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This was fucking ace. By far the best concert I've ever seen at Breakpoint.

I'll second that

hell yeah! rocks!

Romeo Knight!

wow total respect !

Reyn Ouwehand was good too.

So good !
And a real pleasure to meet Xerxes on place.

yep, the gig was great indeed.

Bendik is an amazing drummer, I would cut his hands if I could.
I somehow wished to see more actions on xerxes's side but still, really cool moment!

Hardcore appreciation :D

Hmm... I watched this on the stream waiting for some compo (c64 demo?), got bored and went to sleep. So only a piggy. Anyway, the drumming is awesome.

This thumb is for the skills of the artists who were on the stage. Massive skills. I appreciate.

voting for an enjoyable performance

\o/

very enjoyable on the stream.. yay for drumsolo

Awesome.

Since I wasn't on stage, I wanna thumb it up. :)

This gig really blew me away. You guys have to imagine that the Xerxes, Romeo and Bendik rehearsed the songs for the first time together in the afternoon of the same day the concert was. And every song was played a single time maximum. Sometimes just parts of them.

I'd also like to send out some big thanks to the Breakpoint organizing team who organized the drumkit. Bendik's father told me that Bendik is very picky when it comes to the single elements of a drumkit, but he was REALLY happy with the set he's got there. So thanks for getting it all together.

Secondly I'd like to send a big big thanks to Psykon of Mercury who did a marvellous job with the live visuals on the bigscreen. He had a hard day because first his laptop's harddisk died, then he tried to save the content of the harddisks, and that worked, so he made a backup on a second PC (thanks kb for setting that one up, up there!). Then, during the opening of the concert, the laptop died for good, and Psykon switched to the second PC. He must have been sweating blood up there. :)

And thanks to Yes (photos), Ivy & Critikill (graphics) and Pride (opening and end titles). And another thanks to other demogroups like ASD whose demos was shamelessly used for some action in the background on the bigscreen. :)

Thank you Xerxes, Romeo and Bendik for a wonderful show.

i would like to thank the previous poster, axel, for his wonderful contribution, and for putting the right people in touch with each other. you are truely the backbone of brainstorm, and one of the nicest people i have met!

i would also like to extend my gratitude to psykon, who came into our reharsal room, almost crying, trying to explain what had happened to his planned show. as we all know, it turned out wonderful.. so thank you very much!

to all the people i met at breakpoint.. thank you for supporting our gig, and thanks for being so friendly in every way! breakpoint, to me, was one of the best things i have done in my life.. so i am definitly coming back to meet all of you next year!

and to the organizers, scamp, kb, acryd, okkie etc etc etc.. the TV people.. holy shit you guys are amazing! it is impossible to say in words how well you run things, and you can just tell from all the people that attend BP that you are doing all the right things!

bendik sends his love to you all as well, he was very pleased with the crowd :)

cheers,
klaus

Nice Concert ;)

very pleased to have had the chance to meet you and romeo knight - see you next year!

good drummer, musically very thin and boring concert

exactly what tempest said

hi hempest,

i have no problem with you not liking the music. but i doubt this was your cup of tea at all, regardless of how thin or thick the music would have been. this is your thread:

http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=4848

you say, and i quote:



could you not have lent us the same favor? i don't understand why some people need to express their opinions about music they don't care about to begin with. you like jazz it seems, with tanned latino singers. how can we compete with that?

klaus

You suck! Don't you know that you have to keep some songs for the encore? :D

And WTF happened to Rob is Jarig anyway? :P

haha xernobyl :D we didn't even know if we had time to complete our set because of the compo afterwards..

so yeah... the cream of the earth remix was the encore :)

shoeshine!

The drummer was fucking sick, especially for his age. If he plays his cards right, he could really turn into a big player.

Oh, and Xerxes, next time I want to see super fluid (and cheesy) arpeggios.

awesome gig. and fun boozing with klaus and romeo knight :)

xerxes:

sorry if I sounded too harsh. I just think it wasn't much of a gig. even though the music didn't interest me much (it was always building up, but never seemed to go anywhere), I can still understand it.

