No one could accuse me of being exactly unbiased when reviewing this CD being the publisher of C64 Remix CDs myself. However, during this review I will be reviewing Output 64 like I review C64 remixes: from the standpoint of a C64 music fanatic who likes to hear remixes, and also from a musician's point of view technically and artistically.

A little background though. Output64 is a project born of a concept called Input 64. The idea came from a small record label in Germany called Enduro.

Their idea was that if original C64 SID music recorded to CD was marketed properly by a record company (and also targeted at DJs in clubs) it would sell.

Now original SID on CD isn't a new idea. People have been making their own since CD writers became disposable items, and Kenz has been doing them for years, lovingly recorded from a C64 and then cleaned up sonically. However, the idea of pushing the original SIDs to a new listening public as Processor Punk was new.
To their credit, Enduro went about the project the right way, in getting all the legal permissions in place (though if they hadn't, lawsuits would have ensued).

One thing they were quite clear about though, is that this CD wasn't targeted at the C64 scene, but at the outside world.

It's fair to say that this decision caused raised eyebrows amongst some of the composers (and myself since I was involved in the licencing discussions), since I've seen the effect raw SID has on a newbie. And since they were recording the CD from an emulator with content no different from what you could get from Sidplay yourself, it was difficult to see the point.

However, not all fans of SID have discovered HVSC and the scene, so in a sense it was a good product to try and recapture some of the old fans. As a hardened SID fan it's difficult to say whether the tunes chosen were actually representative of the best of SID. They're not the tunes I would have recommended for newbies. But, it was their choice, and their call.

Skip forward 3 or 4 thousand copies worldwide, and you get to Output64. This was always planned as the next step: the concept? Give a SID to an underground (but well-known) contemporary electronic act and see what they make of it.

Here's my track by track summary of what's here:

1) Arkanoid

Actually quite faithful to the original. As such has been done better, but it's an OK start. This would probably make a solid RKO 70%-er. Some nice vocoding. Keeps the bass from the SID intact.

2) Plundersonics - Mutants, Here I am. The only real reason for this to be on the album at all is the occasional hiccups from Crazy Comets embedded in it. It is indeed a completely different piece of music in its own right. They lyrics are unbelieveably silly, but I'm guessing this was done one of those conceptual art things. Until I lost body parts it was fun, throwing huge things around, that was fun. And then you all threw me around after I lost my legs. Um, yeah. Fine. Whatever… Ironically because they used that Crazy Comets sample, Rob is down as the composer for the whole song (but not the lyrics). It's a weird world. Quality production though, and catchy too. This is the kind of thing that would result from Mahoney and Makke getting together with some weird chick 😊

3) Kissogram: Alloyrun.

Start uses the bassline from the original and puts some cheesy drums and a dance bassline under it. Sounds like someone got their Casio keyboard out.

I didn't think people could get away with rhythm sections sounding this home-keyboardy without getting slagged off. Perhaps they can't, since I just did.

Later some vocals come in to relieve the monotony, and you can then see what it's trying to do, and there are some quite nice C64 sounding breaks in there. This track gets more interesting as it goes on, I think, and a lot more varied. Unpromising start, but one of the better remixes on the album.

This would probably attract a remix64 score of about 65%, since people wouldn't get it, or listen to the last half of it.

4) Gebr. Teichmann - Crazy Comets

Um, this is completely pointless. Four to the floor rhythm, C64 bass stabs rhythmically, occasional Hubbard FX, same chord all the way through, no melody, until 3:30, when he gives up and just plays the SID on top of the previous rhythm.

Which sounds completely awful when it changes to the funky bit, since he doesn't compensate for Rob's irregular time structure, so the kick is way out of time with the actual melody. This is fixed about 30 seconds later, but this is still the worst kind of SID + drums. And he was paid £600 to do this, too. Bah, humbug.

30% remix 64 vote prediction from me. (I'd vote 16% myself).

5) Ron & His 1541 - Push my button.

It's a Bubble Bobble cover based on the SID + some drums, and a vocoded SAM speech-type voice singing a lyric about videogames. Hard to believe it's been played in clubs, but it has.

Clever use of vocals, but panders to the worst kind of stereotypes about videogame music (bleep-blop).

Not one to play if you're trying to dispel the notion that computer game music has any relevance outside its novelty value.

6) Big Chief Electric - Turbo Outrun.

Some Jarre-esque rhythmic things happening here over a SID bassline, but nothing much apart from a slow rhythm happens over the first 1 and a half minutes, then it's distorted SID square wave noises accompanying a slow normal Hubbard-type lead voice. Eventually it gets to playing the chords from the chorus of Turbo Outrun (at 2:30 - up until this point any resemblance to Turbo Outrun has been purely coincidental).

At 3:00, the most absurd detuned lead voice takes the piss out of the melody by playing it almost as a duck's quack (!), then it returns to distorted bass + messy drums for another 30 seconds. Then another melody based on the Turbo Outrun one is played on another SID instrument. There's no bigger picture with this tune: it just noodles along electronically by itself, with no attempt to actually deliver anything to the listener.

To me this is the worst kind of opportunistic remixing-by-numbers, throwing random ideas around in the sequencer (or tracker) and then keeping everything.

