<%@ Language=VBScript %> [bit3jcard.jpg] The Concept About the CD The Tracks and Story The Companion CD Back in Time Plus Clip Downloads (for the impatient!!) The Concept Back in Time 3 is more than just a Commodore 64 remix CD: originally envisaged as an extension of "Back in Time 2" its original track listing bore little resemblance to the one above. It was a mixture of pieces, including Arcade Classics, Wizardry, IK, Phantoms, Zoids, Shadowfire, Kentilla, WAR, Game Over, etc. As the project progressed, it became obvious that I had commissioned far too many pieces to fit onto one CD! So it became a plan for two further CDs, where 3 was Sci-fi and martial arts, and 4 was swords and sorcery. Then Ben Daglish confirmed that Last Ninja and Trap could appear on the CDs: that meant that there was too much Sci-fi stuff! And so Back in Time 3 became a Sci-fi CD. At that point it was still just a collection of tracks. Then I started to re-arrange Ben's 1998 orchestral arrangement of Trap (which covered the first five minutes), and phoned Executive Producer Kenz to discuss the emotions we were trying to convey in Trap. As it went on, we started writing a story around the track to try and justify the emotions we were trying to put into it. Then the idea came about to make the whole CD a story, which then set us arranging the tracks and picking the Sci-fi tunes. The last tune to get put on the CD was Mike Andrews' " Zodis", which was submitted very late in the day, but which was too good to ignore, especially as up until that point Wizball High Score was the last track on the album: a happy ending, to be sure, but was it conveying the sense of uneasiness that the heroes would have to return to after their shore leave? Also late in the day was " Parallax Stroll ", which was a late replacement for "Game Over". The oldest track on the CD was Phantoms of the Asteroids, which was one of the first pieces I did after the release of Back in Time 3, but it's gone through many versions since then... About the CD The tracks on the CD started off being fairly distinct from each other stylistically, but as more collaboration happened, things changed. All the pieces I worked on ended up being collaborations: Armalyte, for example, started off as a Fabian Del Priore/Tom Boecker produced track, then I added my own things to his arrangement and rerecorded it, and then Puffy64 bought his guitar and drums to bear. The final piece sounds primarily guitar led, but the extra work done by Fabian, Tom and me creates the awesome sense of space in this album. Lots of other collaboration was done between me, Boz, Marcel Donne and Darren Izzard, with Kenz acting as the ultimate arbiter of the quality of a cover: Kenz is the uberfan: he's not a musician but he is musical, and he knows what he likes. More importantly, he's very representative of the C64 cover loving population... and is also adept at analysis without losing track of the whole impression. Boz is more of a musician, but does a great job on the collaborative work: and the knob tweaking :) Darren worked mostly on Shadowfire, but provided sterling service in feedback and other detailed criticism that would have escaped a less discerning eye! And of course, the ARTISTS! Steve Barrett, who knocked his socks off producing the chapter artwork (and until recently I didn't even realise he was so good an artist!!). Steve uses Bryce and Poser for his work. Then there's the magnificent Arvid Weber: wow. Photoshop guru, his inspiration set the whole tone for the CD, though his first CD cover was unusable because the main ship was a grab from the film "Pitch Black". Luckily, another collaboration was in the offing, because CGI guru Mat Recardo, fresh from his triumph with Xmas Chortles 2 had already created a ship as part of the One Man and his Droid video to accompany the Back in Time 3 track. His front cover is as magnificent as I could have hoped, but wouldn't have been possible without the other two artists. Which is a microcosm of how this entire CD worked. There were lots of surprises that came out of this CD: one of the chief ones in my mind was the sudden elevation to professional quality of Marcel Donne's work (when you hear the OMAD and Phantoms work, and the links between the tracks you'll be amazed). Whenever I wanted something to sound like Jarre but was out of ideas, along came Marcel! Pete Connelly unfortunately doesn't appear on this album, because Core Design worked the hell out of him for Tomb Raider 4 and 5. Luckily they're working on something else now, so he doesn't feel so suicidal! Who'd be a software developer, eh? It would