it was makes me and

37:04

another thing one thing about I C Q

37:06

was it wasn't. Just. Linked

37:08

to. I'm. Pcs.

37:11

And windows. It. Was on a

37:13

lot of different systems, it was on linux.

37:15

You know that's why you may have padlocked

37:17

more of a geeky kind of base backers

37:20

and I'm a version of it as well.

37:22

I am a yeah Aaron it and it

37:24

to me it felt lot more lie I'll

37:26

say oh or something that could be used

37:29

like universally in a huge you be able

37:31

to. Make. Decline and then

37:33

connect to the protocol. And

37:36

I'm. Yeah, so often that's

37:38

what was that? It apart where

37:40

I'm Sam was very Microsoft in

37:42

our rents. thousands of costs, dominant

37:44

platform member or skew seems to

37:46

be everywhere. I in a. Be.

37:49

A real hey Microsoft in the late nineties. The.

37:51

Yes, that's why turns out early that

37:54

the has been. i seek you

37:56

out some math on the google play store

37:58

on the iss still which they've

38:00

now removed now that they're discontinuing the

38:02

service. But apparently it also

38:04

connected to like WhatsApp and Telegram and stuff

38:06

in recent years as well. I remember using

38:08

a thing called Trillion, which was like I

38:11

could get every Messenger service on there. I

38:13

had like all of them. I was like

38:15

the boss. Yes,

38:18

it was one called Pigeon, but it's probably similar where you

38:20

can log in. A bit later that was, yeah. Yeah, you

38:22

can log in to loads of different services. Yeah,

38:25

I mean, ICQ was definitely the first instant messenger

38:27

that I used, you know, when I first got

38:29

online. What about you, Joe? Were

38:31

you like MSN straight away then? Yeah, MSN. I

38:34

think I went into like an AOL chat

38:36

room like once, and I was like 11.

38:39

But yeah, I was MSN as a teenager.

38:43

Never used this or heard of it until you mentioned

38:45

it on the Christmas quiz a few years back when

38:47

I thought it was a landing. You never used AIM

38:49

or Jabba? No,

38:52

never used them. No. Well,

38:55

it's the thing if someone does bring back ICQ, that

38:57

makes it like a, you know, a recreation of it

38:59

or a resurrection. And me and Ravi are moving over

39:01

to that full time, so we'll have to do all

39:03

our podcasts. Yeah. On ICQ.

39:06

So we'll definitely keep an eye on that. And I think,

39:08

yeah, we've got a feeling the old fans of ICQ might

39:10

not let this die completely. So it would be nice if

39:12

it can get like the old Windows 95

39:14

apps back online again, wouldn't it? And

39:17

like that would be the MSN one. Yeah,

39:19

so RIP ICQ. If you

39:21

want to read more about that story, I'll put that. And

39:23

of course, everything else we talk about, you don't have to

39:25

Google around. I save the job every week. You just check

39:28

the notes section of your podcast

39:30

app or head to our website at the

39:32

retro hour dot com. Now,

39:34

we did have an amazing patrons hang

39:36

out this weekend just gone.

39:39

That was fun, wasn't it? This is where we get together.

39:41

If you haven't heard about this before, basically a bunch of

39:43

patrons, we all get together. I think it's about over 42

39:47

of us at one stage this

39:49

weekend. It was quite a popular one. I

39:51

was actually at my mom's house on

39:53

her very dodgy Wi-Fi, which

39:56

is retro in itself. I think she's got

39:58

like an NTL router or something. I

40:00

was on my iPad and it was actually

40:02

too many people to fit on my iPad screen, which was nice

40:10

to see. It was a really good turnout for it.

40:12

We talked about all kinds of things and tried to

40:14

think about some of the things we tried about. I

40:17

went down like a rabbit hole

40:19

of comics. We

40:22

talked about comics for ages and then we

40:24

started talking about films and different

40:26

characters from those and how comic

40:28

characters influenced games as well. And

40:31

then I went ahead and started a comic

40:33

channel on the Internet. Yeah,

40:36

we're talking about music as well, which

40:39

is nice because obviously we're all different backgrounds and

40:41

different ages and stuff. So it's nice to kind

40:43

of talk to each other about like different genres

40:45

of music we listen to and stuff. But it's

40:47

really fun. And I was actually saying to

40:49

a friend at work the other day, he was asking me all about

40:51

the podcast and it was kind of like I was

40:54

saying we started during lockdown in 2020

40:57

in Covid. And I kind of always

40:59

thought it might have died out, you

41:01

know, kind of like it just

41:03

never has. And it just keeps

41:06

us all connected. And, you know, people from America

41:08

come on in Sweden and stuff like that. Like

41:10

it's absolutely awesome. Yeah. And everyone

41:12

was sharing their data sets as well. And

41:14

there we go. We're talking a lot about

41:16

analog tape and the connection

41:18

between music and also storing data

41:21

on them. Yeah, it's

41:23

just such a giggle and such a great

41:25

community as well. Such friendly bunch of people and

41:28

very welcoming to new members as well. So we have got

41:30

one coming up at the end of next month. They would

41:32

have been moving it to your big Amiga events at the

41:34

end of June, isn't it? So I

41:36

think we're going to be doing it first weekend of July, which

41:38

might sound quite a way off,

41:40

but I'm sure it'll be here before we know it. So if you'd

41:42

like to join us for that. And of course, our patrons community, really

41:45

the main reason that we run that is just to make sure that

41:47

we can cover the running costs of the podcast week in week out.

41:49

So all the details to join is on there

41:51

and they get access to that exclusive part

41:54

of our Discord server as well. You

41:56

can add to our website at the

41:58

retro hour.com. Okay, well, thank you for checking out. the news

42:00

this week, a reminder as well that we always

42:02

appreciate a nice podcast review, don't

42:04

we? Certainly. Whenever

42:07

we see them, Ravi's always sending us a screenshot in

42:09

our little chat group normally. It

42:11

warms the cockles, as they say, to see

42:14

a nice review from people. And not just

42:16

for that reason, it's not all about massaging

42:18

our ego. The main reason that we like

42:20

a nice review is because it helps us

42:23

in that all-important podcast algorithm. So

42:25

if you do listen on a platform

42:28

that does allow reviews, Spotify, Apple Podcasts,

42:31

nice reviews and five-star ratings, help us get in

42:33

that chat as well. And the most important thing

42:35

is get a significant new people, which

42:37

is always amazing to see. So if you did get a

42:39

spare couple of minutes, we appreciate that. Everyone can support us

42:41

on Patreon. But it is

42:43

really easy just to leave a little, you know, take one minute

42:46

to leave a nice little review and that will really help out

42:48

the podcast as well. We would appreciate that. Right

42:50

then, next, we're going to be chatting to

42:52

orbital legend Paul Hartnell. He's

42:54

coming up next on the Retro Out Podcast. satisfying

43:05

than finding something that perfectly lines up with

43:07

your taste and checks all the boxes like

43:10

a suit from Indochino. Their suits

43:12

are made to measure and totally customizable

43:14

with endless options. Choose the

43:16

cut, fabric, lining, and more for the suit

43:18

of your dreams at a surprisingly affordable price.

43:21

Go to indochino.com and use code

43:23

PODCAST to get 10% off any

43:25

purchase of $3.99 or more. That's

43:27

10% That's 10% off at

43:30

indochino.com with code

43:32

PODCAST. Find your perfect

43:34

fit with The

43:37

Federal Inflation Reduction Act can make it

43:39

more affordable than ever to upgrade your

43:42

HVAC system and lower your energy bills.

43:44

Now is the time to say goodbye

43:46

to your old-fashioned fossil fuel burning system

43:48

and switch to an all-electric, all-climate heat

43:50

pump from Mitsubishi Electric. Learn more about

43:52

Mitsubishi Electric products at patriotair.com. Federal

43:55

income tax credit available to U.S. homeowners only for

43:57

qualifying heat pump models. regulations

44:00

and are subject to change. Contact your tax advisor for

44:02

further requirements and to confirm eligibility for tax credits. So

44:05

you're listening to the Retro Hour

44:07

Podcast and we're here today with

44:10

Paul Hartnell and Paul is from

44:12

the Super Group. Yes, Rave Pioneers,

44:14

Orbital, absolutely love this group

44:16

and this interview is going to be a

44:18

bit different. We're also joined by our patron

44:20

Pete and I'd say Pete

44:23

is our resident Orbital Superfan, if

44:25

I'll call you that and it's

44:27

great to have you on and I think this

44:29

could be a really interesting interview. We're going to

44:32

talk about kind of technology,

44:34

the early days of Rave but then

44:36

also video games and you know the influence

44:38

that some of these tracks had on video

44:40

games and some of the technology you guys

44:42

used as well. So Paul, how are you

44:45

doing? I'm doing very well, thank you Revvie.

