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It All Had To Start Somewhere
In the beginning, there was Exit.
On a cold winter evening in 1991, an ex-trumpet player turned guitar player attending college in Alfred, NY, with no previous band experience, only ever had other guitar players to play with, found the center for his being. It was nothing much to start with, just a young man and his computer. He had a Commodore 64, which he had been programming on for some time, and on this computer, he had a digitized drum machine program called Pro Drum Kit. At the time, his influences where varied, everything from Foghat, Rush, and Van Halen to Minor Threat, Ministry, and Skinny Puppy. Up until this point, he had only played solo guitar, with no other accompaniment. But this night, realizing how he's never played to a beat, or even along with prerecorded music, he loaded the Pro Drum Kit.
After laying down a sequences using it's 2 channels of 4-bit sound, what would become 99 had emerged from non-existence. After a month of experimentation with Pro Drum Kit and a tape player with some tape loop sequences, some first songs were roughly created. The first being 'Breeding an Army' in December 1991, and soon after followed "Second Sight" and "False Image". When trying to decide on a name for this project, the best crappy band name that could be conjured was 'Autofactor', which left a horrid cheesey flavor on the tongue once spoken.
Using his beloved Commodore-64 as drum machine, he ripped samples (used to be called 'digis' once, short for 'digitized sound') from what ever games had them and even wrote a programs to alter the samples. The altered samples were used in 'Second Sight', which gave a completely fresh soundscape to create from. The early songs were minimalistic, only instrument being besides the C64, were the vocals which were run through distortion and echo petals. The guitar idea was scrapped once this idea of sampling and altering samples was found.
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In the beginning, there was Exit.On a cold winter evening in 1991, an ex-trumpet player turned guitar player attending college in Alfred, NY, with no previous band experience, only ever had other guitar players to play with, found the center for his being. It was nothing much to start with, just a young man and his computer. He had a Commodore 64, which he had been programming on for some time, and on this computer, he had a digitized drum machine program called Pro Drum Kit. At the time, his influences where varied, everything from Foghat, Rush, and Van Halen to Minor Threat, Ministry, and Skinny Puppy. Up until this point, he had only played solo guitar, with no other accompaniment. But this night, realizing how he's never played to a beat, or even along with prerecorded music, he loaded the Pro Drum Kit.
After laying down a sequences using it's 2 channels of 4-bit sound, what would become 99 had emerged from non-existence. After a month of experimentation with Pro Drum Kit and a tape player with some tape loop sequences, some first songs were roughly created. The first being 'Breeding an Army' in December 1991, and soon after followed "Second Sight" and "False Image". When trying to decide on a name for this project, the best crappy band name that could be conjured was 'Autofactor', which left a horrid cheesey flavor on the tongue once spoken.
Using his beloved Commodore-64 as drum machine, he ripped samples (used to be called 'digis' once, short for 'digitized sound') from what ever games had them and even wrote a programs to alter the samples. The altered samples were used in 'Second Sight', which gave a completely fresh soundscape to create from. The early songs were minimalistic, only instrument being besides the C64, were the vocals which were run through distortion and echo petals. The guitar idea was scrapped once this idea of sampling and altering samples was found.
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