NecroPolo - Sub Hunter Highscore echoed

Back in 2010 when Geir Tjelta of Maniacs of Noise released a special music player that adds echoes to the C64 tune 'Sub Hunter Highscore' by DRAX, I can remember what a jawdropping experience it was for me. That's been one of the most magical moments of contemporary C64 music in my opinion. Note that, by default C64 is just a super barebone programmable 3-channel analogue synth, a couple of basic waveforms and that's it, so echo/reverb is somewhat impossible as well as, for example, playing samples (but Rob Hubbard cracked that ages ago as we all know).

Honouring that achievment by Geir and paying homage to DRAX, one of the greatest C64 composers of all times, I started to start a remix project of this catchy tune with guitars even back then. Years passed but this project kept on running as a background app. Demos were made then discarded, parts were added and removed, something was always missing. It is not a complicated track, the feel just wasn't there.

Then, here we are a decade later, in 2023 that was sort of pretty busy for me, providing not much time pits for C64 music or C64 remix creation. To support the onstage performances of the recently released DIM album, I received a super compact FX / amp sim unit called Hotone Ampero MINI. During creating dosens of presets for the live shows like per/song BPM delays, reverbs, acoustic guitar tones, high gain sounds and so on so on forth, I fiddled a little with Sub Hunter and ended up recording the last pieces of the puzzle.

I used the previously released Kjell Nordbo / Jammer metal mix sessions as a template, to provide a somewhat matching sound to the previous tracks. So, here it comes, the 4th track of the expanding EP project, Dark Flow.

NecroPolo - Dark Flow (the expanding EP)

Tech corner:

- Interface: Focusrite Clarett4Pre

- DAW: Reaper 6.82

- Guitar: Hohner L75

- Bass: Ibanez SR305DX

- Amp sims (VSTi): Neural DSP Archetype: Nolly (rhythm guitars), Mercuriall SPARK (solo 1 & 2), Neural DSP Parallax (bass)

- Amp sim (unit): Hotone Ampero MINI (solo 3)

- Mastering processor: iZotope Ozone 8

- Plug-ins: Melda, Stillwell, Voxengo

Drums: Toontrack EZD2, Metal Machine kit (John Tempesta)

The RG Zebra was used for the video only. The recording guitar was the L75.