In the year 2000, age 14, going into grade 10, I installed Impulse Tracker, joined #trax on EFnet IRC, and started making my own tracks inspired by the music of Nobuo Uematsu, Yasunori Mitsuda, Dust Brothers, Prozzäk, Love Inc., Chumbawamba, Aphex Twin, The Prodigy, OutKast, Squarepusher, Propellerheads, Rob D, Grant Kirkhope, Eric Serra, Glenn Stafford, and Derek Duke.

I didn't know what I was doing, but that didn't stop me. Listening back now, I didn't have much of a grasp on melodies and chords, but I'm still amazed at some of the sounds, moods, and rhythms I was able to produce with such old software and virtually no know-how. I also have to laugh and cringe at my tendency back then to un-ironically use StarCraft and other voice samples in my tracks to hype them up.

Instrument samples almost always came from other tracks I found online. Many of them came from the Kids of Karendow soundtrack, Future Crew demo tracks that came with Impulse Tracker, and other tracks shared with me from people on #trax.

After writing a track, I would record its audio to cassette (!) and listen to what I had written the night before at school on my Walkman. I would share the headphones with anyone who would listen. Usually, the reaction was confusion or annoyance. Occasionally, someone's imagination would join up with me, and we'd get excited thinking about the "game" I was "scoring". Later, I would share renders of my tracks to friends on ICQ and MSN Messenger. I also hauled my PC to school to perform some of my tracks live in ill-fated high school "coffee shop nights".

But it wouldn't be until I joined MySpace years later that I posted my tracks in a single, streamable location. By then I had already moved on to recording other stuff with different tools. I didn't think these were worth posting. I still don't, really, except for posterity's sake.

So, now, here, in more-or-less chronological order starting from July 4, 2000 to May 5, 2001, finished or unfinished, are most of the tracks I wrote, presented as-is for your interest, enjoyment, ridicule, or annoyance.

Shout out to Blair Pyle and Jeremy Cloutier for encouraging me at the time.

Album photo is of me and my extra-curricular drama crew. THEY KNEW! Photographer unknown.