talking with eerie - ansi artist / hirez artist formally with relic, union, shiver, acid and mistigris to name a few..

Session Start: Wed Apr 29 17:55:23 1998

Dangermouse:
First of all, i'd like to say I would have interviewed you sooner, except you vanished from the known world for some time :)

33:
I know, irc had become a major pain in the ass to me and i was exhausted from drawing ansi..

Dangermouse:
Ok, first question: The entire world, well, only me actually, wants to knwo about the real you.. What's your name, age, sex, habitat, hobbies, etc?

33:
David, 22, male, i live in quebec city, canada. Nowadays i like reading & writing--i do some music too, although nothing that you'd like, i'm sure :) I'm not a man of many hobbies

I'm very into philosophy these days, i bought two wittgenstein books in the past 2 weeks.. It's very hardcore

What sort of music?

33:
I play mostly experimental music. i try to make pop music but it always comes out wacky & deconstructed.

Dangermouse:
So, you started out around 1994 if im not mistaking in Imperial, what was the scene like then when you entered it..? Good for a 'newbie' ?

33:
Haha, the vice-president of imperial back then, the night prowler--he was later in grip/ad--told me my pics were not bad, but i should let other people do my fonts.. I had a cartoony style back then, although it was kind of personal, i didn't even know jed, i had just decided out of the blue, "i want to draw ansi". I mean, i had drawn for pd boards forever & all, but i had never been in the scene..

Dangermouse:
I have to say be looking at some of your early work, it was quite good for someone just entering the scene, had you had mushc experience drawing ansi elsewhere, or indeed in art school?

33:
I've been drawing since i was 7, on paper, that is, mostly comic books.. So the first thing i tried to do when i started ansi was, of course, cartoons..

Dangermouse:
It must be indicitive of a lot of the better artists out there, take toon goon or lord jazz -- they have had experience drawing before.. Especially the 'comic book' pics

33:
But i was totally amazed at how "realistic" these guys in acid & ice could make their ansis look like

Obviously.. Yeah, the overshading style was what was big back then, that, & the classic toony style, so even my toons were pretty off in style.. Only a handful of people liked them

Dangermouse:
So after Imperial, which died for some reason, you join Relic, and Mistigris too, what can you tell us about both of the groups.. A good environment to release in?

33:
Imperial died out of internal quarrels.. I joined relic because jaydee, who's local to me, was in it. I thought the atmosphere was much friendlier, less competitive, imperial was striving to be in the top 5..

Relic eventually got in 5th place, but that was mostly from having dedicated artists who got better as the months went by..

Dangermouse:
And Mistigris, still going strong it seems..

33:
I was in mistigris when it started, it was a bunch of friends releasing together, who i had known from being in imperial--they were posting on the nets & all.. Cthulu was actually in imperial as a lit artist.

But then, i didn't want to release in too many groups at the same time, so i concentrated on relic for my ansis, & released a few hi-rez pictures with mistigris -- that was my most productive period, on the first month in relic i released over 30 pieces..

Dangermouse:
Did you expect Mistigris at the time to keep going for another 3 years?

33:
Well, i didn't think much about that.. I mean, it's almost impossible to rightly think of how long a group can last..

Dangermouse:
Especially these days :)

33:
...What i can tell is that cthulu is extremely dedicated, so i'm not surprised it did last..

The problem with relic is that eventually everybody had a second group to release in..

Dangermouse:
Is that why you'd say Relic eventually died?

33:
I think it's one of the causes, people decided not to care so much about the group dynamics & go for their own dreams.. I was guilty of that too.. At that time, for example, union was the big thing, because out of some quarrel, lord jazz--who was _very_ big at the time--, terminator 2 & the clone had all left acid to join union, i decided to join to be part of the fun & much to my surprise, neurotic accepted my application..

I remember asking him on irc : "so, what would you say if i asked you to join union?" & he said : "welcome in union."

Anyway--shiver is another thing, it's back when the guardian was a nice person who you could actually have a decent conversation with.. My dcc was broken & i asked him to upload me some new pack that had just come out--i think acid--& half-jokingly i said that in trade i'd join shiver, he took me seriously, so i joined for 2 months..

Then, radman, after seeing the union success--the 0195 union pack is a must-see, btw, even now--decided to just go & recruit everybody in sight

Dangermouse:
What do you remember most about your time in those two groups..? Who were the inspirations?

33:
Hmm... good question, i didn't stay long enough in union or shiver to know, those were probably the 2 groups i was most uninvolved with.. What i can say about union is that they were always a favorite of mine--at one time neurotic, nailz, kool, that was like the holy union trilogy to me..