44:47

How are you? Really good,

44:49

it's good to have you here and we have

44:51

a question that we always ask

44:53

our guests first which is what was

44:55

the first kind of gaming experience that

44:58

you remember that stuck out to you? Oh,

45:01

first gaming experience that really stuck

45:04

out to me. Now

45:08

I'm not sure which one happened first

45:10

but I'm going to have to say

45:12

adventure on the Atari because

45:15

I got one for Christmas one year

45:17

and I had missile command and that's

45:19

when I first realized that the

45:22

difference between playing games in an arcade where you've

45:24

got a limited number of 10p pieces and

45:27

you're running out of money and you're trying to

45:29

master this game. So when you get it at

45:31

home and you play it, you've mastered the

45:33

game. You can sit there and eat a mince pie on

45:35

boxing day and just play through all the levels. It's just

45:37

like you get really good

45:39

at those kind of arcade games very quickly

45:42

and that's when I kind of realized

45:44

I wanted something more. Someone described adventure

45:47

and I just thought that sounds bonkers

45:49

and I got it and that's when I

45:52

got it. It's so limited but it's the

45:54

first open-ended adventure game. Go where you

45:57

like, work it out yourself and that

45:59

was it. the sort of game that really pulled

46:01

me in. And were you and

46:03

your brother both kind of playing it? No,

46:08

he probably would have a bit, but he was, he's

46:10

like four years older than me. And

46:12

my older brother is seven years

46:14

older than me, our oldest

46:16

brother, I should say. And he

46:19

would have been much more into punk

46:22

rock and girls at that point, you

46:24

know, it's like, whereas I was sat around

46:26

playing video games and nerding out, you know,

46:28

still watching Doctor Who and things

46:30

like that. Actually, my older brother,

46:32

Gary, who went to Cambridge, he introduced me

46:34

to something, which was the other game I

46:36

was thinking of, to kind of

46:39

like a text-based adventure game on

46:42

a computer in one of the Cambridge computer

46:44

rooms. But it was all done

46:46

on paper. There's no, there was no monitor.

46:48

So it would print something out and

46:51

then you'd type your answer and it would then

46:53

go to check, check, check, check, check,

46:55

check, check, check, check, check, check, check, and then print

46:57

out its answer. And it was really kind of intense

47:00

because of that, because it was all on paper.

47:02

And then, of course, when it's ultimately,

47:04

you know, after quite a reel

47:06

of papers that you've just died, you kind

47:09

of you can tear it off and take it

47:11

away with you and just recount your adventure. It

47:14

was that that really opened

47:16

my eyes as well to just

47:18

adventure gaming in general. I think it was a

47:20

big thing back then that you had the program

47:22

called the adventure game, which is essentially watching

47:25

people do an escape room, which in

47:28

turn, you know, has been a big

47:30

thing in video games, especially on phones

47:32

and things like that. But you had

47:34

things like Myst, which is a

47:36

whole big adventure, but it is kind of like

47:38

a giant escape room. Yeah,

47:40

yeah. A good way to put it actually. Yeah,

47:43

all the puzzles to get to the next next

47:45

section, the next room, the next area. And

47:48

that kind of thing is just so,

47:50

so compelling. So you

47:52

started off with a Atari console.

47:55

Did you make the leap to another console? Did he

47:57

go through to PCs after that or computers or what

47:59

did he want? What was next? Well, when

48:01

I went from an Atari to

48:05

nothing, there was a few

48:08

wilderness years where I got into Girls and Punk

48:10

Rock. And

48:12

then I got an Atari STE

48:15

with my first paycheck from releasing

48:18

Chime. And that

48:21

was the beginning of me playing games

48:23

again when I remember doing a gig

48:25

in Manchester and just walking around the

48:27

Arndale Centre and walking past a shop

48:29

that was a video

48:31

game shop. And I went in

48:33

and just saw the Atari section and thought, oh my God,

48:36

I can play games on this thing. I

48:38

hadn't even thought. So you

48:41

got the Atari for music production originally? Yeah,

48:43

yeah, yeah. So you were using the same

48:45

machine? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh,

48:47

yeah, yeah. And then, you know, it's

48:50

like music production then evening

48:52

off. It's straight into Dungeon

48:54

Master, which blew my mind. I

48:57

love Dungeon Master. It was the

48:59

ultimate for me back then. Oh, it's an awesome game.

49:01

Did you have any goat programming

49:04

at all or typing in stuff

49:06

from magazines? Absolutely.

49:09

Actually, because I did have for a brief spell,

49:12

when me and Phil were working on a building site,

49:15

he was the bricklayer and I was the labourer.

49:17

There was another guy who had an old Texas

49:19

Instruments computer and he sold it to us for next

49:21

to nothing. And I

49:24

remember doing all the, you know,

49:27

go red, go yellow, return, you know,

49:30

repeat and that kind of thing. And just making it

49:32

kind of strobe in the bedroom with

49:34

flashing colours. But that's as far as I

49:36

got really, as far as actual programming. When

49:39

I did try and get onto a course for

49:41

how to build electronic instruments

49:44

and they, in the interview, they

49:46

were discussing my

49:49

mathematical and programming prowess and that's when

49:51

I realised, oh, I'm a player, not

49:53

a maker. And they

49:55

didn't let me. They asked me if I wanted to make

49:58

violins instead and I thought, no. I've said

50:00

that, I'm not doing that. Well,

50:05

I love the kind of name orbital of

50:07

course, and that's based on the M25 going

50:10

around and there's all these free parties and

50:12

raves back in the days. And this was

50:15

maybe hard for some of our listeners to

50:17

understand, but, you know, without

50:19

social media and stuff, people were

50:21

organizing these on a mass scale

50:23

with, you know, party lines on

50:25

phones, pirate radios and stuff. Do

50:27

you remember the kind of illegitimate

50:31

use of technology back

50:34

then and kind of how it all

50:37

happened and, you know, grew to such

50:39

a huge scale? Indeed. And don't forget the

50:41

humble printer. You know, it was all about

50:43

flyers back then. You've got, you

50:45

know, people got flyers and they passed them

50:48

around and they told their friends, oh, look,

50:50

Saturday night, ring this number or go to

50:52

this service station or whatever. And

50:54

that's what people did. That was, you'd

50:56

find a flyer with a

50:59

number for a mystery party and that's why

51:01

everyone was set off around the M25

51:03

because you're never more than, you know,

51:05

like an hour away from the possible

51:07

destination. And they've waited the

51:09

service stations, wouldn't they? And then there'd be

51:11

like one phone box and you'd

51:14

have to kind of ring this line

51:16

and word would get out. Yeah, that's

51:18

it. People were collaborative back then, you

51:20

know, someone would ring it up and

51:22

it'd go where the parties and

51:24

they'd turn around and go, right, we're all going to wherever

51:26

and shout it out and everyone would peg it

51:28

off. You know, it was that

51:30

kind of thing. I mean, I could never really

51:33

do those parties because I only had a really

51:36

small part time job in

51:38

order to facilitate myself to do music for

51:41

half the week. And most of

51:43

these parties you kind of had to pay

51:45

to get in even, you know, they weren't

51:48

free necessarily, but the cost

51:50

of getting in was too expensive for me back

51:52

then. I wondered as

51:55

well, did you get any like mixtapes

51:57

because I know mixtape packs and

52:00

mixtapes and live recordings. Often some of

52:02

them I think they were done on that

52:04

tapes as well at some point you

52:07

know to get higher quality ones later

52:09

on but did you get any recordings

52:11

of like these huge raves and parties?

52:13

No, I've got some I've got plenty

52:15

of mixtapes though from when

52:18

I went to Australia I've got I you know

52:20

I've got mixtapes of two of the DJs that

52:23

I stayed with when I was there Ming and

52:25

Sheen and I got

52:27

mixtapes from people early on

52:29

in the in the like 1990 from

52:32

people like Shane and Jamie who were

52:34

two West country Acid,

52:36

Halsey, Techno, DJs. They they've actually met

52:38

people and made friends. They just give

52:40

you tapes Because that's how

52:42

you pass the information and I go home and listen

52:44

to it and I tell all my friends out there

52:46

They're really good and then someone might you know through

52:48

all of that through giving out all those tapes people

52:50

are gonna get jobs And that kind of thing and

52:53

they'd always have their phone numbers on it Yeah,

52:55

that's how I got in Belfast

52:57

because the original copy of time Had

53:00

the ozone record shop phone number on it

53:02

David Holmes rung that jazzy em gave

53:05

David Holmes My mum's number when I was living at

53:07

home And he just rung up out of the blue

53:09

and that's that's how it was all done It was

53:11

all about the phone number and the printed printed

53:14

number somewhere Yeah, I remember the days of

53:16

those mixtapes we used to be swapping around

53:19

at the school playground and you'd have recordings

53:21

of recordings of recordings Yeah, yeah, sure. I

53:23

had some great ones actually from Shane and

53:25

Jamie. They gave me a brilliant one, which

53:27

was an Early each static before

53:29

they'd ever had any records out and they were just

53:31

playing live Around the West Country

53:33

raves and they gave me this tape of this band

53:35

and it was just blew my mind because it was

53:38

like the first Tramps if you

53:40

like that I'd ever heard it was it was

53:42

like acid housey techno stuff

53:44

with loads of crazy vocal Samples, but

53:46

all this kind of Osric

53:49

tentacles type, you know our pagiation

53:51

across the top and I swear I

53:53

don't I'd never the term trance I think

53:55

comes from the band each static. Yeah,

53:58

it's like early file sharing but and

54:00

literally sharing a tape and then all

54:02

duplicating it as well. And I guess

54:04

stuff came over from America as well

54:06

with the house scene over there

54:08

and how that got established.