"...express their opinions about music they don't care about to begin with"

I consider your tunes some of the best ones in rebels' chipmusicdisk #2, like you can see from my comment there :). romeo knight has made some great stuff, his old mods and the recent studio versions of old c64 tunes. the drummer was also hyped beforehand as kid wonder, so when I started watching the gig, I had a great interest towards it. so you got me wrong there.

my main problem with the gig was that the 3 musicians on stage didn't seem to have much communication, apart from "here starts the 8 minute sample, play a beat/chord" and "here stops the 8 minute sample, stop playing a beat/chord", and I felt that the elements - your compositions, guitar and drums - didn't work very well together. this is of course a typical problem of "spiced-up laptop gigs". maybe you guys are too far from each other musically, or didn't have enough time to rehearsal. also romeo knight's playing sounded a bit stiff. maybe he was nervous, I dont know. the drummer was on fire though, but I felt that he was at the wrong place.

these are the impressions I got from your gig.

I also feel that taking my old phrase out of context didn't work, as it was from a thread that was especially created just for sharing music (and it's wrong to assume, that if I like something that differs from your music, it's automaticly the only kind of music I like.) this gig is labeled as a brainstorm release and this is pouet, so what's wrong with critical feedback? there's plenty of praise here to balance it. but I admit that my previous post was bit of a cheap shot.

and btw, I'm not that fond of jazz.

tempest, just go to the next breakpoint and show us some groove. -) i really believe you can.

and, btw, this is actually the first live gig @ breakpoint, from which i got pleasure, not a headache.
thanks for the great music, guys.

Great performance!

hempest, thanks for making things right! i wholeheartedly agree with you in all you say about our gig not being very tight, communication being a bit off etc.. i guess this is a result of us meeting for the first time 4 hours before the show. i think that with a few hours of reharsals.. we could have pulled off something more coheseive.

maybe next time :)

cheers m8,
klaus

Eventhough it might have been a bit incoherent, it was still a kick-ass experience just to see these people on stage!

ok, now I read axel's comment aswell. the pieces are starting to come together. it takes time and practice to get a band working together and you guys met for the first time 4 hours before the show... phew. like I said about reyn's gig: respect for taking risks.

Simply wow :) cream of the earth at the end rocked, too bad it was so short - anyway, massive thumb up for this :D

I liked the gig very much!

definitely high quality for being impromptu as it was.. thoroughly enjoyed it on the stream.

Loved it on the feed

'Pay your respects now!' ... especially you, Archmage, you rememelk-rawer LÖL

rul

hey pasy, thanks btw for the great opening of the video!

No stage presence whatsoever. And hiding behind a laptop never looks any good. :)

(Music was pretty good though.)

and how do you suggest we do it? have you seen kraftwerk live? four people behind laptops, and a million dollar lightshow to support it. we had two musicians playing their hearts out on stage.. yet people find something to complain about :)

fact is.. 90% of all electronica festivals / concerts today sport artists who stand behind their laptops and present their music.. and this is accepted. because it is not about the jumping around on stage high on acid, or breaking guitars and wearing scary make up. it is one hundred percent about the music itself. nothing else matters really.

i can see how this doesnt work on the demoscene where the standards of live performance is of such high standards :)

I like it

What they said.
It was obvious that it was an impro show. But given what it was, it was just great. I enjoyed it very much live. The drummer rules.

RK comeback!

The whole laptop thing is more of a personal preference, I guess (I like to see sound produced as live/non-prerecorded as possible). And yes, it works much better in a big stadium with a huge light show, where noone can see shit anyway. On a small stage I much prefer "physical" action. ;)

agreed :) i usually play some of the pad work on my virus TI.. but seeing that this piece of hardware is my life (that and beer).. i didnt feel like handing it over to ryan air :)

cheers and good weekend!

no offense, but i prefer studio recordings over liveshows-without-presentation. ofcourse it's a big achievement to play like you did if you've only rehearsed for 4 hours or thereabouts. but this fact doesn't improve the performance's visual appeal in any way, unfortunately.

Hey Klaus, Eike and Bendik! This one really made me cry during the last few minutes ... Why oh why did I miss this event?

Very well done. The drumming is really excellent!