be unfair not to mention the quality work on Iridium (deadline pusher-to-the-max), Fabian Del Priore and Tom Boecker, the Merregnon team responsible for the Last V8 cover, and of course Rob Hubbard himself, realising WAR in a form none of us expected, but which brings to mind the best Sci-fi soundtracks... plus the inspired Mike Andrews, who's contribution was finished and perfect... and of course then I have to mention O2, whose inspired Zoids cover provides on of the best mental images on the album :), and who becomes more distinctive with each track... The Tracks and Story - a Guide to the CD Anyway, the CD begins with Agent X 2 , a Jogeir cover which represents the departure of our heroes from their spacestation. At the end of the track, I can just see the "Directed by" and "Produced by" credits as those flutey instruments fade away! Jogeir used his usual coterie of instruments here, and the guitar of Jan Henrik-Bang. Then we're into WAR, which represents the first jaunt into the Universe. The first half of the piece is essentially military in nature: the mental image this gives me is people scurrying to and fro preparing the ship, and generally saying "Aye-Aye Captain" :) The second half is the various initial teething problems they have (such as destroying a planet: whoops!). The piece itself was arranged by Rob Hubbard and Steven Scherer, and on the Companion CD you can find a scan of Rob's orchestral notes that Steve worked from (written in his own handwriting! Wow...) After their narrow escape in WAR, we're onto the first Zoids, courtesy of O2. Already on Kwed, this is a version which has been enhanced and generally put through the ringer to sound smoother and even Jarre-ier. In the story, the heroes are exploring a deserted and water-covered electric planet that still has plenty of picture-esque monuments and buildings around, in a sort of Egyptian way. How can anyone listen to this music and not feel underwater, eh? Mostly used on this one were the Novation Supernova, the Roland JP8080, and the Korg Z1: O2s original track was augmented by more SFX, a smoother sound and some high frequencies that Jarre was so fond of using in Oxygene. Next up is Shadowfire: the Hyperspace theme. It's Dr Who meets Fred Gray in this heroic piece, (which in the story represents the bravery of the heroes hurtling into the unknown with vigour and courage). The Hardsid gets its first outing on the CD providing Fred's inimitable SID lead. The bass is from the Supernova, and the JP8080 is strangely underused on this one... this one started out as a beta track on Back in Time 2, based on Darren Izzard's original arrangement which was largely based on a Queen-type feel (oo-er). Through many versions, which alternated between orchestral/symphonic and synth, it eventually came out Dr Who-ish. It's a tough track to cover, because it's very much self-contained: there's no synth sound that can match Fred's SID lead: that sparkling quality, and it's difficult to produce a bouncy enough bass which also contains enough low frequencies to avoid sounding lightweight. Armalyte is the most changed track on the album: you can hear its progress on the companion CD from Fabian's first draft version to the final Puffy-less version which adorned the beta-tester CDs. A lot of banging and crashing on this one, courtesy mainly of the Supernova and JP8080 generating the SID burbling, and the orchestral instruments and SFX cards of the JV2080 providing a lot of the more substantive backing. It gains a lot from the guitar, which in combination with the banging and crashing really convey the seat-of-the-pants feel we wanted to convey for this bit of the story: the Asteroid storm! As in, having flown straight into the middle of one, towing a load of scoutships... oops!! Next up, heralded by the opening of a crashed scoutship door (and giving a great view of the planet: that's what the cover is based on), is Phantoms of the Asteroids. The nice slow start was my first ever attempt at a slow link piece that had been in my mind as a disciple of Jarre: variations on a theme. In the versions of Zoids on the Companion you can hear another similar attempt. Although this in theory is a link, I don't think of it as such :) This piece has changed a lot as different equipment has been brought to bear. The final piece (at the last minute and at great expense) features more Jarre-isms from Marcel to add extra interest to the track: it's be far the most slavish SID cover on the album, containing large parts of the original, but still trying to sound like Magnetic Fields. Frenetic? I should say so! The end of this track