54:11

Yeah, American 12 inches were like

54:13

gold dust over here. Imports,

54:16

imports, always expensive, but always

54:18

coveted. I used to spend a

54:20

lot of time as a kid at Eastern Block Records in

54:22

Manchester, and that was very

54:24

much a case of you'd listen to, but

54:27

back then it was Sunset Radio, 808 State

54:29

Radio Show, and they'd be playing whatever's there,

54:31

and sort of top 10, if you like,

54:33

and have all the imports from Italy and

54:36

America and all that. And I'd save up my

54:38

paper round and try and get what I could afford

54:40

to buy. And yeah,

54:43

all this underground music scene was massive by then. Yeah,

54:45

if they'll even admit that they've got it in the

54:47

shop and not just be saving up in the DJs,

54:49

because that's what happened to me when I went to

54:51

Eastern Block. So I've arrived with

54:53

my soft southern accent and said, oh, have

54:55

you got Marina Van Rooey? I

54:58

said, no, no, I've sold out. And Sasha was in the

55:00

shop, where he'd come in with me, but they didn't know

55:02

that we'd come in together and he'd turn around and say,

55:04

oh, stop it, stop mucking about, give him one. He

55:07

went, oh, bloody hell, and just reached under the

55:09

counter and gave them. You

55:12

know, it's really like who you know.

55:15

Yeah, I think they like to keep it local as well, didn't they? Oh,

55:18

yeah. Why not? Yeah,

55:20

they had all the power, those guys. They

55:22

certainly did. So when

55:25

obviously you did chime and it's well documented under

55:27

the stairs and all that kind of thing, and

55:29

you were using hardware since connected

55:32

and very much just

55:35

doing it on the fly, I guess, or just jamming. When

55:38

did you start integrating a

55:40

computer or a door into the into

55:42

the flavor there? They're pretty soon after chime.

55:44

I mean, I had an MMT8

55:47

sequencer, which was an eight track sequencer that

55:49

you could do, you know, do arrangements and

55:51

songs on, which I used to do sometimes.

55:55

Nine times out of ten, it was just easier to create all

55:57

the parts and then just jam it onto your

55:59

four track. track or a

56:01

DAT as time went on. And

56:04

if it didn't work, you'd just do it again until

56:06

it did work, until you were happy with one of

56:08

the jams. A lot

56:11

of our early singles, the original version

56:13

of Halcyon is just a jam. And

56:16

also editing was not an easy thing to do.

56:18

It was very expensive. So that's

56:21

why you get 12 minute long orbital tracks because

56:23

it was a 12 minute jam and we couldn't edit

56:25

it. So it was just, well, there it is. We

56:28

like the vibe. It seems to work. Let's just go

56:30

with it. But I first got into

56:33

using a DAW was when I got an Atari

56:35

and I think

56:37

we had an advance of something like

56:39

2 grand, which seemed astronomical to me

56:41

to start

56:43

writing more stuff after signing a deal with London

56:46

Records. And I spent

56:48

it on an EMAX 2 sampler,

56:52

an Atari STE, couldn't even afford Cubase,

56:54

which is what I wanted because

56:57

I liked the arrangement page on it. But

56:59

I went with C-Lab creator, didn't bother

57:02

with Notator because I don't read music.

57:04

So just went with creator on

57:06

an Atari, have MIDI on it. And it was

57:08

like the world opened up

57:10

to this whole new land, you know,

57:13

the next level stuff for

57:16

it, much easier to arrange things

57:18

and do amazing things. I

57:22

just got it out recently and I

57:24

settled back into it. What's doing C-Lab?

57:26

You got C-Lab out? Yeah, yeah. And

57:29

then Atari STE because I had to

57:31

because I was reconstructing

57:34

our green and brown albums

57:36

for playing live on the

57:38

recent tour. And because

57:40

everything used to be just jammed or

57:42

arranged and then recorded straight like as

57:44

a live mix onto that, we never

57:47

multitracked anything because we were always doing

57:49

it at home. So

57:51

I had to reconstruct it. And

57:54

I've always had this sort of suspicion that if you

57:56

plug it in, it's all just going to work and

57:58

guess what it did? I think

58:00

I have one or two failed files,

58:03

no actual completely corrupted floppy disks, just

58:05

one or two files that just would

58:07

not load. But everything

58:10

else just worked and I plugged it

58:12

into my old trusty old

58:14

wave station and R8 drum machine

58:16

and yep, it all just worked.

58:18

And all the Cisneg bumps worked

58:20

and everything. Do you find that

58:23

groups nowadays are trying to go back to their kind

58:25

of roots like, I know the

58:27

chemical brothers are starting using some of that

58:29

older equipment and setups. Is

58:33

it kind of good fun revisiting that and

58:37

people are trying to achieve nowadays? Yeah,

58:39

I felt young again, having to wait

58:41

for the floppy disk to load and

58:43

watching the Busy B on the Atari

58:46

and that kind of thing. And it's

58:49

quite zen because it's like you can't rush it. It's like,

58:51

I've got to turn it on, it's got to fire up,

58:53

I've got to load the C-Lab Creator. Now I've got to

58:55

find that disk that I didn't write on when I was

58:57

22 properly and

59:00

put it in the machine, find the

59:02

file and off

59:05

you go. And then it crashes and then you have to do

59:07

it all again and you just go, oh well. So

59:10

you were controlling since with MIDI

59:12

then through C-Lab, but

59:14

did you ever consider using synthesis for

59:17

something like the SID or

59:19

computer generated ones? No,

59:21

not back then. I didn't even know that was

59:23

a thing or even possible. I've

59:25

got an Electron SID station now,

59:27

which is a great machine, but

59:31

I didn't try and do anything

59:33

like that back then because this

59:36

was kind of uncharted forward thinking

59:38

territory. The idea of using a SID chip

59:40

back then would have been like, you

59:43

would have thought, well, why would I want

59:46

those kind of very bad plinky plunky kind

59:48

of sounds? I'm not insulting those sounds now.

59:50

I know they're valid now, but

59:52

back then it would have been, no, no, no,

59:54

we're going forward. This is Acid

59:57

House. This is techno. This is something that

59:59

hasn't been done. Dumb before you have it was

1:00:01

more about. Finally getting the

1:00:03

money to buy something that the the big.

1:00:06

People. Would have had like have a

1:00:08

wave station and then money pit doing things

1:00:10

on that that nobody else is doing, not

1:00:12

bothering to program it. Of.

1:00:14

Also wondering like how much synth pop

1:00:17

and you know, The. Kind of

1:00:19

fab. British. Gonna Sound

1:00:21

of Uses emphasizes influence to as

1:00:23

well and that than a history

1:00:25

I'll yet it may you be

1:00:27

using more underground stuff like bands

1:00:29

like Cabaret Voltaire, Of the

1:00:32

whole labels like Zed T T Records,

1:00:34

Factory Records, all of those Fifa World

1:00:36

of massive influence and people manipulating stuff

1:00:38

electronically like come on the Sounds records

1:00:41

like Tuck It In Case Leblanc and

1:00:43

things like bass that is that you

1:00:45

have like industrial hip hop and it

1:00:47

was that. It was such a powerful

1:00:50

sound. All that was very much influence

1:00:52

and then and Electrodes is a New

1:00:54

York collect in and the the American

1:00:56

electro scene. And then when house music

1:00:59

came along it just it was like

1:01:01

Ike I. This feels like a progression

1:01:03

of. Like. Bobby Oh

1:01:05

Style. A high energy disco

1:01:08

music and electrode? Brilliant. Okay, I can

1:01:10

buy into this. this is great and

1:01:12

then I got bit bored of it.

1:01:14

Will being a bit solely in a

1:01:16

bit. I didn't really like the solely

1:01:18

piano house stuff so much alike. the

1:01:20

cob samples in the craziest often. Then

1:01:23

of course acid house appeared. Which.

1:01:25

Was totally off the scale for said

1:01:27

they had no territory your geography thirds

1:01:29

of where where he had come from

1:01:31

and then Detroit Techno which obviously had

1:01:33

it's roots in bands or Kraftwerk and

1:01:36

something a little dirty a book able.