Chromag: Because you most likely were already wasted at that time? :)

I was saving my energy for the Brainstorm orgy!

LOL. That was worth it too.

you had to be there! xerxes <3 <3 <3

probably the better decision :D

great concert. enjoyed it a lot.

Might now have been the greatest stage show ever (not that I really care) but the music is great! Thanks to the BP organizers too for getting it all together and releasing the vid (immediately ripped the audio, split it into tracks and burned a CD for my car ;) ).

Pure love.

i owe you a beer.. thank you for your kindness. see you at BP 09!

Bendik Hovik Kjeldsberg is impressive.
Great music.

fuckin' great!

great music, awesome drummer
sadly I don't dig "press space to play on Ableton Live" gigs :|
don't get me wrong, but I mean, if you go up to play on stage, oh well... play on stage a bit...

do you feel the same way about the conductor in orchestras..?? basically that is what i did in this gig. romeo knight and myself met 4 hours before the gig, and therefore i basically made sure everything ran smooth.. as i said earlier, i didnt want to send my 3000 dollar synth on an airplane.

and finally.. i am not really that good at playing the keys anyways.. i'm not a live musician. i do what DJs do.. start and stop.. contrary to a DJ, at least i composed and produced all the music from scratch myself.. so i still feel i should have a place on stage :)

oh well the conductor in orchestras is not quite the same as electronic music isn't it ? :)
and anyways, they damn move a lot :P
props for getting that done in such short time
you should get a cheaper small keyboard controller so you can move it on abroad or maybe some fancy knob controller which is handy to fire up tracks, filters and stuff hehe
I'm glad you didn't took me wrong (and I wasn't expecting less from you :), it is just it feels so empty on stage being that static :)

i do understand very well your concerns.. but my idea behind performing electronic music is bringing along VERY good musicians to make up for the use of laptop. to be honest.. dragging some filter knobs just for the sake of dragging them doesnt make the music any better or more interesting.. and therefore i just avoid doing just that. i take it you have never been to a pure electronica festival.. it would be a shock for you :) one man.. behind his laptop.. not doing much but presenting new mixes or versions of songs.. or just brand new material. this is expected... if you are a rock band - there are other rules, like sometimes they wear make-up.. they break guitars on stage.. that is not really my thing hehehe... i'm glad you liked the music, and i suppose we could have done a hell of a lot better on stage if we had more time to plan the gig and actually meet up to reherse a few times before standing in front of the crowd at BP.

cheers man :)

Xerxes: Just bring those damn goats next time and you'll be fine. :)

apart from that, rehearsing before Breakpoint is way overrated, just ask any BASS member *g*

And btw: massive thumbs up. What all the others said, thanks for the great time, and first of all it's one of the very few concerts that are a pleasure to lsiten to at home. :)

thanks kb.. and for all your help before the gig. without you and a few others, it wouldnt have been possible :)

Awesome! I'm a bit of a Xerxes groupie at the moment, and this was a real treat!

I am amazed how well you all worked together. It sounded fantastic!!

very nice music :)

ah yeah, 2 posts... forgot 2 times the thumb...
ps can certify it, my head is messed up lately...
anyways...
well the point about the filterizing/bring that track on or off/whatever is that you hardly would get 2 times the exact same song which is nice
...while moving a bit more on stage :P
so... let me know when you are bringing that goat on stage :)

REALLY enjoyed this. I have always admired and liked Xerxes work and having it paired with Romeo Knight's guitar work and Bendik pounding out magic on his drums, this was an hour of listening bliss. I do agree with those about the laptop thing, but every artist is unique and in that situation, I understand. I'd also like to acknowledge the sound crew. Sound was nicely balanced and sound quality was very good. Kinda wish the final recording had been in stereo, but I do understand that on a small stage it's not always possible, having worked sound crew on such things myself. Cheers everyone for a big success and a great show.