heralds the end of "Part 1" of the CD. If this was a record, you'd be turning over here! Parallax Stroll is one of Martin's most gorgeous hidden masterpieces: always a favourite of mine, but overlooked in favour of its more flashy cousin, the 9 minute title tune... as the Companion CD will show you, this one started off as a fairly stright SID cover: SID sounds from the Hardsid, bouncy Galway bass, SID lead. For some reason, this didn't come off. Why? Well, it's a question of emotional impression. The bass which worked on the SID, and didn't ruin the dreamlike atmosphere, didn't work when using a proper "Galway synth" bass. So the piece was entirely too bouncy. A second pass resulted in much toning down of the piece, including (at Martin Galway's request) removing the reliance on the original SID sounds. The lead was changed to one of "Fin"'s Oxygene samples, which we all later thought didn't quite work, because of the sustaining nature of Martin's lead sounds in the original. During conversations with Martin, it also became clear that the piece was too repetitive. Nice, but repetitive. His ideal cover would include an additional lead line derived from, but different to, the SID one. So that's what I worked on: in the end, it was a simple Theremin lead. Less is more, as Kenz always says! In this piece, the two lead lines are played on each instrument alternately. It's a nice effect, and doesn't repeat. The orchestral bit in the middle is just some free-range noodling on the nice Roland JV orchestral type patches. It's nice :) Storywise, this is the "sleeping on a starship through the nebula track", hence there's not a lot going on apart from sleeping and bleeping ;) It's a nice intermission piece, and therefore doesn't connect to any of the other pieces on the CD directly. So, into the second part of the CD we enter the "action packed" section, with Zoids Desert Battle . Obviously this is John Williams inspired now: the mental picture is of a battle with big At-Ats, walkers, and various other not-at-all-like-Star-Wars-Honest stuff stomping around. Or they could be Zoids! Stranger things have happened. Now I have to mention here my thanks to Larry Fast, the author of "Ancestors", of which Zoids is a (very creative and loose) cover. Larry has been great with the licencing, and will also be recommending BIT 3 to his own fans, on the basis of the three (!) versions of Ancestors thereon... nice!! The Companion CD contains all of the previous versions of Zoids done in preparation for this CD: you can hear the progression from "Gumby MIDI version", to "Stompy but inexplicably short of Tomtoms" first version" (source file corrupted when I tried to come back to it), the second version which encapsulated the first but included the first hints of the orchestral mayhem to come... there was nothing actually wrong with this second version apart from a few sonic annoyances, but some beta testers complained it didn't quite convey the raw emotion that Zoids (as a favourite piece) should have conveyed. The third version is essentially the first stab at orchestralising, but is let down by some crappy brass sounds and a lack of variety. The fourth version hit a kind of paydirt. You'll have to read what Kenz wrote about it in his Companion CD, but it was liked. But it wasn't perfect; it was tinny, some bits were inappropriate, and the rhythm was crap. However, the soul was there. After studying my John Williams scores, I became determined to add an Imperial March vibe to the track to add power. Everything good from the previous track was there, and it certainly had power. This was the fifth version, which was also the main beta-test version (and which me and Boz sweated buckets over!!). Now, this one was certainly superior technically to the fourth one. But it didn't get underneath the skin of the beta-testers so much. The general consensus was that it wasn't necessary to be so slavish to the use of the real orchestra when we weren't using one, and that important emotional effects had been lost when the piece made the transition to "Bolero meets Mars meets Imperial March". So, we returned to the roots of the fourth one, added some of the superior orchestration of the fifth, used improved orchestral samples (especially the brass) and generally made it sound more deserty. Which was appropriate!! The end result owes more than a little to decent orchestral samples, a nice snare from the Yamaha A4000, some flourishes and harp samples, and the excellent JV and Emu Virtuoso samples filling the rest of the gaps. Also the Asia card on the JV2080 provided the "Lonely Vibro" patch that sets