1:01:38

Again, it was putting this stuff into

1:01:40

the house music the wasn't kind of

1:01:42

solely it was much more. The

1:01:45

much more kind of. Austere and

1:01:47

dogs was great guy I'd. Just

1:01:49

because Joey Belgium that says that ecstasy

1:01:52

track com which is one of the

1:01:54

first big kind of trance ones as

1:01:56

well thought later on. yeah

1:01:58

i've been having kids It's

1:02:02

really got that connection but

1:02:04

it's also got a bit of

1:02:06

a British feel as well, just having

1:02:08

that legacy there. Yeah, for

1:02:10

sure. I think the

1:02:12

British sound of what

1:02:15

would eventually become rave music, for want

1:02:17

of a better word, if

1:02:19

you look at people like us, 808 State, even

1:02:21

a bit later, Chemical

1:02:23

Brothers, but also Round

1:02:28

Out time, Leftfield, Prodigy, there's

1:02:30

a kind of punk rockness

1:02:33

to it that

1:02:35

I feel you hear kind

1:02:37

of on you sounds influence and all

1:02:39

those dirty electronics

1:02:41

you used to get from Cabaret

1:02:43

Voltaire and factory records. Yeah,

1:02:46

I'd agree. So you

1:02:48

had the Atari ST, I did wonder why you hadn't gone to

1:02:50

Cubase and I guessed it might be a budgetary thing back at

1:02:52

the time. What did you start going on to

1:02:54

a Mac or something like that after that? Oh,

1:02:56

Mac, I've eventually got a Mac

1:02:59

for the insides album. So I

1:03:01

did three albums on the Atari and

1:03:03

then switched to a Mac and I was very suspicious of

1:03:05

it. So I kept it in

1:03:07

my bedroom and would toy with it

1:03:10

until I was fluent and then I swapped it

1:03:12

out for the Atari. Were

1:03:14

you brand new to the Mac then? Oh yeah,

1:03:17

I was gone before. Yeah,

1:03:19

but then of course I just

1:03:21

covered Warcraft and lost

1:03:23

about an album to Warcraft. I

1:03:27

used to go into work on Saturday,

1:03:30

I say work with commas in the

1:03:32

air on Saturday

1:03:34

and just play Warcraft all day long. Yeah,

1:03:37

and I'd think, I'd go

1:03:39

in with good intentions to settle down to do some

1:03:42

music. I think, oh, I can't just have five

1:03:44

minutes of Warcraft and then it's like lunchtime and

1:03:46

you're like, oh bugger, I've

1:03:48

lost half a day to video games,

1:03:51

but that was an addictive game.

1:03:54

I still have that problem. I

1:03:58

was wondering as well when the internet came. around

1:04:00

like you guys had quite

1:04:02

a strong community and presence. Steve

1:04:05

Price aka loops had

1:04:07

helped set up the community. How

1:04:10

important was the early internet to

1:04:12

you guys and harboring that? Well

1:04:15

I was always quite skeptical in the

1:04:17

sense that it didn't bother me.

1:04:19

I didn't really troll the internet.

1:04:22

I quite liked email. I quite liked that again

1:04:24

that's that addictive thing isn't it? I quite like

1:04:26

going in the morning and see it and having

1:04:28

the little chicken go you've got mail you know

1:04:30

and it's like great. But I

1:04:33

never really used to look

1:04:35

at the internet that much or think

1:04:37

websites were that important. We ended up

1:04:40

paying someone big money to

1:04:42

do a website and the first thing they came

1:04:44

but they came around they sent an interview around

1:04:47

to get the bio kind of stuff

1:04:49

and the first thing they asked us was well

1:04:51

when did you two meet and I just thought

1:04:53

this isn't going to go down. Okay

1:04:57

they've done zero research

1:05:00

and it was always such a painful process

1:05:02

to change anything and expensive as well and

1:05:04

then like you say in the background there

1:05:06

was this fan website

1:05:08

called loops which had far more connection

1:05:11

with all the fans and information

1:05:13

and was just constantly

1:05:16

updated and working and then Steve

1:05:18

ended up in

1:05:21

Kent and so I know that their parents have

1:05:23

got a pub somewhere in Oxford and

1:05:25

so I think he must have done a

1:05:27

pub crawl of Oxford but he found my

1:05:29

mum and dad's pub because he looked at

1:05:31

the jukebox and noticed that every orbital single

1:05:34

was on this jukebox and it's like right.

1:05:36

He was stalking you. Thanks

1:05:38

for that Pete you know yeah. He

1:05:44

caused me baby

1:05:46

reindeer. And then he

1:05:48

got chatting to my mum and then we just kind

1:05:52

of stayed in touch and Steve's having

1:05:55

stalking us but he's not a scary guy. He's

1:05:57

on the left. He's

1:06:00

a great guy. He now does

1:06:02

it for us officially. Well we ended up sacking off our

1:06:05

website and just said, do you want to do it? They

1:06:07

said, you're doing a better job. Will you just do

1:06:09

our website? And he was like, yeah, great. And

1:06:12

so, you know, Steve ended up doing it and it's never

1:06:15

really changed, you know, and he's done a lot.

1:06:18

He does a lot of our social media

1:06:20

as well, the important posts of telling people

1:06:22

we're doing stuff and he just instinctively knows

1:06:26

how to deal with the internet from an

1:06:28

orbital perspective. He's got it

1:06:30

all going on really, which is great. Yeah,

1:06:33

it's good. It's like you say,

1:06:35

he's tuned in both to you and online

1:06:38

and the internet and how it works and

1:06:40

how to get people excited and the

1:06:42

idea of building up this network of people, the

1:06:44

loopers as they call them. Yeah. Although

1:06:47

I was on that forum back in the day,

1:06:50

I've kind of only recently discovered at the last

1:06:52

few years, the loopers,

1:06:54

the guys that are just so into

1:06:56

the band that they've got tattoos and

1:06:58

all sorts. And it's been great

1:07:01

to meet them because they're such a nice

1:07:03

bunch of people. So yeah, big shout out

1:07:05

to the loopers. Well, yeah, because if I

1:07:07

get the chance, I'll often, because

1:07:09

I'm always in communication with Steve,

1:07:12

if he's going for a meetup

1:07:14

sometimes beforehand or whatever,

1:07:17

occasionally I'll nip along, you know, which

1:07:19

is always annoying because everyone wants to buy me a pint and

1:07:21

I can't have one for them about the cold stage. So

1:07:25

it's like, it's always nice to go and meet

1:07:28

those people. You get to know

1:07:30

everyone. And yeah,

1:07:32

I was talking to a pair,

1:07:35

Wendy and Tez at the front of the

1:07:37

stage, five minutes while I went on and

1:07:40

Bearded Theory, you know, you just go down and have a

1:07:42

chat, oh, are you doing all right? Yeah. Anyone

1:07:44

else here and that kind of thing. It's just like, it's

1:07:47

good to be in contact with the people

1:07:49

that do, you know,

1:07:51

use you as a method of travel. It's like

1:07:53

a random, it's like throwing the dice. Wear a

1:07:55

orbital with me. Oh yeah, that sounds fun. Let's

1:07:57

do that. I like it. didn't

1:08:00

they as well? They did indeed, yeah. I

1:08:03

bumped into the front of the queue and

1:08:05

I went to go and change into my

1:08:07

stage outfit in the hotel over the road.

1:08:09

I guess it's good kind of

1:08:11

having an archive of stuff as well and I was

1:08:13

wondering internet, you know, the

1:08:16

audio and the streaming was pretty bad

1:08:18

like early on. Did you guys ever

1:08:20

attempt to do any like

1:08:22

streaming or internet radio show or

1:08:25

any kind of thing like that? We did something with

1:08:27

the BBC. We did a live broadcast

1:08:30

from our studio early

1:08:32

on. ISDN I

1:08:34

believe was the method that

1:08:37

they used. That

1:08:40

required them to have like a huge lorry

1:08:42

out the front of the building and cables all

1:08:44

traipsing through the windows and that kind of

1:08:46

thing. It wasn't really a

1:08:48

possibility without someone like

1:08:50

the BBC back then or so

1:08:52

it seemed anyway. Yeah, so

1:08:55

I know you guys were pretty influential

1:08:58

in terms of the

1:09:00

early PlayStation scene and

1:09:02

how that also kind of had a

1:09:04

crossover into rave culture that we're bringing

1:09:06

the playstations into nightclubs to get

1:09:10

the people playing with them. But the

1:09:12

game Wipeout was massively

1:09:14

popular which helped to launch

1:09:17

the PlayStation which also because of its soundtrack

1:09:19

with Chemical Brothers and Prodigy and you guys.

