Over the years we've gotten some complaints that a) we only release at big parties and b) people want a sequel to Chaos Theory. So we decided to satisfy both camps at ones and celebrate the 10 year anniversary by making a sequel called Universal Sequence for Function 2016 - it's everything you liked about Chaos Theory, only bigger, better and louder!
2016-08-05 23:12:58 - Ten years is a long time.
Ten years ago this day we boarded a plane to Helsinki thinking that we have an intro that we really, really liked, even though we never did anything like it before, but also not being sure how anyone else would like something that was, by our standards, incredibly abrasive and erratic. It wasn't a concern about how technical the intro was - we knew that at that point our technology was outdated - but how the intro FELT. As much as we had a gut feeling that it was something different and exciting, we weren't sure if it would resonate with the audience, who we up to that point mostly treated with either large doses of content-heavy bombast or subtle aesthetic pleasantry. This intro was neither. This was pure untamed energy, and we weren't sure if we were ready for it, let alone anyone else.
We knew we'd be going in for a strong competition. Kewlers brought their A-game, Visualice at the time was hitting his peak for making 64ks with the Farbrausch tools, and of course, there was Fairlight, who we've been circling around each other with for years - we already knew that this could potentially be one of the more notable competitions in 64k history. What we didn't expect was the spectacular technical mishap that ultimately got the intro's life to a rocky start, when during the competition screening the bass speakers of the sound system failed and severely affected the soundtrack of the intro. It was a heartbreaking moment and despite placing second in what turned out to be one of the best 64k competitions ever shown, our smiles were not fully honest.
But then something started to happen. Internet feedback started to come in - but it didn't stop. It just kept coming. For months. Major news portals started writing articles about the intro. Radio stations called. TV stations called. Friends who we didn't know watched demos started popping back up to compliment. Film festivals became interested. We'd go to a club and DJ's would be playing the soundtrack or it'd show up on the bigscreen as VJ material. We'd hear stories from people where it'd show up at their workplace or university. People started to come to the events we organized just to meet us. It just never stopped. We got caught up in this unexpected swirling hype of having made something that despite our uncertainty, with all its distortion and flash and intensity, resonated with people on a very primal level.
And to this day, ten years later, it still pops back up. Every so often people find out and are excited to tell us that they saw it and they love it, and being on the recieving end of that is a feeling that will never leave.
It was the time for the annual clash between the unstoppable force and the immovable object: our experimental intro Darkness Lay Your Eyes Upon Me placed second with a hairsbreadth behind Mercury's great Fermi Paradox - we've since released a final version that has some slightly updated content and bugfixes. Enjoy!