Anyway, about acid-- So i get this call from radman, & i'm like, "whoa, my childhood dream finally comes true", so of course i join up, not knowing that at the same time, everybody else does too.. So union loses all of their best men

Dangermouse:
So, radman can be liked to Bill Gates on this front :) 'Buy' up the rivals :)

33:
Yeah... that's always how it's been with acid.. Anyway, what i should have mentioned, also is that since the first days of relic i had started an emag called "undergrown", specializing in small groups, with mostly reviews, so with me joining union, & then acid, there were some talks that i had sold out, & all that..

Dangermouse:
I've never heard of it..

33:
Man, i released 12 issues of that, you have to have heard of it

Dangermouse:
Are they on artpacks.acid.org? I'll get em later if so..

33:
Yep, they're all there

[ed: plug - go get them..]

Dangermouse:
Anyway, you were saying

33:
Well, it ended in 1995, & i made 2 more issues in the summer of 1996..

33:
Anyway, because of that, radman appointed me to a position of editor of what is now called "acid press", so i made one issue of the acid newsletter, though my english was pretty bad back then, so most of what i wrote got edited out :)

But, i got to write an editorial litterally trashing a group called "paramount" that basically had 2 artists, the rest being in ice & releasing there part-time. It was just to me the most absurd excuse for a group, the 2 other artists were devine styler & bay..

Dangermouse:
Good old bayfield..

33:
& the funny thing is-- after i left acid to form spastic, again out of the blue paramount disbanded & both ds & bay joined up with spastic..

Anyway, spastic was an interesting experience, but it didn't turn out as i wanted.. I wanted quality art, yet people who have fun doing what they do, but the wizard insisted on having many of his friends join the group, who weren't too skilled, in my opinion.. For example, we could have an argument with him saying : "i want a toon artist in spastic!" & i was : "there are _no_ good toon artists in the scene, except maybe toon goon"

Dangermouse:
I noticed you released lit with spastic, how did that come about? Influences from your time in Mistigris or?

33:
Haha, i released two lit files ever. . One in mist, & one in spastic, the one in spastic was more of a joke, the one in mist was actually something i had written, not for the scene, but i decided to release it in an art pack..

Dangermouse:
The spastic one was done in "22 seconds" i believe ;)

33:
Yeah, it did take 22 seconds

Anyway, there was some good & some bad to spastic, the good parts was that i got to work with some old friends of mine, like young, zoltar, or zircus (who was at the time known as "kerplunk").. But on the other hand, there was a lot of bad politics & then we had one guy rip an ansi in our first pack, which didn't help much & because of the lack of quality, we didn't get much respect from the scene, we were regarded as equivalent to shiver..

I left the group because i was sick of running it, & i didn't see myself being even an artist there, there was a sense of failure from the spastic experience, so i decided to join integrity, who i thought were the most skilled artists in the scene at the time.

You have to remember that radman hated my guts for leaving acid, & nobody in ice really liked me too much, except supposedly aphex twin, so i couldn't really join either of those..

Well, i stayed till the end of integrity... i believe the artists got lazy & lost interest eventually.. I didn't like everyone's personality in integrity, but we had some of the best artists. darkforce, grimlock, inquisitor... i was feeling small next to all those..

Session Close: Wed Apr 29 18:45:13 1998

Part II

Session Start: Sun May 10 12:17:36 1998

Dangermouse:
It's great seeing you again man.. Last time we spoke you were talking about integrity, and how you felt small next to all the other *big* artists.. Any other comments on your time with integrity?

33:
Well, my goal was, as it had always been, to be a great ansi artist. So, to "confirm" that i was "good enough", i tried to adopt the realistic style that integrity was sporting at that time, but i quickly realized that, even though i had the basics okay, i wasn't a true realist ansi artist..

At the same time integrity died, i moved out on my own, & i was devoid of a decent computer, all i had was a 286 with a monochrome monitor, so obviously i couldn't draw much

For the time when i didn't draw much, i was officially with fire, because i knew most of the people in it, especially halaster..

On the summer of 1996 i moved to philadelphia to live with mogel in an apartment & this other kid called morph, that was basically a zine gathering, 'cause in the meantime i had started contributing to this zine called doomed to obscurity, which mogel ran..

Anyway, during this summer i had access to a better computer & i had a new encounter with the ansi scene, out of nowhere i met rza & we decided to form a new group named samsara.. The group was formed almost as a joke, with 6 members including fluor & defiant who both left ice for it, which also gave a new reason for ice to hate my guts..