1:09:22

We had this kind of older generation

1:09:24

of people, the teenagers, the clubbers

1:09:26

that were getting into gaming at that point

1:09:28

and consoles became a really

1:09:31

good way of winding down after gigs

1:09:33

or after the night

1:09:35

out and things. Is that how you use them? Yeah,

1:09:38

that was the getting involved with Sony

1:09:40

to do Wipeout was that was my next

1:09:42

step into the console. They gave us a

1:09:45

PlayStation as part

1:09:48

of the process and so that was

1:09:50

the first time I got back

1:09:52

into consoles because like I say I've been

1:09:54

very much Warcraft and things like

1:09:56

that before then. I absolutely

1:09:58

loved it. Again, it was It was like

1:10:01

next level gaming for me. The fact that when they

1:10:03

said, you know, we want you to do a piece

1:10:05

of music, I thought, okay, this is going to be

1:10:07

interesting. Am I going to have to do

1:10:10

something limited on a SID chip or something like that?

1:10:12

And they said, no, no, no, you can do anything

1:10:14

you like. I said, but how does that work?

1:10:16

I thought games had to be done on

1:10:18

the machine. I said, no, no, it's like a CD-ROM

1:10:21

kind of thing and we'll just put

1:10:23

the music on there, which blew my

1:10:26

mind about being able to do that.

1:10:28

So they gave me a video of

1:10:30

somebody playing the game really well. Much

1:10:33

better than I could ever play it. That

1:10:35

was about five or six minutes. And now

1:10:38

I was hopeless at it as well. And

1:10:40

so I just used to put that on

1:10:42

and I composed kind of watching that.

1:10:44

So like film scoring to try and match

1:10:46

the kind of speed and the feel

1:10:49

of it and get that side of

1:10:51

it right. So it was like it was composing to film,

1:10:54

really. Did you have

1:10:56

an attitude towards the PlayStation that this was

1:10:58

going to be a big success? Because in

1:11:01

a gaming world, people were like, oh,

1:11:03

Sony, Sony doing gaming. You know, you

1:11:05

had Sega and Nintendo quite dominant. But

1:11:07

a lot of people in the audio

1:11:10

world, of course, knew about the Walkman,

1:11:12

the Dickman, the kind of quality of

1:11:15

Sony products. Did that kind of influence

1:11:17

you? Well, the first I knew

1:11:19

of it was before it was even released. And as soon as

1:11:22

I'd seen it, I thought, oh, my God, this is going to

1:11:24

be huge. You know, it was

1:11:26

such a brilliant machine. They

1:11:28

gave me a whole bunch of games like

1:11:31

Battle Arena to Shindon and things like that.

1:11:34

And Demolition Derby, which was great fun. Oh,

1:11:36

yeah. Things like that. So I

1:11:39

was straight away like, oh, this is going to be good. And

1:11:42

I don't really have an

1:11:45

attitude towards certain manufacturers

1:11:48

because they've all they've all surprised

1:11:50

us at one time on other. I went Casio

1:11:52

brought out the CZ 101 and everyone's like Casio

1:11:54

doing a synth. Oh, my, you know, and then

1:11:57

it's like then they heard it and went, oh,

1:11:59

wow. This is incredible. And

1:12:01

it's like Alesis were always sneered

1:12:04

at in the musical world as being cheap and

1:12:08

not very good. And they supplied me

1:12:10

with so many of my early drum

1:12:12

sounds and sequencing machines and

1:12:14

things like that. So, you know, you never know what

1:12:16

someone's going to come out with. And

1:12:18

I thought the way that they had

1:12:21

as a CD player, but also the fact you

1:12:23

could put a CD in there and get visuals

1:12:26

on there was like very connected to the

1:12:28

rave scene. Yeah, you could just leave the

1:12:30

PlayStation on and have visuals

1:12:32

going on your favorite CD. Yeah, that's

1:12:34

brilliant. That's really good. Like seeing a

1:12:36

laser in a rave or something, you

1:12:39

know. Yeah, you know, they were

1:12:41

definitely thinking about the young

1:12:43

adult world as well as, you

1:12:45

know, kids and things like that, which I

1:12:47

guess, like you say, is it was actually

1:12:49

stepping outside the box really for where

1:12:52

you would aim a console. So

1:12:54

have there been any other games

1:12:57

that you've been kind of invited

1:12:59

to contribute to or after being any

1:13:01

kind of genres of games that you would like

1:13:03

to write soundtracks? Yeah, I'd

1:13:05

love to do Fallout 5. That

1:13:08

would be the ultimate. But

1:13:11

that kind of those are the kind of games that

1:13:13

I like. I mean, I've had we've had tracks here

1:13:15

and there in various games, you know,

1:13:17

where they compile things for certain racing games and

1:13:20

that kind of thing. But I've never

1:13:22

been I've never had a chance to do a

1:13:24

full game. I'd love

1:13:26

to do that. You know, like a story based RPG

1:13:29

would be fantastic. That would be

1:13:31

amazing. Yeah. Not orbital

1:13:34

RPG. Yeah. But

1:13:36

I can imagine that could work really well as

1:13:38

well. If you, you know, had a

1:13:41

kind of very modern, like, ravey

1:13:43

sound and then, you know,

1:13:45

a fantasy, you know, something, you

1:13:47

know, the way they do atmosphere

1:13:50

on computer games. That could work. I

1:13:52

was wondering what the process of, you

1:13:54

know, when you got asked to be

1:13:57

on video games, were there any ones that you

1:13:59

rejected in your. No, I

1:14:01

don't want to be on that one at all. Oh, no, not at

1:14:03

all. You know, when

1:14:05

it comes to things like that, I like a, you

1:14:08

know, a Gun for hire kind of challenge. It's

1:14:12

like doing adverts and that kind

1:14:14

of thing. It stretches your creativity

1:14:17

in a different direction, which is good. So

1:14:19

it's like working out at the gym on

1:14:21

a different piece of equipment. It's good for

1:14:23

you. So having

1:14:25

to do anything out

1:14:27

of your usual comfort zone is

1:14:30

really good. So I'll take

1:14:32

to any challenge, you know, it's like scoring for television

1:14:35

and film. I rarely get

1:14:38

to use synthesizers when I do

1:14:40

it because I've done things like

1:14:42

Peaky Blinders, which is essentially a

1:14:44

period drama. So I had to

1:14:46

use cellos, violins,

1:14:48

pianos and electronics.

1:14:50

But, you know, as the

1:14:52

director said, you can use as many synths as you like,

1:14:54

as long as I can't hear them. And

1:14:56

it's like, okay, yeah, I get, I knew what

1:14:58

he meant as long as it wasn't obviously like

1:15:01

bow, wow, and that kind of thing. And

1:15:03

it worked really well. It's, but you

1:15:05

know, I love doing that kind of thing. I love

1:15:07

being told, do this

1:15:09

with this tiny amount

1:15:11

of leeway in a certain way. And it's

1:15:13

like, oh, okay. That's how you get your

1:15:15

real creative juices flowing. Do it having to

1:15:17

do things like that. It's brilliant. It's

1:15:20

often when you're limited into what you can

1:15:22

do or limited by your tools that some

1:15:24

of the most creative things can happen. Yeah,

1:15:26

yeah. I think when you're young and you

1:15:28

haven't got very much equipment, that's when people

1:15:31

get really innovative and do really amazing stuff

1:15:33

because they're pushing everything they've

1:15:35

got to its limit. And

1:15:37

they're really, you know, using

1:15:39

the machine to its

1:15:42

max potential. And that's brilliant.

1:15:44

You know, like now I've

1:15:47

got like a studio full

1:15:49

of synthesizers. I've got far too

1:15:51

many. I just had a bit of a cull recently because

1:15:53

it was annoying me that, you

1:15:55

know, it's weird. It's a double edged sword because

1:15:57

if you're into synthesis and

1:15:59

sound, design and electronics. You

1:16:02

kind of want to keep abreast of what's going

1:16:04

on. So you do buy lots of new stuff

1:16:06

when you think this might be bringing something new

1:16:08

to the table. Nine times out of ten it

1:16:10

isn't and it was just like a one-off

1:16:13

dopamine hit and then ends up like a doorstop

1:16:15

because it doesn't sound as good as something

1:16:17

you've already got or you know how to use.

1:16:20

So I just got rid

1:16:22

of like about 17 bits

1:16:24

of equipment and my studio feels so much lighter

1:16:26

and better and I haven't got all this other

1:16:28

stuff like haunting me. Is that saying use me,

1:16:30

use me, you never use me. I

1:16:34

saw that you were selling some of the kit and I know

1:16:37

some of the fans picked it up and my

1:16:39

wife's been using that phrase get rid of a lot

1:16:41

recently with his moving house and it scares me. But

1:16:44

it must have felt like giving away some of your

1:16:47

babies. I mean since was it like that or was

1:16:49

it just a case of okay you've been

1:16:52

a good friend it's now time

1:16:54

to retire you. Absolutely it's like

1:16:56

there's no point getting sentimental over a machine.

