The story of how I discovered the joy of music on the Internet

One can hardly imagine the Internet without its MP3s, pop culture without its iPods, and all the pleasures and complexities digital music hath brought to us. I was sharing a tender moment with my wife because I heard that Enigma’s new album comes out in about 45 days. I had to gush that among my fave albums of all time are the first 3 Enigma CDs, and after that, my interest waned. But every time, every few years I get wind of a new release, my ears perk up.

It was the mid-90s, around 1996 I think, when I originally heard of Joar’s Enigma Site. I don’t exactly recall what brought me here, but I do clearly know this: multimedia on the web (aside from images) at the time was a very striking and arresting innovation. You didn’t have Flash easy-embeds like today, and formats were confusing.

I spotted an .AU sample of a track called “Knocking on Forbidden Doors”, and curious, waited what seems like eternity for it to load. Even with the downsampled, hissy noise which doesn’t compare to today’s 256-kbps, LAME-encoded MP3s or even FLAC (purists abound!), the sheer sonic brilliance shone through. From the plinky-plonky opening “notes” to the minimalist wailing of horns, from the irresistibly catchy beat to the monks chanting over it minutes in (a decadent Enigma signature which has been copied ever since), I listened to this over and over. It was on my Mac Quadra 660AV at the time, and sometime after, I knew I had to get the whole album. And that was my first transcendental experience with finding music on the Net.

Joar’s Enigma Site is still around, bearing formatting not too different from the original. The Internet Archive, alas, doesn’t go far back enough to the time when I originally found out about Enigma. But compared to how quickly I sample clips now, it amazes me that little Torley was able to get anything done. I’ve grown a lot.

Other memories come to mind: my computer wasn’t powerful enough to play MP3s in realtime (hard to believe, eh?), so I had to run the still-fresh format through a converter to make it a playable AIFF. It took about half an hour for a song (!), but among the treasures I discovered on various Hotline servers was Aphex Twin’s  “Xtal”. I’ll never forget opening that waveform on BIAS Peak and listening to it excessively too. From the slight pinches of choral drippings to the deep breakbeat underpinning the mix, I was in glorious awe.

And then, to prolong my listening sessions, I hooked the audio output of my Quadra up to my tape deck, and manually recorded songs I had converted. (I could also tell you about the stack of VHS tapes I accumulated from watching MTV, and earlier, MOR Music TV.) These were all songs I had downloaded from various sources, including Hotline (do you remember?) and Napster, and I later purchased a number of “key albums” that would influence my later musical outlook and creative process: Aphex’s I Care Because You Do and Enigma’s MCMXC A.D. and Le Roi Est Mort, Vive Le Roi! were among them.

(In case you’re wondering “What about The Cross of Changes?”, I didn’t buy it because I borrowed the tape from the public library, copied it, and wore it out. This came in addition to other ethno-electronic sounds I became terribly infatuated with at the time, like Deep Forest’s Boheme which still stands as a crowning masterpiece today. How I miss them.)

I’d also, at the high school library, read these music guides which were hardcovered in bright orange. I don’t remember the series name but each volume would cover a wide variety of artists across genres (from ABBA to Yanni, literally). I photocopied some pages to take home and study on my own terms, since this wasn’t part of any formal class… altho I did bring my tapes in to art class and ask if friends wanted to listen! (I was lagging behind on the alternative music front, so it would be another few years before I realized the brilliance of, say, Smashing Pumpkins.)

Sometimes, memories explode from my past when I’m confronted with a reminder in the present: I listened to a sample of Enigma’s new single, “La Puerta de Cielo”, and it sounds like it harkens back to their “original” sound instead of the mixed sci-fi bag that was their last album. Early descriptions tag it as being “omni-cultural”, and I’ll reserve judgment for when I listen to it in full (which I surely will). In the meantime, I remain hopeful that it’ll be a return to form of their roots with sparkling vitality added.

Other tangents split off from here whose experiences I may share at a later date: the pleasant surprise of finding out Mega Man 9 will look, sound, and feel 8-bit (like the originals!) is a fine example. Because I played Mega Man 2 and 3 too damn much.

I shouldn’t be so backward-looking, I tell myself sometimes. But that’s also when I’m reminded that the future is meaningless if you don’t have a past with memories to cherish like this.

Tagged as: Cyber-History, General, The Web, Video