the mood for the piece: it's beautiful! The link between Zoids and Flash Gordon is slightly controversial: after all, why have a synth join for two orchestral pieces? Well, at the end of Flash Gordon, the Captain of the mothership is dragged into the robot city: Flash Gordon is his escape from it. So the robotic atmosphere is being conveyed in this link from Marcel (BTW: Marcel was responsible for all the links except Agent X 2 -> WAR, Shadowfire -> Armalyte, and Armalyte-> Phantoms). So it's synthy... Flash Gordon is a strange piece of music. In the story, it represents the escape, capture and re-escape from the City of the Robots. Based originally on a Cubase arrangement from Marcel Donne, it essentially redefined my vision of the piece, which I had never really (blasphemy) liked in its original C64 form, primarily because I had a short attention span and couldn't get past the quite whiney beginning with the laser-like sounds. When I listened again as my adult self, and based on Marcel's interpretation, I began to get excited about the piece. The final synth version of Flash was a composite of Marcel's version and the Blake's 7-like additions from me. I liked this version very much, but it seemed people were expecting more emotionally. The problem with this piece has always been: it's more than one piece of music! You've got the essentially synth-pop feel of the verse/chorus, and then you've got the darker and more epic middle. How to do both? Well, the real question was: how do we convey a heroic film-like atmosphere for the verse and chorus without making it sound too happy. The problem was solved when I was playing Kenz a string part over the phone, and he was underwhelmed. When we moved it to a fake orchestral hit (a la Art of Noise), it started to work. The other pitfall was again because I fell in love too much with John Williams: in this case, I made the second part of Flash Gordon (after the fast bit ends) a little too based on the quiet bit in the Star Wars score just before the Princess' ship goes into the screen (you know, twinkling stars, etc). This sounded excellent, using string triplets to convey the feel we all know and love, but it discarded the essential menace conveyed by the original piece. This was solved in the short-term by bringing back the "ooooeeeeeoooooooo" and low string note sections of the original into this arrangement: this unfortunately necessitated altering the subtly changing tempos in this piece (it's one of the only C64 covers that routinely changes tempo for effect in a subtle manner). The rest was a question of tweaks. The link from Flash to One Man and his Droid is inspired: it's all the more surprising that it wasn't written with this link in mind! In this section of the story, the Captain and his Ship droid have stolen his ship back, and are chased through the desert. This owes a HUGE debt to Magnetic Fields (various tracks). You can hear Marcel's original take on this on the Companion CD. I sped up the track, and inserted the SID leads back in. It took until the final CD version for the trains and noises to be replaced, and for the mid punchy section to be more punchy. The Magnetic fields bit is JV2080 analog card, most of the rest of the track is JP8080 (nice stuff) and Supernova (SID stuff). And so we're in the caves (see Mat Recardo's wonderful video to see how this happened!). The bells of doom are tolling, and there's a seat-of-the-pants ride to get back to the mothership before the ship explodes. Nothing much to tell of the story behind this one: Last V8 was one of Fabian's favourite pieces, so Tom Boecker arranged for Fabian to arrange it. This is the result. The Last V8 beginning and endings were Marcel's first links for BIT 3, and are gorgeous in their Equinoxiness (though some others say they're more Chronology-esque). Back to the mothership and the epic voyage home. Delta In-game was surprisingly painless for me and Boz to produce: it almost arranged itself once the decision had been made to keep the Hardsid-produced filter throughout, and to gradually morph from pure-synth to orchestra over the course of the track. Emotionally it was realising that the end of this piece was wrist-slashingly morose that led on to the idea of the heroes having some kind of shock: and the shock being when they arrived at the planet at the beginning of Trap. It was this thought that led to the whole BIT 3 concept thing. People thinking of Delta In-game probably think of it as an ambient relaxing track, but there's no way that it responds to treatment like that: it's a very intense, claustrophobic piece. You've definitely got