That the recording is in mono (tried to rescue it a bit tho with some ambience and Ozone magic) and has dropouts that we had to fill with camera sound is a screwup from our side. We've very sorry for that and promise to improve next year...

quite nice. couldn't follow it closely because i was deadlinecoding my ass off, but it was good background music. that said, i do regret that it was obviously just already-known xerxes tunes with a bit of guitar improvisation and some too loud drumming. but even then it was great to hear "cell progression" once more, and this time so loud and so long - it truly is an awesome track.

i'd have liked the drums a bit better if they had had more progression over them (also in volume) like many of the songs did.

and about the physical action, maybe we can have "next life vs xerxes" next time? that should compensate one another.

Maybe if you smashed your laptop and yelled SCHEISSE... OK OK I'm kidding! ;)

if i had done that, i would have been instant legend forever in the scene.. you should be my manager :)

kb: No need to apologise! Okay, it's in mono. So what? You guys still did a great job and it shows! I enjoyed it very much just the same!

kb: No need to apologize! Okay, it's in mono. So what? You guys still did a great job and it shows! I enjoyed it very much just the same!

Hm, sorry about the double-post. Not quite sure how that wound up happening.

either you typed it twice.. or sheisse

worth seeing!

Come to think of it..

by Brainstorm?

by breakpoint tv should be more like it..

:-)

It's about the music and not about the camera direction...

Didn't remember much of it from the party (was probably busy, or tired, or both), but listening to it afterwards, it rocks! Great performance.

Xerxes, I made this for you, go practice:



When you are done, tell me so that we I can give you some two-hand tapped stringskipped arps.

and what exactly is that?

Guitar tabs? Don't tell me you don't know those!

guitar tablature. But sweep picking sounds so boring..

String skipped arp's can sound quite sweet though.

lord black, no need for me to know those.. we have romeo knight for that :)

Oh, oops, naming mess-up. Sorry.

it was a wonderful example of the good gig. thank you, guys, i really liked the show!

Great gig and boozing, greets.

was watching from a live stream, but was still awesome gig!

Saw it only from video but my fat thumb up for your outstanding guitar and drumming skills. And xkx for making famous concert, far the best in the demoscene history. I am joining the crowd at the end :" WE WANT MORE!"

thank you all once again! we have learned our lesson.. and would like to get another shot at it. and this time, do everything right :)

breakpoint 2009!

cheers
klaus & bendik

Fantastic news, xrs!
I am SO looking forward to BP09, now.

I liked the music very much but the only song I actually knew was the last one - cream of the earth. I don't care if you jump around on the stage or have a massive light show. Just tell a few words between the songs about the songs and yourself and, especially, look at the audience from time to time while you're playing. Aside from that: Well done!

nice

we are not booked to play 2009, we only mean.. we WISH :) i think someone else gets to play next year.. which is only fair ofcourse :)

insane !

btw whats the 1st song called ?

i'll post a tracklist a bit later today...:)

tracklist:

1. Intro
2. Crush
3. Moonrider
4. Cell Progression
5. Spacewalk (Drum solo)
6. Psykedelika
7. Two Notes
8. Dovre Gubbens Hall (Edvard Grieg)
9. Footsteps
10. Forklifter
11. Counting Down From Zero
12. Cream of the Earth (xerxes remix)

that was my favourite concert at this bp! (though i was drunken and deadlinecoding like hell :)

I just watched the show up till after Bendik's solo again. I am so happy that I witnessed it, I've never ever heard a drum solo with so much soul in it.

unbelieveble cool mixup between electronic music, real drums and a guitar ! :)

This concert has rocked!
I've listened it with SLAY Radio, and then watched @ home in DivX!
Really a beautiful concert!
Incredible, Bendik wasn't a simple boy, was a professionist!! :o :D

Lol! Look Romeo Knight when xerxes started with "Cream of the Earth"! I imagine what he has think about... "Hey xerxes! And now I should play with this quite-cool-but-old music?!?" :D

(talking about xerxes when started with the "original" song, and not the "remixed" one)

*claps*

nice gig :)

Hearing one of my favorite demo soundtracks ever being played live, wow, that's something quite unique. Congrats for the whole performance RK and the rest.

That drummer was amazing btw :)

the music, the drummer and everything else!

Really fhaaking awsome concert. Really impressed by the young drummer.
And Xerxes trax are to die for. Excellent!

Superb... Wish I were here...

very good appearance. *clap clap*

all hail the sex rex!

yes