Loch Ness Expanded Soundtrack

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 2018-04-16

Label: Nightwind Records

Loch Ness was originally composed as a soundtrack for a - never finished - 2012 Commodore 64 Loch Ness ‘Spotter Simulator’ videogame. An adventure / simulator / RPG in which the player takes the role of a cryptozoologist trying to proof the existence of the Loch Ness Monster.

The goal is to make a photograph of the creature and sell it to a newspaper to become a millionaire. You roam around the lake visiting various landmark sites and villages - driving around in an extremely simple car ’simulation’. In the villages and landmarks you can visit various locations: restaurants, supplystores or something more eerie like Alister Crowley’s Boleskin mansion.

The sounds on this soundtrack come from the mighty Commodore 64 itself. This computer, released in 1982, came with a state of the art soundchip - the MOS technologies SID. Far ahead of its competition it sported advanced functions like waveforms with Pulse Width Modulation, envelope generators and a filter. With this chip the commodore 64 had a real 3 voice synthesizer build in - lightyears removed from the spartan primitive unmusical blips and beeps of the Ataris or Apple II’s.

Today the SID chips distinctive chunky, almost analog resonating sound is still used and enjoyed by many freaks and enthiousiasts. Its sweeping PWM modulated strings and arpeggiated synth sounds are of such haunting diabolical quality that they easily eclipse many modern synthesizer.

The Loch Ness videogame soundtrack was released to the public as a free digital release in 2012 on the legowelt bandcamp page, this is the very first time this release sees the light on cassette tape with a number of unreleased released tracks also made on with the Commodore 64's sound chip. This new bandcamp digital version has been recorded straight from that cassettetape so you can experience the tranquil tape noise of magnetic particles in the comfort of your own computer.

© 2017/2012 Nightwind Records NW019 -Written, produced and artwork by Danny Wolfers - Manufactured in Scheveningen Holland

Gear used:

Commodore 64 with MSSIAH MIDI SID Software cartridge
Inkel MX995 mixing desk
Evans Echopet 100 delay
MacBook Pro running Ableton
Sony Cassettedeck