1:16:59

There really isn't and anything that I've

1:17:01

used extensively on an album like I've

1:17:03

got you know an overheim expander. It

1:17:06

was used in the mid-90s on so much of

1:17:08

my stuff. I will never get rid of that

1:17:10

because that one I may need to

1:17:12

reconstruct those albums one day and two

1:17:15

I know how good it is and I know it

1:17:17

inside out and I know it will come around and

1:17:19

have its moment again. But things that you

1:17:21

bought and went oh yeah this is interesting. It

1:17:24

doesn't really do what I hoped. Oh well that

1:17:26

sort of stuff just get rid of it. I

1:17:28

was wondering you know you mentioned floppy disks earlier

1:17:30

and how you've got some of your work on

1:17:33

there. Have you had any errors

1:17:35

with them and have you seeked

1:17:37

out like anybody to clean them

1:17:39

or kind of archive them at all? No I

1:17:41

had a couple of files that didn't open that's

1:17:43

about it and with that I

1:17:45

just kind of went oh well

1:17:47

I will never know what was on that one

1:17:49

which was a badly named file anyway and may

1:17:51

or may not have been what I was looking

1:17:53

for so as long as I found what I

1:17:56

needed I did do one thing

1:17:58

I did reconstruct like in

1:18:00

minute detail, one of the hardest tracks on the green

1:18:02

album. And when I got to the end, I found

1:18:04

the disc with the action track on it.

1:18:07

And, you

1:18:09

know, instead of going, oh, well, I loaded it

1:18:11

up and then checked my homework with it

1:18:13

and spent another couple of days seeing how

1:18:15

well I'd done, you know, and I, I

1:18:18

think I did all right. I said, yeah, I think I

1:18:20

got eight with a gold star, you know. So

1:18:23

you were doing a cover of your own tune effectively.

1:18:25

Exactly. It's

1:18:28

interesting. I mean, thinking about the cinematic scoring side

1:18:30

of what you've done in the past, because you

1:18:33

do, or the music you do have, like

1:18:35

you've done for Concrete Plans and Pinky Blinders and things.

1:18:38

And even like the Insights album,

1:18:40

you have those moments of taking the

1:18:43

listener on a journey, like

1:18:45

a sci-fi experience. And it's like you're

1:18:47

telling a story. And it does

1:18:49

strike me that you have a lot to offer in the, to do

1:18:53

soundtracks for games and Fallout

1:18:55

was immediately, I mean, I've heard

1:18:57

you speak before about your love

1:18:59

of dystopian apocalyptic scenarios and

1:19:02

it just felt like, oh yeah, pull Fallout

1:19:06

soundtrack. Yeah, yeah. I, I,

1:19:09

I would do, you know, I would do any game

1:19:11

if you'd want it to be good.

1:19:13

If you're going to spend that much time or

1:19:16

they'd need to be paying you enough for you to not

1:19:18

care that it's not going to be very good, but you

1:19:21

know, it seems to me when games get into

1:19:23

development, they're normally pretty good, aren't they? When they're,

1:19:26

well, I don't know. And maybe there are some bad

1:19:28

ones out there, but I just don't play them. I, I'm

1:19:30

very selective with what I play because I don't want

1:19:32

to go down that rabbit hole

1:19:34

of, of losing another album

1:19:36

to a video game. Um, well,

1:19:39

but I think that the, the sad thing is we're

1:19:41

in a position now where a lot of

1:19:43

the games that they, they're all chasing the blockbuster. They've all

1:19:46

got investors that are all big companies

1:19:48

and they're, they're precious for them to, it's

1:19:50

like the film industry. They're precious for them

1:19:52

to have a success to pay the shareholders

1:19:54

back. It means these productions are getting bigger and bigger and

1:19:56

bigger. And they don't want to take the risk. So

1:19:59

I think. This is why I love retro gaming and

1:20:01

playing the older games that they

1:20:04

were done by two or three people

1:20:06

or even less, one guy and again

1:20:09

back to the creativity and the limitations

1:20:11

of the old computers. It's the same

1:20:13

with indie games kind of coming as

1:20:15

opposed to the indie games out

1:20:17

there. A thing that

1:20:19

I absolutely loved being a mate got

1:20:21

into over a holiday break

1:20:24

one new year and that was

1:20:26

the Stanley Parable. Now it's absolutely

1:20:28

absurdist, brilliant game,

1:20:31

non-game kind of crazy experience and

1:20:33

I absolutely loved that. Machine

1:20:37

error. I saw you mention that. I've never heard of

1:20:39

this Stanley Parable before and I asked some guys earlier

1:20:41

and they said how have you not heard of that?

1:20:43

It was massive so please if anyone else hasn't heard

1:20:45

about it, what was it about? You

1:20:47

kind of wake up in your office, you're

1:20:49

Stanley and you're just

1:20:52

a lowly office worker and you walk

1:20:54

out and there's

1:20:56

nobody there and it's just deserted and

1:20:58

you just walk through this office

1:21:00

that gets more and more weird

1:21:03

and dystopian and kind

1:21:05

of lots of

1:21:08

surveillance and

1:21:10

things like that and lots of buttons

1:21:12

that say don't press me but this

1:21:14

is the clincher. It's got a voiceover

1:21:17

like a narrator telling you what

1:21:19

to do all the time

1:21:21

but really witty and funny and

1:21:23

so you have to choose whether you're going to do what

1:21:25

the narrator says and

1:21:28

then Stanley walks through the left door and

1:21:30

you've got a left door and a right door so you walk

1:21:32

through the right door and the narrator will go Stanley

1:21:36

picked the wrong door

1:21:38

and it's just

1:21:41

this constant dialogue taunting you

1:21:43

or directing you and it's

1:21:45

a kind of weird open-ended game with multiple

1:21:47

endings. I don't think I've ever done them

1:21:50

all. In games they do

1:21:52

lead you to that idea of do you do the good

1:21:54

thing, the right thing or do you do the bad thing

1:21:56

because you want to say are you a good path person

1:21:58

or are you a bad path person? I'm

1:22:00

a guy. I always want to be a

1:22:02

bad past person, but I always end up

1:22:04

playing good. I'm always on Armor

1:22:08

in in in Fallout, you know,

1:22:10

I'm a beacon of Goodness

1:22:13

and you know what? I enjoy it more. I

1:22:15

just can't be mean to those Those

1:22:18

poor people, you know, it's yeah. No, I

1:22:21

always I always play good I always

1:22:23

play right in powerful It's funny because

1:22:26

I would I would have thought if I was

1:22:28

guessing myself I would have thought I would have

1:22:30

gone for magic and wizarding powers Nope I

1:22:32

go for great big axes and chainsaws and

1:22:35

and the biggest Laser gun I

1:22:37

can possibly find and the biggest suit of armor

1:22:39

and and yeah I always go down the the

1:22:42

total kind of muscle route, which is I

1:22:44

guess that's because it's not me That's

1:22:48

the point isn't it that's yeah you get to be

1:22:50

somewhat what you'd like to be yeah,

1:22:52

I've seen recently There's been

1:22:54

like orchestras doing video game

1:22:56

soundtrack kind of recreations live

1:22:59

There's been huge live performances.

1:23:01

Would you ever consider like

1:23:03

doing a live wipeout? Kind

1:23:06

of play along or something like

1:23:08

that No, I don't think I would because I

1:23:11

used I did go through a phase of

1:23:13

thinking. Oh, yeah I'd love to do you

1:23:16

know one of my albums With

1:23:18

an orchestra and then it kind of dawned on me

1:23:20

over time that it's like hang on

1:23:22

Why would you do that? What is that saying

1:23:25

because something that often gets said to me when

1:23:27

I'm doing scores is yeah We want you to

1:23:29

use real instruments It's like guess what a synth

1:23:31

is a real instrument and if I

1:23:33

was to do orbital as an orchestral score It's

1:23:36

almost like I'm saying this is how it's

1:23:38

supposed to sound guess what it isn't that's

1:23:40

not how it's supposed to sound It's electronic

1:23:42

unashamedly and that's what we were

1:23:44

doing back in the day So you will never hear

1:23:46

orbital as an orchestra, which of course

1:23:48

now I've said that means you were absolutely definitely

1:23:51

here Some point but

1:23:53

no my intention will be that it

1:23:55

will never be Done all

1:23:57

casually because I don't I just don't think it's right. I

1:23:59

think I've heard Belfast done

1:24:02

in Pete Tong's Ibiza

1:24:04

classics orchestra. I

1:24:07

prefer the original idea.

1:24:09

It was fun, but it was

1:24:11

like my first reaction was, oh god, they're

1:24:13

using an 808 instead of a 909 on

1:24:16

their electronic drum kit. Come on.

