News

From Eddy Joseph, brother of Richard:

A celebration of Richard's life was held on Saturday 28th April at All Saints' Church, Coleshill. Many friends from both of his music careers attended.

London, April 23rd 2007:
At 4pm today Commodore Gaming opened the virtual doors to their online store for the UK and Ireland, offering gamers in these countries the privilege to be amongst the first in the world to own one of the unique Commodore Gaming PCs. Commodore Gaming plans to roll out their cool gaming rigs across Europe in mid May, before the rest of the world.

Bala Keilman, CEO for Commodore Gaming, commented This marks a new chapter in the history of Commodore, opening our webshop to offer great gaming PCs that are as unique as they are customizable. We’re extremely excited and proud to offer our range of exceptional gaming machines and since PC gaming and online gaming is about instant entertainment, this is what we intend to deliver with machines that will satisfy everyone from the casual gamer to the professional.

The online store will be launching across Europe in mid May, alongside retail outlets in UK, Germany, France and the Benelux. Further details on retailers for European territories will be released shortly.

The online store will supply the higher specification models Commodore gx and Commodore xx, while the Commodore g and Commodore gs range will be made available in retail outlets. Commodore Gaming machines are priced competitively for such high spec components and hand-finished build quality:

Commodore gx - £1759 (inc VAT)
Commodore xx - £2899 (inc VAT)

(Above prices include buyers choice of C-kin case artwork)

Commodore Gaming has also confirmed that customers will be able to customise aspects of their gaming PC, offering a customized interior and exterior. All components can be selected to build a personal specification on each machine.

Commodore Gaming now offers over 100 unique ‘C-kins’ designs in their online store, each case being artistically painted using a patented dye process (unique to Commodore Gaming) and individually finished with a scratch proof surface usually reserved for the automotive industry.

All Commodore Gaming PCs come with a full two year service and parts warranty.

Source: hype.se

Discussion

Commodore Gaming Store

All my news items in one chunk, including BIT Live 2007 latest, the return of Nexus 6581, the Richard Joseph Tribute album, news about Tonka and Markus Siebold's forthcoming CD releases, what that BIT 4/5/6 thing is about, and more.

The newsletter...

Last wednesday, during the BBB show on SLAY Radio, Chris Abbott released a new'n'improved version of the home of the last sonic underground - C64audio.com.

The new site boasts with a lot of new features and possibilities for both the customers and Chris. One of the biggest improvements is that it now features digital downloads of all the tracks. The flexibility of that implementation makes it easy to create bundles and addons for your other purchases. For instance, when you buy the album Project Galway (either the digital version or the physical audio CD), you'll receive over 700(!) bonus downloads! It's also made possible to put together special bundles like the charity tribute album to the late Richard Joseph where all the proceeds go to to Macmillan Nurses, the noted cancer charity.

A lot of the tracks are also available in lossless FLAC and AAC and one of the most important things - not even one of all tracks contains any kind of DRM (like other somewhat well-known shops do).

Once you've made a purchase, you'll have the right to download the tracks forever, which means that you'll be able to buy now and download as needed. The bonus system is very flexible overall and if you buy a digital track, you'll receive a discount on the whole album. Also, you'll receive a free random track from one of the other albums for each purchased album.

This overhaul of the site has given Chris a lot more possibilities to bring out more stuff to the scene, both new and old things that has been hidden and unreleased until now and for your download flexibility, a european download mirror to the original US server is also available to bring the tracks to you as quick as possible.

C64Audio.com

Discussion

Torben Hansen (Metal) of Vibrants has designed a new bank for reFX's QuadraSID, the vsti that emulates 4 SID-Chips.

Torben Hansen Signature is a complete bank of 128 presets in FXB and FXP format for the quadraSID vsti. Torben Hansen is an accomplished C-64 scener, and this new collection proves him worthy. Users will find classic C-64 sounds, including drums, basses, leads, sequences, sound effects, and more. These sounds are sure to give your chip-tunes and other electronic compositions a genuine chip flavor.

Reported by Dr.Future

More info

Discussion

Ticket sales for the Fifth Symphonic Game Music Concert just started. The production involves several members of Merregnon, including Andy Brick, Jonne Valtonen, Chris Huelsbeck, Yuzo Koshiro and Thomas Boecker. The concert will be held on August 22, 2007 at the famous Gewandhaus zu Leipzig in Germany.

Conducted by Andy Brick, the FILMharmonic Orchestra Prague will be supported by a choir again. Titles from games such as StarCraft, Final Fantasy XI, Ragnarok 2, Stranglehold, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, Secret of Mana, The Abbey and Turrican 2 will be presented. The concert will also feature two medleys of music from Commodore 64- and Amiga-classics. Accomplished Japanese opera singer Izumi Masuda will perform music from Final Fantasy XI and singer Conny Kollet will come back to Leipzig this year presenting the title theme from the game Stranglehold.

Tickets for the concert on August 22, 2007 are available at Ticketonline.de.

Reported by Dr. Future

In our interview section, you'll find a previously unpublished interview with Richard Joseph, done by Chris Abbott in 2002.

Warren 'Waz' Pilkington has made an article about Richard's past as a progressive rocker. It was written in 2003 and is now available at the articles section.

Thanks guys for sharing those.

Richard Joseph Interview

The Secret History of Richard Joseph

Amazing we haven't mentioned it before, really....

Back in Time Live is back, featuring Jeroen Tel, Reyn Ouwehand, Disco Danceaway, 8-Bit Weapon and ComputeHer, in the Spitz Bistro, London (it's in the City of London near so many eateries it should be ashamed of itself!!).

Anyway, June 22nd 2007: limited to 200 spaces. You know it will be cool, since the acts are great, and the staff of Slay and R64 will be there, as well as remixers such as Romeo Knight, and many more!

Tickets are £10. No, seriously!

Buy tickets here until C64Audio.com is back up...

Shining Movie Vision (www.shining-movie-vision.de) is producing a film-documentary about the C64 remixing scene.

From the producer, Konstantin Stürz:

"'The 8Bit Philosophy -a commodore 64 symphony-' will be a (approx.) 45 min. documentation featuring Thomas Detert, Romeo Knight, Reyn Owehand, Larsec, Markus Schneider, Markus Holler, PRESS PLAY ON TAPE and many more.

We will meet the people behind the remixes. They will talk about their passion for commodore 64 music and what drives them to keep the remixer scene alive.

Be prepared for some very interesting interviews with extraordinary characters.

You know the originals, you know the remixes... now you will know their story."

Release Date: August 2008
Shooting Period: 2007 (March to December)

Shining Movie Vision

Don't forget that Europe "Springs Forward" at 01:00 GMT on Sunday 25th March... which unfortunately means we lose an hour's sleep!

When and Why do we change?