KynyNasty

Back in 2003 a demoscene producer viznut (from the crew PWP) managed to create two very nice Commodore VIC-20 demos for our pleasure.

They are called Robotic Warrior and Robotic Liberation. Fucking great! Just try them out totally drunk!

The second one is like a sequel to the first.

viznut/PWP – Robotic Warrior

“Robotic Warrior is a single-loading VIC-20 demo featuring a voice synthesizer and an apocalyptic story about robots turning against their creators. The technical catch, of course, was the voice synthesizer, which was used to sing out the text of the story. The sound-related code and data became quite bloated, eating up more than a kilobyte of RAM, but it still left space for some text, pictures and flashy effects which were used to illustrate the story.

The demo uses a psychological trick causing the listener hear details that are not there. There are only fifteen distinct sounds in the voice synthesizer – far from enough – but since the viewers also read the lyrics while listening, they get the illusion of hearing the words properly.” -viznut

viznut/PWP – Robotic Liberation

“Robotic Liberation, released at Assembly 2003, is still my finest show-off regarding what can be made with an unexpanded VIC-20 (and a standard disk drive). The demo is designed around an apocalyptic concept similar to that in Robotic Warrior and contains refined versions of many of the ideas introduced in my earlier work.

Unlike its prequel, however, Robotic Liberation is not an illustrated story but rather like a music video inviting robots into a battle against humanity. You are free to interpret it as having an anti-fascist and/or techno-sceptical message. Also the graphics and effects are much more abundant than in the prequel.” -viznut

I was going to post tracks by mysterious spanish synth-pop group Vam Cyborg but Mutant Sounds did that (still available) already a year ago.

Instead we have here pretty much similar group called Vocoder, which is also from Spain. Italo-Disco from Spain? Yes, perhaps a little more towards electro/synth-pop. Not much more information available besides what is said in their myspace profile. They did couple of songs and disappeared as did many other italo/electro acts in the 80s. (The songs in their myspace are available for download if you log in! Tip.)
Re-press needed. Clone Classic Cuts perhaps?

This video is fun. Ingenuous and naive fun.

More Vocoder at Youtube:

directo en ZGZ (Vocoder live at Zaragoza, Spain) (youtube)
Hacker (youtube)
(maqueta La Radio)
Radiotelescope

Vocoder (myspace)

MP3
Vocoder – Amor de Robot (192 kbit MP3)
Vocoder – Mindanao (rapidshare) (192 kbit MP3)

edit: Someone did this one too. Couple of years ago. Nothing in teh internet is rare nowadays!

This week I recommend awesome Japanese nonsense humor anime series titled Gyagu Manga Biyori (Gag manga biyori). The first season is available entirely at YouTube.

I have selected couple of my personal favorite episodes here. Second season has been made also but only three episodes have been fansubbed so far. I haven’t read the manga though. Prepare yourself for random and absurd experience.

Some of the gags go way beyond understanding mostly because you need to know Japanese culture (okay there are some translators notes but you won’t have time to read them).

The director of the series (Akitaro Daichi) is famous for directing similar kind of shows like Sexy Commando Gaiden: Sugoiyo! Masaru-san (which is also available at YouTube). Appreciated.

Season 1 Episode 4

Season 1 Episode 10

Season 1 Episode 11

Watched Masters of the Universe last weekend. Oh boy…

Masters of the Universe (1987, USA)
Director: Gary Goddard
Fantasy/Sci-Fi/Adventure/Teen

The plot makes no sense and it’s filled with holes so I won’t bother telling it to you. Instead I asked myself couple of questions and answered them:

Where is Orko ?
- Gwildor replaced Orko as a comic sidekick.
Why ?
- Probably because they did not have the technology to create Orko.

Where is Prince Adam ?
- Nowhere. He-Man is all the time in his superform although he shouts at the end, “I have the power!”.

Why does Skeletor has large army of stormtroopers borrowed straight up from Star Wars -movies ?
- Yes, why? That is something totally unprecedented.

Where is Battle Cat (aka Cringer) or many other major characters known from the series ?
- Well, the movie follows the animation series only a little.

Closing comments:
What you get is a movie that somehow resembles the Masters of the Universe with “stormtroopers” and same kind of music borrowed rom Star Wars but it actually doesn’t remind anything!

Worth watching?
If you’re looking for decent turkey, you’ve got watch Masters of the Universe. It has blonde muscular Swedish actor sputtering bad english, rubberfaced Skeletor, 80s teen movie action and of course, He-Man himseld. For me, that was enough.

There is currently a new He-Man and the Masters of the Universe -movie in production (produced by Joel Silver). It will have visual effects done in the similar way as with the movie “300″. It has the potential but I fear the worst… I found couple of interviews (1) (2) about the new film and it seems they just might be doing it right. At least, in the way how the new Transformers film turned out to be.

Here is some great moments from the movie I uploaded to YouTube:

“Vanha Hippi” (old hippie) is a song by Top Ranking Eric & The Revolutionaries. It isn’t the the first reggae song in Finland but among the first ones, yes. It appears on the first volume of “Suomi Rock ‘80″ compilations released by Poko Records.
Most of the older Finnish reggae stuff aren’t any good (e.g. Avaruuslintu – Kesä Reggae) but this “Vanha Hippi” is a great success mostly because of the controversial and amusing lyrics! Definitely a good source for vocal samples (tip!).

As said before, the easiest way to get it is to acquire a copy of Suomi Rock ‘80 compilation but we’re here @ KynyNasty so nice people that we offer you the opportunity to get it right here.

Top Ranking Eric & The Revolutionaries – Vanha Hippi (Johanna JHNS 128)

If you’re the owner of the song/the artist performing it/don’t want it to be put online, please message us and we’ll remove it as soon as possible.

A brief history of Finnish reggae (published in Ylioppilas-lehti 09/2001, in Finnish)