1:24:19

But things like that. And

1:24:21

so for me to be bothered about things like

1:24:23

which drum machine you're using means I'm actually still

1:24:26

invested in the idea that it's electronic. Yeah,

1:24:29

I was wondering as well, have you

1:24:31

noticed like, I'm definitely seeing stuff in the

1:24:33

charts at the moment, more of a kind

1:24:35

of focus on the 90s and

1:24:37

80s sound from the new generation. Yeah,

1:24:41

I mean, you know, you got to remember back

1:24:44

to, you know, kind

1:24:46

of like, in the 90s,

1:24:48

there was definitely a swing back to disco at

1:24:50

times and things like that. It kind of seems

1:24:52

to go in 20, 30 years

1:24:54

cycles or whatever it's ripe, I guess, you

1:24:56

know, whenever the young people start. Is

1:24:59

it they're listening to their parents records?

1:25:02

Possibly. And a lot of parents

1:25:06

from the 90s have got kids

1:25:08

that are old enough to be making music

1:25:10

now. So I guess they are listening to

1:25:12

their parents records and it's cycling around. I

1:25:15

mean, since and I guess it's decades as

1:25:17

well. So like, you know, back

1:25:19

in the days, people were getting nostalgic for

1:25:21

the 60s. And yeah, yeah, you know, yeah,

1:25:24

and it kind of changes up every time

1:25:26

there's a new generation. Yeah, but I mean,

1:25:28

I remember when I first started hearing that

1:25:30

and thinking, really, you know,

1:25:32

is that what you're doing? Wow.

1:25:35

And then sometimes I'll have like Radio 6 on

1:25:37

and I'll listen, I'll hear a track and I'll

1:25:40

go, okay, because it could go with 5050 with

1:25:42

Radio 6. Is this an old track

1:25:44

that I don't know? Or is this some new track?

1:25:46

And it's so often it's just a new track sounding

1:25:49

old. And it's

1:25:52

good news for people like us because all of a

1:25:54

sudden we sound contemporary again, even if we just play

1:25:56

our old tune. It's incredible. Yeah,

1:26:00

it's crazy. I

1:26:02

find it highly amusing when I see these young guys with

1:26:04

mullets at the moment. In terms of

1:26:06

fashions coming around. We would have thought the

1:26:09

mullet would become fashtable at night. It was

1:26:11

like something you laughed at. And

1:26:13

the moustache. Yeah, I

1:26:15

had a history of art teacher at

1:26:17

Sixth Form College that had a blonde mullet,

1:26:19

a big moustache, and he used to wear

1:26:21

leather trousers. He was the laughingstock

1:26:23

of all of us young people. But

1:26:26

God, he was just ahead of his time. And

1:26:29

he's probably been driven by drip

1:26:31

coffee in the lanes in Brighton.

1:26:34

So, yeah, you touched on Dungeon Masters being

1:26:36

one of your favourites. Around that

1:26:39

time, I think I was playing Eye of

1:26:41

the Behold, a very similar game. You seem

1:26:43

to be erring towards the RPG and the...

1:26:46

Dungeon crawlers. Dungeon crawlers, yeah.

1:26:49

Open worlds and the storytelling type

1:26:51

games. What else were you playing? What

1:26:54

caught your attention? I think... Okay,

1:26:56

so I'll wake up at two in the morning and

1:26:58

go, oh, I forgot

1:27:00

that. But Dungeon Master and I

1:27:02

enjoyed... I think it was called Captive, which

1:27:05

is like a sci-fi version of Dungeon Master,

1:27:07

which was good. I like

1:27:09

the strategy games of the original

1:27:12

Warcraft and StarCraft. But for

1:27:15

those kind of things, on the console,

1:27:17

it was things like Resident Evil and

1:27:20

Silent Hill blew me away. I

1:27:22

didn't really like Tomb Raider

1:27:24

so much because it was more kind

1:27:27

of like an acrobat, you

1:27:30

know, stealth game. That wasn't quite enough

1:27:32

for me. I preferred the

1:27:35

storytelling and the creepiness, the atmosphere

1:27:37

of the horror games. But

1:27:40

I think for me, in the

1:27:42

mid-90s, someone recommended that I get

1:27:44

the original Fallout. And

1:27:48

when I got that, that was it. I

1:27:50

lost the summer to that game. It

1:27:52

was absolutely brilliant. And also

1:27:54

another one, I think it was called Neverhood,

1:27:57

which was like an animated plasticine game. I

1:28:01

think it was on Pete Joplin. Yeah.

1:28:03

And it was, it was like a, again, it

1:28:05

was more like mist in the sense, it was

1:28:07

like comedy puzzle game, not the mist is comedy,

1:28:09

but, you know, like, a, you'd be stuck on

1:28:12

a screen and you'd have to play bells

1:28:14

in a certain order that you'd

1:28:16

seen on another screen. And then you kind of worked

1:28:18

it out. Oh, if I go back and listen to

1:28:20

that, that'll open the door. Right. But

1:28:23

it was really beautifully animated, but it was, it

1:28:25

was great. It felt like you were in

1:28:27

control of it, even though obviously it was, it

1:28:30

was all animation and plasticine. That was,

1:28:32

that was amazing. Did

1:28:34

you ever play any online titles or, or,

1:28:36

you know, connect to any MMOs or anything?

1:28:39

No, I don't like playing with other people.

1:28:41

I liked, I liked to be in my

1:28:43

own little world. I'm just

1:28:45

very one player. My

1:28:48

giant act is not really

1:28:50

alive and not going, not

1:28:52

swearing at the telly of the other end. I don't like, and

1:28:55

also I don't like that thing of then doing

1:28:57

it with mates and going, Oh, are you ready? Should we do it now?

1:28:59

It's like, no, no, no, no. I'll play when I want to play. Which

1:29:02

is generally when the family go to bed and I'll play for

1:29:04

an hour or two and

1:29:08

stop at 12 o'clock and move

1:29:10

on. You know, it's so no playing with other

1:29:12

people is not a thing for me unless you've

1:29:14

got, you know, like my

1:29:17

wife Louise doesn't really do video games.

1:29:19

And then, but then when I got

1:29:21

the PlayStation, she absolutely loved battle arena

1:29:23

to Shindon and she would be like

1:29:25

a wild woman, like beating the crap

1:29:27

out of me and shouting in the

1:29:30

room and really enjoying winning that game.

1:29:32

So, you know, you never can tell, but doing

1:29:35

things like that, a little game of two players,

1:29:37

that's like a quick

1:29:39

turnaround. That's often fun. I

1:29:41

was wondering what machines you still have then. Do

1:29:43

you use any of the old consoles

1:29:46

or any of those things?

1:29:48

Or have you got like emulation or games

1:29:50

on as well? Yeah,

1:29:53

I've got, I've got steam on my

1:29:55

work laptop, which is dangerous. I've

1:29:58

got disco Elysium, which I haven't seen. I still

1:30:00

haven't played yet. I bought it for

1:30:02

long haul flights and I still haven't.

1:30:04

I've been asleep while watching some awful

1:30:06

movie. I've

1:30:09

got PS2,

1:30:12

PS3, PS4 and

1:30:15

an Xbox. I bought an Xbox for

1:30:17

StarCraft recently. There was

1:30:19

no way I was not going to play the next Bethesda

1:30:21

game. And I have to

1:30:23

say, while I enjoyed it, I went

1:30:25

back to... Because I've got the game pass

1:30:28

on the Xbox, I went back to Fallout

1:30:30

3 and just thought, oh, actually, this is

1:30:32

better. Welcome back to the wasteland. So, yeah,

1:30:34

here you go. There's your crappy laser

1:30:37

gun and off you go. And it was like, yeah,

1:30:39

yeah, yeah, this is the world I like

1:30:42

inhabiting. StarCraft was alright,

1:30:44

but a little dry, I

1:30:46

think. I mean, it looked incredible, but I

1:30:49

don't think it

1:30:51

kind of worked as well as the

1:30:53

Fallout games for me. But that might

1:30:56

be just a personal choice of how it's dressed

1:30:58

up. It's great that

1:31:00

also on the games pass they've got all the older

1:31:02

titles as well. So you can actually just go and

1:31:05

download some of the older stuff on there. No, I know because

1:31:07

I missed out on Fallout 2 and 3 at New Vegas because

1:31:11

I never had the right machine at the right

1:31:13

time. Otherwise, I wouldn't make them. And

1:31:15

then now I can just go and do it all,

1:31:18

which is just incredible. How's the PS2

1:31:20

working out then? Are you enjoying that? I

1:31:22

am. I didn't know if we could mention that

1:31:24

or not. A bit

1:31:26

of context to our listeners. I think

1:31:28

Pete sorted you out with a

1:31:31

PS2 recently. Yeah, he sorted

1:31:33

me out with a PS2

1:31:35

chock full of retro games,

1:31:38

which the untold brownie

1:31:40

points with my two signs. One

1:31:44

of them's already just spanked

1:31:47

through Silent Hill. And

1:31:50

he's now, what's he going on to? Resident

1:31:52

Evil 4. He's gone on to.