7) Last Ninja - Jeans Team.

Lazy and repetitive. A four-beat bassline, home-keyboard rhythm repeated over and over and over again, with just a three note horrible-sounding ringing bells interlude. Occasionally a bar of the Last Ninja Wilderness riff gets dragged out and played over and over again. They can claim it's art if they want, but it just sounds like lazy, repetitive crap. The musical mindset of anyone who could enjoy anything this musically empty is completely incomprehensible to me.

They didn't cover Last ninja, but they didn't put anything else in its place.

8) Computerjockeys, Turbo Outrun

Starts off with a trendy breakbeat and Jeroen's voice samples from the game.

Definitely no attempt to cover the SID, but a nice melange of samples and SID stuff happening. It's more a mosaic of sounds from the original than a cover of the original.

And it mostly works. There's a nice C64 triangle flutey thing that improvises round the Turbo Outrun melody later on. Like the previous track, it's (obviously) not my cup of tea, but unlike the previous track, there was some thought put into this with sound placement and rhythm usage.

As a cover? Useless. As a piece of electronic music? Surprisingly mellow.

Put this on in the background and I wouldn't grimace.

9) Lopazz - Bubble Bobble.

More than any other track on Output 64, this is a lost opportunity. The beginning (live rock band starts building up to the Bubble Bobble chords) is very promising, and when the chords crash in with the guitars and crash cymbals, it's very uplifting.

As soon as they start singing, it falls apart. It's not a great tune, it's not great playing, their voices aren't compelling… it just doesn't work.

A prog-rock instrumental version of Bubble Bobble probably would have worked bearing in mind the promising beginning.

10) O:PL Bastards - Alloyrun

By far the most ear-punishing track on the album. Jeroen Tel's Alloyrun bassline and some metallic congas are joined by a terrible drunken sounding voice singing AlloyRUUUUN. It gets worse when in the next verse he goes up an octave, and I started to wish someone would kick him in the balls and make him go up another two octaves.

It's terrible, but also terribly funny. I'm sure they didn't mean it that way. A crap Hawaiian guitar pops up occasionally too to add to the unintentional hilarity. Then a sitar accompanies some more of his vocal noodlings…. towards the end of the piece slightly more distortion and chords get involved with some prog rock chords sequences, but they can't save it.

Terrible.

11) Mina - Arkanoid

Put simply, imagine Puffy64 doing Arkanoid. Now imagine Puffy64 had an accident that removed his musical skill and sense of pitch, and then did Arkanoid. This is the result. The entire SID is under there, but everything about this cover is done badly.

This album BADLY needed a Puffy64 or Machinae Supremacy Arkanoid instead of this.

12) Ovuca - Turbo Outrun

Hyperactive random-sounding chemical beats and distorted lead melodies bearing no resemblance to the original. Later on in the piece, the melody is joined by detuned bells which really do make you laugh out loud. Later on the tune becomes so detuned as to be actively repellant. This would get 16% in a Remix64 vote.

It seems to go out of its way to produce as many sickening and repellent sounds as possible.

13) Chazem/Perry/Arrebatado - Crazy Comets

This sounds like a bad version of Popcorn. Stylophone version of the main theme, out-of-place Conga all over the track, and most funny of all, the lyrics:

You Crazy Com-ETS,
followed by
Why don't you go away?.

Well, yes, my thoughts exactly.

Laughable synths, melody compromises all over the place, bad performances and timing. This is trying to be a complete cover of the original piece (which is good), but it just doesn't cut it. It's OK to say we should be considering this as a new piece of music, but it manifestly is just a bad version of an existing tune.

We don't let remixers on RKO get away with claiming that bad versions of a tune are art, so why should we let these people?

14) Raumagent Alpha - Bubble Bobble

One phrase from Bubble Bobble repeated over and over and over again with occasional additional SFX of rhythm hits added in, at least until it hits about 2:10, when you get chord stabs as well!!

As the chord stabs come in more frequently it becomes more clear what the piece is actually trying to do, but it ends up sounding like someone stabbing randomly at a keyboard while a looped bar from Bubble Bobble plays.

Musically empty.

15) Mikron64 - One Man and his Droid

Truly horrific. It's like a road accident. Imagine One Man and his Droid without any of the emotion or expression played by a badly distorted fake fairground organ. Sure, the notes are right, but surely there can't be anyone out there who would actually listen to this stuff willingly? If it was the soundtrack to a Gameboy game, you'd be reaching for the volume switch so quickly…. synthesised speech conversations within the tune are just irritating. Just confirms every prejudice ever expressed about computer game music.

Rob deserves better than this.

The BMX Kidz track started off OK, but irritated immensely because it took the funkiest bit of Rob's music, and then changed the chords, the funky bassline and everything else that was good about the piece.

Again, this is another track where the arranger arrogantly removed the best musical ideas from a piece, and failed to add ones which could replace it…

And if you didn't know the originals? I haven't a clue, though I played the whole album to my brothers (who aren't C64 music fans, and have completely diverse musical tastes) and their immediate reaction to most of the tracks was either to pull a grimace, or to laugh cruelly.

If the tracks from this album ever got onto RKO, only Mutants Here I Am would end up anywhere near the first six pages of the Remix64 charts.