to like the original and be in the right frame of mind for listening to this one!! The synths are the usual suspects, the strings too. And so the heroes arrive at the planet, and face the alien mechs: they battle, they win. Trap is a very military piece of music, and so is atypical Ben Daglish. But Ben is a stylist: he's well trained and he knows how to elicit emotional effects. In October 1998, he visited me and laid down the foundations for this piece which formed its emotional core. The second part of Trap is the first orchestral arrangement I'd ever done where I actually scored for individual parts instead of just spinning sounds together. Into Wizball High Score , and our heroes deserve a break. Tonka (now Iridium) can always be relied upon to deliver something with an extra twist that's ultra-commercial... it conveys the party mood excellently, in an "Ewok Party at the end of Return of the Jedi" way. And can you resist the "Filth Raid" bit? When you hear it, you'll have a smile plastered on your face! And so to the end credits, with Mike Andrews "Zodis" mix of Zoids. Awesome lead guitar, reflective, it conveys the uncertainty, flashes of hope and inspiration and general unresolved emotions of the end of the CD. It brings back the emotion of the whole journey, and reminisces while looking to the future, not always with hope. This is especially true of the end minute, where a hopeful guitar solo gives way to the random uncertainties of life... The "KenzCo" BIT 3 Companion CD Kenz has been hard at work on the "Back in Time 3" companion. This one is a very different animal from the "deluxe" CDs for the previous Back in Time CDs, which essentially had very little to do with the Audio CD but the name... Back in Time 3 Companion is an essential resource of Back in Time 1, 2 and 3 information. It contains exclusive never-heard-before early mixes and betas from Back in Times 1, 2 and 3 (including a direct recording of the MIDI files I was sent by Rob Hubbard for Monty 97 and Comets 97 before I got my mitts on them!). Plus: BACK IN TIME +! Yes, this CD-ROM includes the fabled Back in time + in MP3 format. Plus it contains galleries of graphics from BIT 3, OMAD and "Trap Demo 2" CGI videos, lots of text, reviews, trivia, documents, scans, screenshots and other curios from the making of all the Back in Times...! Text from me, Kenz, Rob Hubbard, and many other sources make this an essential purchase for the Back in Time fan, or anyone wishing to get the full Back in Time 3 multimedia experience. Plus the interface (designed by Kenz) is gorgeous and nice, and the CD is beautifully presented, professionally pressed as a picturedisc, and included along with Back in Time 3 Audio CD in a double jewel case for convenience. How can you resist? How many other albums can you buy whose authors take you blow-by-blow through the creative process? Why did we make certain decisions? Why did we leave certain tracks off? New tracks never-before-heard on this CD-ROM include Game Over and Arcade Classics, and many other treasures, all painstakingly documented and analysed. Want to see Rob Hubbard's orchestral WAR score? It's here! And many other bonuses and covers, warts and all... Here's a screenshot. Nice eh?? :) [Bit3Comp.jpg] Kenz's mock BIT + cover.... you could almost believe we'd released it ;) [BitPlusBigProtoThingymajig.jpg] BIT Clip Downloads (for the impatient!!) All 30-40 second 128kbps MP3 clips except Delta In-game and Trap which are two minutes long... enjoy! BTW: These are still beta-tracks, and so might improve in quality before release. Log 1. Agent X2 (Follin arr. Liljedahl) - The Launch Log 5. Armalyte (Walker arr. Del Priore/Abbott/Puffy64) - The Asteroid Storm Log 6. Phantoms of the Asteroid (Hubbard arr. Abbott/Donne) - The Chase Log 7. Parallax Stroll (Galway arr. Abbott/Boz) - The Nebula Log 8. Ancestors (Fast arr. Hubbard arr. Abbott/Boz) - Zoids Desert Battle Log 10. One Man and his Droid (Hubbard arr. Abbott/Donne) - Canyon Chase Log 11. The Last V8 (Hubbard arr. Del Priore) - Race Against Time Log 12. Delta In-game (Hubbard arr. Abbott/Boz) - The Voyage Home Log 13. First part of Trap (Daglish arr. Daglish/Abbott/Boz) - Battle for the Planet Part 1 Log 14. (that bit in Trap with War of the Worlds) Log 15. (second part of Trap) (Daglish arr. Daglish/Abbott - Battle for the Planet Part 2) Log 16. Wizball High Score (Galway arr. Iridium) - The Celebrations Log 17. Ancestors (Fast arr. Hubbard arr. Mike Andrews) - End Credits The other tracks will have to be a surprise, but hopefully you'll agree that these tracks are persuasive enough to make you buy the CD!!