1:31:54

He just jumped 1, 2 and 3 and went, no,

1:31:56

I'm going for 4. And

1:31:58

he's loving it. They love the

1:32:00

retro games. People

1:32:02

do now, don't they? They love the quirkiness of

1:32:04

it. I

1:32:07

guess it's like early house music. There

1:32:09

was no path. People did

1:32:12

anything over the top of

1:32:14

a house drum beat because there wasn't

1:32:16

a set of rules laid down. Like

1:32:18

club music now kind

1:32:20

of has to adhere to certain rules

1:32:23

and regulations, otherwise DJs won't play it

1:32:25

because it's not necessarily club friendly. Because

1:32:27

back then, that wasn't a word. It

1:32:29

was just house music and you played

1:32:32

the tracks you liked. I

1:32:34

think old games are like that. They're

1:32:36

bonkers. It's the same with,

1:32:38

yeah, that's a really good way of putting

1:32:41

it because it's the same with genres as

1:32:43

well. People would just

1:32:45

make a game and suddenly become a genre

1:32:48

and it would be playing with old

1:32:50

house tunes. It wasn't

1:32:53

set and now everything's like, oh,

1:32:55

it's this kind of a game or it's

1:32:57

this kind. It was

1:32:59

like a doom like game. It wasn't

1:33:01

FPS. There was, yeah. Yeah. Just

1:33:04

just for reference and for the listeners, we went,

1:33:07

it was Halifax, wasn't it, where you were performing

1:33:09

that night? Yeah, yeah. Just before

1:33:11

the gig, I was wandering around town and I went

1:33:13

to a little independent computer shop and like Paul was

1:33:15

saying earlier, he likes to go to the computer shops,

1:33:17

wherever he's going. I looked to my

1:33:19

right and there's Paul and I was like, oh,

1:33:21

hello, Paul. He was so gracious

1:33:24

and he said, oh, hello. What's your name?

1:33:26

And Brett really very nice and said,

1:33:28

what are you looking for? And he said, yeah, I'm

1:33:30

looking for a copy of Silent Hill on the PlayStation.

1:33:33

And the guy behind the counter was like, oh, good luck

1:33:35

with that, mate. It's like a hundred pound of coffee

1:33:37

now. And it's like,

1:33:39

do you think you'll ever find that copy

1:33:42

of Silent Hill, the original? I did actually

1:33:44

get one. You did? I

1:33:46

did get one. And then that's

1:33:48

when I discovered my PlayStation was

1:33:51

slightly quirky and wouldn't

1:33:53

accept any of my save

1:33:56

game cards. So he kept

1:33:59

playing it. and then having to start again. And it's

1:34:01

like, you know, you would get bored, wouldn't you? So

1:34:05

you saved the day with

1:34:07

your supercharged PS2 with Silent Hill

1:34:09

on it. Yeah. I

1:34:12

have to say as well, you know, when I first met Pete,

1:34:16

he was wearing an 808 state t-shirt. I

1:34:19

don't know if he could spot that out there.

1:34:21

He could spot the kind of guy

1:34:23

he was. To be fair, I got the

1:34:25

train with Graham. So, you know, whatever's

1:34:28

my allegiance. Well,

1:34:30

I know it's a tricky one, wasn't it? It was,

1:34:32

you had to wear one or the other. Well,

1:34:35

I was wondering if you can have any

1:34:37

mention of the computers and stuff in your

1:34:39

biography as well. And how's that coming along?

1:34:42

Well, the biography was something we started a

1:34:44

while back and then stopped doing because Phil

1:34:46

didn't want to do it anymore. And

1:34:49

it may happen again. I

1:34:52

mean, I started writing a personal

1:34:54

biography quite a number of years ago. And

1:34:57

I just thought, okay, I'm going to start at the

1:34:59

beginning. And, you know, I was doing all that painting

1:35:01

of thinking, well, what do you include? What don't you

1:35:03

include? And I thought, right, just start from first things

1:35:05

you can remember and just keep writing

1:35:07

it, whatever comes to mind, whatever's interesting. And I got

1:35:09

to about 220 pages and I said, I

1:35:13

said, I was still only 22. So

1:35:15

obviously there's a lot of stuff in there that would

1:35:17

need editing out, but, you know,

1:35:19

I did start to do it. And I might

1:35:21

just sit down and do that again another day

1:35:24

because for me, I thought it might

1:35:26

be in, or

1:35:28

the interesting angle for me is to write,

1:35:30

I would never try and write a history of techno

1:35:33

because I've read a few books like that. And I

1:35:35

just find them kind of slightly annoying because they're

1:35:38

writing it as if it's canon,

1:35:41

as if this is it, this is the

1:35:43

history of techno instead of writing it.

1:35:45

Well, this is how I saw it

1:35:47

at the time. And from my angle,

1:35:49

I saw this. And so it's kind

1:35:51

of misleading. And, you know, obviously everybody

1:35:53

sees everything in a different way. So

1:35:56

for me, it's more about writing what it was

1:35:58

like to be a foot soldier. during the trenches

1:36:00

of dance music through the 90s. I

1:36:04

can't think of a massive overview. I can tell

1:36:06

you what I saw and how

1:36:08

I saw it. Because you see so many techno

1:36:11

documentaries that are just repeats of the

1:36:14

same story over and over again. And it's

1:36:16

good to get it from the individual perspective.

1:36:18

Yeah, and I think if everybody wrote one,

1:36:20

wrote them like that, then you can kind

1:36:22

of piece together your own final

1:36:25

history by reading everybody's individual account,

1:36:27

which of course will never add

1:36:29

up to one solid constant.

1:36:32

But there will be a few things in there

1:36:35

that people go, OK, yeah, that seemed to be

1:36:37

big around there, you know, around that time and

1:36:39

that kind of thing. But yeah,

1:36:41

it's interesting. It's interesting. But

1:36:43

that's how I would do it. I've got

1:36:45

someone actually on me at the moment trying

1:36:48

to get us to do another one, to do

1:36:50

another book. You know, in a similar vein to

1:36:52

the Chemical Brothers one. For

1:36:55

me, it's a bit too coffee

1:36:57

table. I haven't read it, so

1:36:59

I don't actually, so I'm not, I don't

1:37:01

know, it might not be as the book

1:37:03

part. But looking through, there's a lot of

1:37:06

pictures. And it's like, I

1:37:08

hope it's got more substance than just

1:37:11

pictures. I will have to, I'll read

1:37:13

it. Because this guy really wants

1:37:15

to write it. And actually, that's often

1:37:17

a good way of working with people

1:37:19

if someone's got enthusiasm for a project.

1:37:22

But I'm also slightly skeptical because

1:37:24

I kind of want to write

1:37:26

it myself. But I don't mind the idea of

1:37:28

it being ghost written by somebody else as

1:37:31

long as you get out what

1:37:33

you want to say. But I

1:37:35

do find writing is a different discipline

1:37:37

to speaking. And you

1:37:39

tend to go over it much quicker when

1:37:41

you're speaking and you miss a lot of

1:37:43

the detail. Whereas if you write it down,

1:37:46

as you're writing each paragraph, it reminds you

1:37:48

of something else. And it

1:37:50

has a different kind of rhythm to it. So

1:37:53

we'll see. It may happen one day. I

1:37:57

was wondering as our final question, are you up

1:37:59

to anything else? else as well and anything

1:38:01

we can look forward to. Yeah, I'm

1:38:03

doing a Christmas movie at the minute.

1:38:05

I'm not acting of course, just doing

1:38:07

the music, which is great. It's just

1:38:09

begun, but I can't say what

1:38:11

it is or I can

1:38:14

say when it's coming out. And that's Christmas,

1:38:16

but I don't

1:38:19

know how much I can say about it. This

1:38:21

Christmas or next Christmas? I know, definitely this Christmas,

1:38:23

which is interesting doing a Christmas movie in the summer.

1:38:27

I guess that's when you have to do it. I

1:38:30

know, who knew? You don't think about

1:38:32

it, do you? And then it's like, oh yeah,

1:38:34

of course. No Christmas movie was ever written at

1:38:36

Christmas. Yeah, of course. You know, it's

1:38:38

always written in the summer. But

1:38:41

I've got some, you know, I used to

1:38:43

be a couple

1:38:45

of years of Morris dancing. So obviously I've

1:38:48

got my Morris dancing bells, which are doubling

1:38:51

up as sleigh bells and proving

1:38:53

to be very, very effective. So

1:38:55

yeah, I didn't see

1:38:57

that one coming either. I'm glad

1:39:00

you saved that. Well,

1:39:02

Paul, it's been fantastic having you on.

1:39:05

I've really enjoyed our chat. And yeah,

1:39:07