An Interview with LMan

My favourites in the early days were of course Galway, Hubbard, Huelsbeck, Cooksey, Tim Follin and Richard Joseph for Defender of the Crown.

In the early 90s I liked Stefan Hartwig for his groovy techno stylish Turrican intro musics, Ramiro Vaca, Thomas Detert, Drax and Laxity. Well I'm sure I've missed out many people of both eras - this list could get much longer…

Nowadays I admire everyone still active, especially I'd mention AMJ, Jeff and TBB.

A selection of them would be:

• Turrican I II
• International Karate
• Wizball
• Defender of the Crown
• Shades
• Ghosts 'n' Goblins
• Miami Vice Loader

….and many many more😉

I like THC Flatline's tunes very much for his tunes are IMO very well worked out. He often adds this magical bubbling chillouty sound and feel to a remix, which matches my personal taste! 😊 Next, I would mention Oj Oscillation, for he adds some real phat and driving techno groove to his remixes. Very unique! DHS and N-Joy from the Soundwavers provide fantastic dance mixes, very well worked out and technically perfect - but I really love when they do that Kraftwerk'ish electro-thing! Sune M. Pedersen did a real nice job on Defender of the Crown, unfortunately there is no other work from him that I know of. Generally I like unique, non-standard-stuff mixes - or faithful covers. Good examples for this come from Wobbler, PhilBak, TSR, The Dead Guys, Betweenzone, O2 and many others I may have missed here (shame on me😉

What I like is that in these times, where everyone can afford internet, all those people who remember the good old c64 times seem to gather on the web! It is fantastic how the community invests so much energy and work into remixing, maintaining web sites etc, all without greed or money-making intentions. You keep meeting interesting people all the time. 😊

I dislike when people show disrespect towards others, be it in discussions, reviews, tactical voting etc… We're a community consisting mainly of friendly people, and I hope it stays that way.

I approached this remix with huge respect to the original. My first intention was to try, and if it hadn't worked out - no-one would have ever heard of it. I never put so much work into one tune ever before, I adjusted instruments and mixer settings over and over again, I even consulted Hubbard himself until I found that I had finished what was to me the ultimate IK remake. I was really happy when I found that others liked it, too 😊 Thank you folks for all these nice comments!!!

The source of my inspiration is undoubtedly my love Sunflower 😊

And to keep the cover faithful to the original, I try to imagine what the composer had done with the current technical possibilities. Of course I actually know shit of what the composer had done, but that's how I work😉

Basically I like all kinds of music, I favour ambient, house and techno. A little pop now and then, and a pinch of hip-hop, trip-hop, drum 'n' bass… What I don't like is all those manufactured making-record-companies-rich-pop-stars - usually there is no heart and no soul in their music. To speak of covering, sometimes there are really nice covers of old pieces - faithful to the original but with innovative ideas!

What pisses me off is that so many artists release half-hearted redos of other songs, often without even crediting the original - just for the sake of profit. I try keeping all these thoughts in mind when creating my own music - to remain myself, to keep my own style.

It gives me joy! I have been doing music for more than ten years now. My overall audience was generally no more than some friends or colleagues. I kept composing mainly for myself, and somehow I grew tired of doing that in 1999. After getting in touch with the c64 remix scene last summer, making music made a completely new sense for me - there actually were other people caring for the old c64 hymns - plus an interested audience!

So I released my Turrican 2 Loader Remake after one and a half years of abstinence from making music. By the way: this was not really my first c64 remake - I've done a cover of M.U.L.E on my amiga in 1992, using Protracker 😊 but ehrrm, I wouldn't dare to upload this one to R:K:O…

Fortunately mainly positive! 😊 There were some really nice comments on Turrican 2 and International Karate.

Hehe, well I am often impressed by the complexity and finesse of the original sids. Then I wish I was able to compose such music instead of merely remixing it! But I know I never will be😉

As mentioned before, it should either be unique, with some nice innovations or remixing ideas, or it should transport the ambience and feel of the original. Arrangers shouldn't adapt to Zombie Nation's style of covering: I'll take a beat, and a SID, and completed is my hit!

