We are of course talking about the Amiga Shock Force.
This trio seemed to appear suddenly out of thin air in the 90s, but made a bigger splash in the scene.
Like their name implies, they utilized the Amiga series of computers (not only) for their music. This miracle machine was invented and manufactured by the Commodore company (hence the title of this little feature!), which also created the C64, also known as the "breadbox". But while the C64 stormed the worldwide markets, the Amiga was a dud in the USA; yet it became very famous in Europe (especially Germany, France, and the UK) and other parts of the world.
Compared to the studios, gear and setup of other high-brow Techno and Electronic artists, the Amiga put you into the low-brow, low budget range of producing.
Despite, or rather because of this, ASF made some of the most teeth-bashing, crowbar-wielding hardcore in the 90s era.
They had their first EP on Speedcore Records out in 1996 already, with some of the tracks topping 300 BPM. (btw: one year *before* DOA's album "New York City Speedcore" happened).
So, at one point they were among the fastest acts around, and spearheaded this whole movement.
Later releases had a more spiffy and complex production, so there is reason to believe this music was not done entirely on Amiga anymore. This later period also saw them venture into Breakcore or Experimental territory.
We still dig it the same, though!
The Amiga Shock Force traveled around the Europe club circuit, and became a regular performer on the "Terror areas" of big Dutch-Hardcore festivals.
But somewhen after the Millennium, things became more quiet, and rumors about a split or break-up made the rounds.
They occasionally do releases though, and play parties, and the sound is still kicking everyone's a**es.
Let's listen to 11 tracks by the Amiga Shock Force now:
1. House Full of Gangstas
2. First Strike
3. Violent Geisha
4. 24h Connection
5. Kik Me
6. Blood
7. Fastbreak
8. Hardcore Rmx
9. Arschloch
10. Keep Your Enemies Close
11. Guru Meditation
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ReplyDeleteYo this is Bazooka.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all let me thank you for recognizing ASF and for realizing how geniusly and insanely awesome they are.
I know them from the beginning, even before I released my first vinyl in 1995 on Shockwave Recordings. ASF are (or were) Dirk Konze, Ralf Kühn, and Dirk Obst (aka Obsti, fat Obsti)
He was the voice to the outside world and he connected ASF to the work. He even connected them to me back in 1995. Since then we were really close friends and still are.
Compared to my music (which was always hard) their music was an earthquake.
People calculate BPMs and then its this or that genre ?? Yes ASF made 300BPM before DOA even Breakcore since ATR but they also did 1200BPM Tracks before people tried to get into the guiness books for SH!T. I just wanna say, they are beyond comparism and I still love their old tracks as they are timeless.
OK back to the gang.
As Obsti acted assholinessly and didn’t do anything but promoting, they kicked him out really early. I think he managed them to release their first vinyl ever (on Fischkopf recordings) but then got kicked the F-. Out.
Dirk and Ralf are the creatives, they make the tracks.
Dirk is 10 times more creative than Ed Sheeran while he gets f’d in the A* by Johnathan Davis screamin’ in a new song for KoRn. He has no limits on anything or shame in taking stuff, crap tracks (like Sash) (actually like what I did with Scooter) and show them how it should have been done without being commercial.
Ralf is more Breakbeat focused and more into UK Hardcore but always pitched up +40. Therefore the Breakcore / Speedcore seperation on the ASF Tracks as they are obviously different Genres. However, they merged them together and that was already in 1995/1996.
I managed to get them to their release on Speedcore Recs. as it was a Sublabel of Shockwave (aka run by the Speed Freak and as said before i was on Shockwave), so I talked to him. He didn’t like the Amiga Sound for obvious reasons. Low Memory aka low Sample rates aka on long tunes, with many samples in RAM they still sounded Bitcrushed as they were often on really low sample Rates. Bassdrums for example were often on 5khz to 6khz not on 44khz actually never on 44khz, not even 22khz ;) Also Amiga sounded quite compressed and he also didn’t like that. Nevertheless, I talked him into it and im sure he wasnt disappointed with the sales of the Vinyls.
All my records had Graffitis on my Covers so my old Mate Kore27/ÜbeL did all my graffitis so I asked him to do a Graffiti Logo for them which you also see on the videos (Arschloch) you posted. I also told Dirk, as he wanted to release some of his own, different Tracks to call himself “Narrator” as this was a Sound Library, associated with the “Robot Voices” on the Amiga. The Graffiti Logo Artwork was for this Album which I then released as a CD release for him. You can see my name on the lower right.
ReplyDeleteI also did their newer logo which you also see on the video screenshots. (Guru Meditation)
The latest I did was a Remix, aka collab with ASF which I released on my latest Mokum Release MOK#248 (2022) as “Aggroman” called “Life in Hell” which obviously has better Quality than the Amiga Tracks. However, I used the old Amiga Module as base and did this new Track for Mokum out of it. I also started making music on the Amiga and thats why I really appreaciate what ASF did in their track arrangement and aural wise. They both are geniussesss… ;)
ASF sadly releases too less tracks these days as they are too hard for the world and people don’t get that so who would pay for them ?
I see them as the H.R. Giger of Hardcore music. You can not teach creativity. Its born into you. You can try to immitate them but you never get done what they did. I really still love the guys and what the do and did. So once again, thanks for the feature here. I hope I shared some light into the dark side of the ASF.
Im sorry if it looks like I wrote too much about myself instead of ASF ;) However I just wanted to show how involved im was into them since the beginning. They Are ACE !
Cheers mate, Bazooka/AGGROMAN !
(Message was too long so i had to split it)
Thanks for the clarifications! There is a lot of stuff that we did not know about yet :-)
DeleteWe totally love your own music productions, too, by the way.
Would it be okay for you if we use some of the information from the comments you wrote, in a follow up to the Amiga Shock Force article?
Hey man, Bazooka again, Low Entropy, i think we met years ago ?? Thanks for the props. Glad to hear it.
ReplyDeleteYes of course man, i wrote all this here to give out some more infos about ASF. You can put all this into your Text from above and delete my comments. Its fucked up anyway as i tried to clean it up, i had to delete the older ones and now it looks like chaos. :D
If you want / need more infos about ASF you could hook me up via "baz (at) Aural (minus) Carnage (dot) com (fuck the bots hehe ;) I just landed here by accident anyway.
Btw. We still have contact but sometimes it takes them month to answer :D Anyway man. Peace out. BAZ