"We will not retreat - this band is unstoppable!"
I guess a Breakpoint retrospective is in order.
I would be lying if I'd say I was unconditionally looking forward to Breakpoint this year: It was the last event and all, and still the best party ever around, but let's face it, since January / February, I've been going through such a heap of shit, that literally I've come to doubt everything I considered axiomatic before. I simply saw no possible way I would enjoy Breakpoint.
Then again, I've been wrong before, and I knew that too. So I trusted Procyon to buy tickets and started hoping that life would turn out more enjoyable.
Around the same time, early February, after a bit of discussion, Decipher, Ferris and I had an agreement to make a 64k, and I immediately sat down in front of Buzz with a simple mission statement: whatever comes out of this, music or intro, HAS to be better than Chaos Theory. Rude Awakening has been such a hype that I slowly became embarrassed about the fact that apparently I haven't made anything better since. Hence the objective was crystal clear: topping it. Add to the mix a huge dose of desperation, self- and omni-loathing, aggression, cold weather, and a lot of Nefilim, and well, you get Commence/Collapse. I'm not sure if I have an explanation for the title actually; when Decipher first heard it, he said "I'm not sure which one I would pick" - it never occurred to me to think of it as a choice. As for how it went during the compo, apparently this thing called reLive lets you listen to the compo stream - the audience noise at the end was music to my ears, as was Saga pointing out that it was rude to "own a compo that bad".
And I did. I won Breakpoint. Alone, purely out of my own energy and desperation.
It's a weird feeling, even if I'm one the few people who somehow placed in top 3 at EVERY Breakpoint. It's been something I always wanted to do, but yet it seemed so trivial and simple. When I finished the first RC1 of the track, everyone who I showed it to had that hesitant moment - "... is this 64k?" And that's a great sign - it shows the sound transcended the barrier of being a 64k and it was a piece of music on its own already. Ultimately now I have to come up with new excuses on why my music sucks.
I don't want to talk much about the BASS gig - I had little to do with it; my initial stipulation was that I want a playlist, I'll learn it, and I'll perform it when the time has come. (The other was that Scamp has to come on stage and sing with us.) With that in mind, I had fun in what ultimately ended up as a jam session with a bunch of really cool people on stage. The only downside was that we fucked up a lot of songs, I broke a drumstick in half and fucked up my palms to the level that I wasn't able to grip all hold the next day. Otherwise, well, we had fun, the audience seemed to have fun, and I guess it's about time that I got over my perfectionism against all odds anyway. Besides, we played Paranoid.
One thing I certainly would like to mention is something that utterly blindsided me: meeting Skip / Potion. You have to realize that Skip, among with TSC, KB and Teque has been in the group of people I completely idolize in the scene, and I certainly didn't expect him to be there, at least until Tomoya mentioned that they came on the same train, at which point I started hiccuping and turned pale white. I didn't really want to meet him to be honest, because really I have such immense respect for him that I would've felt awkward. But then we DID in the end, and I was literally lost for words, especially when it turned out that he's dumbfounded as well, being a Conspiracy / Chaos Theory-fan who is also very confused about how we could've been influenced by Potion intros. (Gift had 3 parts. Project Genesis had 4. Go figure.) We had a great artist-fan moment and it was a moment worth remembering.
I guess the most important thing I want to mention about right now is the closing ceremony. It was hard. There were a lot of people teary-eyed, and I admit I had a very dry throat during Scamp's ending monologue. The standing ovation that followed was the sound of 1200 people thanking eight years. It's hard to describe what people might have felt at that moment. Glxblt said something like "It felt like my pet turtle died", but today as I talked to Smash, we deduced it didn't entirely feel like it. It was a different type of sadness.
It was the graduation melancholy. The feeling of having been somewhere for 8 years and now the routine won't be there anymore.
In Hungary, the usual school system starts with eight years of primary school, then four years of high school. For me it was the other way around - four years elementary, eight years high. This meant that from the age of 10 to 18, I've been growing up with the same people. It was incredibly hard to tear away from them even when I knew that I'd see them again some day, knowing that the change is here and we have to get used to standing on our own two feet in life now. And that's exactly how I felt when I turned back to take a last look at the Rundsporthalle again.
In 2003, I was 19 years old, went to Germany knowing noone, and came back knowing everyone. Now I'm 26, went there knowing everyone, and came back hoping I'll see them again as soon as possible. My scene puberty went through these exact eight years, becoming from tiny Hungarian coder to compo winner musician. Met a thousand faces, saw thousands of demos, heard thousands of stories, became addicted to traveling, and so on. Now we feel the new era incoming, and we're all a bit scared, because we're not sure what it can or will bring.
Sunday morning I woke up to see the the launch of STS-131 shown live on the bigscreen - it was weirdly appropriate. (Not just because of the name.) It all seemed like a strange metaphor to a new beginning.
Things keep changing, but that's no reason to mourn, and I never mourned Breakpoint. It was a party that, by all means, achieved more than anyone expected. It was a privilege to be there every year, even when the party barely happened. It was a privilege to see all the amazing releases, meet the amazing people, to step in and feel that something wonderful is going on. And for that I am eternally grateful and thankful to Scamp and the guys who sacrificed so much to let that happen.
