Neophyte – The Three Amiga's E.P.

Some may say the sound quality is poor, I say it adds to the charm. An amazing release for sure - all six tracks are great IMO.

1993. I recall an interview with DJ Paul Elstak, shortly after "Alles Naar De Kl--te" by The Euromasters became a Dutch Top 40 hit. He was asked about new directions of Rotterdam Records, because the summum of hardcore was said to be reached.
"You mean that 250 BPM thingy? That was a joke. Nobody is going to dance for six hours at that tempo. The original 170 BPM is fine. But the sounds we are going to make... they can still be a lot harder. 'Alles Naar De Kl--te' is certainly not the end. It's the beginning."
"And what is the next thing then?"
"Did you know that the old Amiga game computer has a sound module? It can produce sounds louder and dirtier than anything we did before. So get ready for the first hardcore tracks with Amigas!"
At that time, this EP was not yet released.

When the EP was released and reviewed in a Dutch dance music magazine, the reviews were very enthousiastic. The track went all the way to No. 3 in the Dutch dance charts. This is where Jeroen Streunding's success story started; one that is spanning four decades meanwhile.

To be honest: I never really was a fan of this release, but now that I'm writing this, I wish I understood the underlying message better.
In 1993, being 23 myself, I was doing my sleeping room music thing with limited hardware. I had one turntable and two CD players; one of them had pitch control, and a simple Alecto mixer. Most music was bought either from sales or on handy ZYX compilations that featured the long versions. I recorded my mixes on a Sony tape deck and my only editing option was a broken pause button (but it still worked). That's how I made my mixes.
I wish I had a bit more guts those days. Like those Neophyte guys, who ran into DJ Paul Elstak who did not bother about the sound quality and saw the potential of these guys. Maybe I would have encountered someone like Paul who liked what I did, despite the bad sound quality of my tapes, full of edits gone wrong. Maybe I had the chance to redo my things on good equipment. Maybe I would have followed the path of Ben Liebrand if everything worked out. But the fact that my equipment was so humble made me feel humble about my skills regarding musicality. Far too humble for the dance scene back in those days.

Luckily for me, the memories remained. And there is Discogs, so I can share them with you. Maybe I should become a writer someday... ;)

The program they used on Amiga is ProTracker, for those interested. I think that if you listen closely to single patterns of this record you can hear the quality isn't the best (example crashs). However, it kinda adds a certain flavor, plus I know it was quite the effort to create such long tracks on this program. So props for creativity for sure.
My Favorite is Recession mainly due to its dark synth/bass hook and the various tempo changes.

According to an interview with Paul Elstak, when Paul was working at the Midtown Records store in Rotterdam, the of Neophyte came to the record store at lunchtime early in 1993. They handed Paul a demo cassette tape, however the quality of the tape was bad mainly due to the fact that the music had been produced on an Amiga. They then recorded the tracks in Paul's Studio, which was located on the edge of Rotterdam. DJ Paul was impressed with Komen Wij Uit Rotterdam (We Are Coming From Rotterdam) as this was a song the Feyenoord fans would sing at De Kuip. And the rest is history....

I always liked the fact The Three Amigas comes from the 1986 movie, The Three Amigos. :)

My personal favourite track from this vinyl is Level Creator. Like all the tracks on here, its that rough Amiga sound and Neophyte's uncompromising interpretation of Hardcore and Rotterdam Gabber. The other fun part I like about Level Creator is that it's loosely structured like a computer game, the soft female voice saying "Level 1" "Level 2" "Level 3" and Level 4" for each part of the track. A pounding beat, simple but effective sounds constantly keeping the track interesting, the fact they produced it on an outdated Amiga is quite impressive. I also like the end of the song, "Game Over."

"Be proud to be an Amiga-, dudes!!!" Nothing more to say :)

lol Robbie i couldn't agree enough , they can't make nothing shit hot with todays technological capabilities ! they aint got a clue the ann frankers , oldskool all the way GOLDENAGE :-)

Impressive Neophyte's debut produced on a Amiga gamecomputer. Soundquality is therefore poor, but most contempory hardcoreproducers with much better equipment are unable to sur this.