That's a long, looong story starting in 1986, I'm not sure this is interesting but anyway😉 We worked with water colours in the art class of my new school. After the lesson I properly cleaned my paint-box and when I was finished, one of my new classmates intentionally poured his dirty water all over it. I stared at him in bemused disbelief and said You are a… a… and grinning, he completed: Wutz! which means as much as You sod!. Well so I called him Wutz all the time, and that's why soon I was called Wutz too. During the years, Wutz changed into Lutz, Lutz turned into LutzMan - well, you can guess the rest😉

By the way, the guy became my best friend throughout the years - and he still is! I am greeting you, BMan!!!

Whoa, there are plenty! Playing games with my brother or friends, listening to sid music all the time, learning to code basic - things I spent much time on doing! I particularly remember one day in 1987, there was 15cm of fresh white snow in the morning, and our bus got stuck in it on its way to school. After my brother and I marched a few kilometres back home, we spent the whole morning playing simple games like Wizard of War or Serpentine - but damn this was fun on that day - still makes me smile when I think of it!

Well for the sake of the scene, I hope it will never do in the way Zombie Nation did. In my opinion, this success was driven by profit, not by devotion to c64 music. But I hope that the scene keeps growing and as free and friendly as it is now, and who knows - there might not be a huge commercial impact but a non-commercial breakthru to the public! You could say now Chris Abbott's work is commercial, too - but what I am referring to is commerce merely driven by profit. Chris' intentions are respectable and for the good of the community. Think of BITLive! 😊

Back then in 1991, the c64 was pretty much alive for me 😊 for I had no money for buying an amiga… but in that time my ambitions and desires for making music rose! Since having no sequencer or other audio gear except my Roland M5, I started doing c64 sids using a program called AMP. It allowed to compose in a tracker-like environment, and had a nice interface for creating sounds. I tried to learn several techniques by covering Hubbard's Commando, but my best SID was a cover of Moroder's Midnight Express. You can check them out if you like, they are contained in the new HVSC update 25. 😊

Basically I'd say no to that. It's just a matter of limited possibilities - you draw a sketch of the tune in your head and try to adapt it to a physical layer - the better the technical possibilities, the better the result (or in some cases, worse 😃)

Hehe, I guess the main difference is, that back then I tried to convert real music into SDI music, and now I do the exact opposite😉

My first contact to the remixing scene was www.c64audio.com - and when I stumbled into R:K:O, I was a little disappointed. Though the hosting of all these files (and them being free) and the upload function was great stuff, I missed the nice background info to each tune and arranger which is found on c64audio. Plus, there were so many reviews spread all over c64rmx mailing list, but no central archive. So I got the idea of a meeting point for arrangers, reviewers and composers, with review submission, voting, arranger's comments etc. And I wanted to do it in co-operation with R:K:O.
When you, Neil, appeared on the list and announced the existence of remix64, I was very happy that you agreed to a co-operation of both formats! So we'll have a meeting point plus a scene related online magazine united in one site!

I hope that we will be able to launch soon! I would like to see remix64 become a nodal point in the scene - uniting everyone who's somehow involved. It would be nice if community members really liked to drop into the site frequently, for being up to date, for discussion, for contacting other members etc…

I'm not sure yet - maybe Giana Sisters, Antiriad, R-Type… who knows?😉

Well, I usualy don't expect too much from the future. It's good to have goals and to work on reaching them. Mainly I'm looking forward to having a family, though. 😊

I hope the scene stays the way it is, regarding it's good atmosphere. Though a public breakthru would be a cool thing, this would certainly attract businessmen - they'd start a complete c64 remix blow-out until nothing of the original scene's magic remained. I have to say that I might be slightly pessimistic in commercial matters… (again, this does not aim on Chris' work at all, for he has respectable goals and the right attitude for his commercial projects!)

My last words: Let's all give eternal life to the c64! 😊