Breakpoint wasn't just a party, it's a mindset. Forever.
I would be lying if I'd say I was unconditionally looking forward to Breakpoint this year: It was the last event and all, and still the best party ever around, but let's face it, since January / February, I've been going through such a heap of shit, that literally I've come to doubt everything I considered axiomatic before. I simply saw no possible way I would enjoy Breakpoint.
Then again, I've been wrong before, and I knew that too. So I trusted Procyon to buy tickets and started hoping that life would turn out more enjoyable.
Around the same time, early February, after a bit of discussion, Decipher, Ferris and I had an agreement to make a 64k, and I immediately sat down in front of Buzz with a simple mission statement: whatever comes out of this, music or intro, HAS to be better than Chaos Theory. Rude Awakening has been such a hype that I slowly became embarrassed about the fact that apparently I haven't made anything better since. Hence the objective was crystal clear: topping it. Add to the mix a huge dose of desperation, self- and omni-loathing, aggression, cold weather, and a lot of Nefilim, and well, you get Commence/Collapse. I'm not sure if I have an explanation for the title actually; when Decipher first heard it, he said "I'm not sure which one I would pick" - it never occurred to me to think of it as a choice. As for how it went during the compo, apparently this thing called reLive lets you listen to the compo stream - the audience noise at the end was music to my ears, as was Saga pointing out that it was rude to "own a compo that bad".
And I did. I won Breakpoint. Alone, purely out of my own energy and desperation.
It's a weird feeling, even if I'm one the few people who somehow placed in top 3 at EVERY Breakpoint. It's been something I always wanted to do, but yet it seemed so trivial and simple. When I finished the first RC1 of the track, everyone who I showed it to had that hesitant moment - "... is this 64k?" And that's a great sign - it shows the sound transcended the barrier of being a 64k and it was a piece of music on its own already. Ultimately now I have to come up with new excuses on why my music sucks.
I don't want to talk much about the BASS gig - I had little to do with it; my initial stipulation was that I want a playlist, I'll learn it, and I'll perform it when the time has come. (The other was that Scamp has to come on stage and sing with us.) With that in mind, I had fun in what ultimately ended up as a jam session with a bunch of really cool people on stage. The only downside was that we fucked up a lot of songs, I broke a drumstick in half and fucked up my palms to the level that I wasn't able to grip all hold the next day. Otherwise, well, we had fun, the audience seemed to have fun, and I guess it's about time that I got over my perfectionism against all odds anyway. Besides, we played Paranoid.
One thing I certainly would like to mention is something that utterly blindsided me: meeting Skip / Potion. You have to realize that Skip, among with TSC, KB and Teque has been in the group of people I completely idolize in the scene, and I certainly didn't expect him to be there, at least until Tomoya mentioned that they came on the same train, at which point I started hiccuping and turned pale white. I didn't really want to meet him to be honest, because really I have such immense respect for him that I would've felt awkward. But then we DID in the end, and I was literally lost for words, especially when it turned out that he's dumbfounded as well, being a Conspiracy / Chaos Theory-fan who is also very confused about how we could've been influenced by Potion intros. (Gift had 3 parts. Project Genesis had 4. Go figure.) We had a great artist-fan moment and it was a moment worth remembering.
I guess the most important thing I want to mention about right now is the closing ceremony. It was hard. There were a lot of people teary-eyed, and I admit I had a very dry throat during Scamp's ending monologue. The standing ovation that followed was the sound of 1200 people thanking eight years. It's hard to describe what people might have felt at that moment. Glxblt said something like "It felt like my pet turtle died", but today as I talked to Smash, we deduced it didn't entirely feel like it. It was a different type of sadness.
It was the graduation melancholy. The feeling of having been somewhere for 8 years and now the routine won't be there anymore.
In Hungary, the usual school system starts with eight years of primary school, then four years of high school. For me it was the other way around - four years elementary, eight years high. This meant that from the age of 10 to 18, I've been growing up with the same people. It was incredibly hard to tear away from them even when I knew that I'd see them again some day, knowing that the change is here and we have to get used to standing on our own two feet in life now. And that's exactly how I felt when I turned back to take a last look at the Rundsporthalle again.
In 2003, I was 19 years old, went to Germany knowing noone, and came back knowing everyone. Now I'm 26, went there knowing everyone, and came back hoping I'll see them again as soon as possible. My scene puberty went through these exact eight years, becoming from tiny Hungarian coder to compo winner musician. Met a thousand faces, saw thousands of demos, heard thousands of stories, became addicted to traveling, and so on. Now we feel the new era incoming, and we're all a bit scared, because we're not sure what it can or will bring.
Sunday morning I woke up to see the the launch of STS-131 shown live on the bigscreen - it was weirdly appropriate. (Not just because of the name.) It all seemed like a strange metaphor to a new beginning.
Things keep changing, but that's no reason to mourn, and I never mourned Breakpoint. It was a party that, by all means, achieved more than anyone expected. It was a privilege to be there every year, even when the party barely happened. It was a privilege to see all the amazing releases, meet the amazing people, to step in and feel that something wonderful is going on. And for that I am eternally grateful and thankful to Scamp and the guys who sacrificed so much to let that happen.
Breakpoint wasn't just a party, it's a mindset. Forever.