motion of artstate presents to you in december 2021, ]for the love of ben', a music collection dedicated to the memory of legendary commodore 64 sid musician, ben daglish. press keys f1-f10 or number keys 1-0 to select tunes. code and fonts by motion. the cobra bitmap was taken from the pompey pirates ]compact disk 24' menu from the atari st and cleaned up a little. i believe it was drawn by british pixel artist sb aka ]syd b'. as for the audio, i've used the playsid library by il scuro and phs to emulate the sid chip of the commodore 64. this collection reflects the tunes that i enjoyed listening to in my youth, whilst watching classic compunet demos and being totally in awe of the onscreen action and entranced by the sound eminating from the speaker. much time has past since then, but the magic remains the same. i'm now going to hand over the keys to judge drokk of anarchy. hello everyone. writing words in an artstate production is always a pleasure, but this time is more poignant than usual. what can one say about the great ben daglish? the most ]real' musician in the industry? he was as much a live performing artist, as he was a composer of computer game soundtracks, if not more so. it was a great loss to lose such a man at the young age of 52. ben lived in the next town to myself. i was touched by his work, though i never actually met him. as a fourteen year old in 1984, i'd heard ben's fantastic cover of jean-michel jarre's seminal equinox v, for the first time in the game loco. this was before hubbard ]broke out' and before david whittaker became a recognised name. ben was the first name i associated with the composition of commodore 64 sid music. in 2017 i was asked to help with an interview with ben. this was for a retro games website, as a previous interview i'd helped make with his friend and colleague, tony crowther, had been well received by its readers. this was an honour and a privilege. prior to ben's death in 2018, he had been working with chris abbott of c64audio, on the ]8-bit symphony' in hull, england.  ben would have been the host of the event and introduced each piece of music. i was present at the concert and sat alongside ben's family. as long as we continue to enjoy, share and listen to the music of ben daglish, he will always be with us. i'll leave you with that thought. thanks for your recollection, judge drokk. i really appreciate it. my earliest memory of ben, was the ]we music' demo by ratt and benn. a little fragment remains etched in my mind. i was sitting on the floor of my dining room with my c64, my portable black and white indesit tv on top of a tall stool. the demo itself was turbo loaded from my c2n cassette deck. ah, those were the days! as you can see from this disk, i made a little conversion of sorts, so that's a few extra tunes for you to enjoy. i had to be selective about which tracks to include, as the sid emulation has its limitations. i think these sound really good. ok, it's almost 2 am here, i'm having a hot cup of tea as i finish off this scrolltext, before i call it a night. i'll upload this disk to aminet in about 8 hours time. thanks for reading. see you in the next artstate production! motion signing off.                



          COBRA, OCEAN (1986)           
CHALLENGE OF THE GOBOTS, REAKTOR (1987) 
      DEATHSCAPE, STARLIGHT (1987)      
         LUNARI, REAKTOR (1988)         
    BULLDOG, GREMLIN GRAPHICS (1986)    
      HADES NEBULA, NEXUS (1987)        
    KRAKOUT, GREMLIN GRAPHICS (1987)    
    DOGFIGHT 2187, STARLIGHT (1987)     
   TECHNOCOP, GREMLIN GRAPHICS (1988)   
         TRAP, ALLIGATA (1986)          
    ARTURA, GREMLIN GRAPHICS (1988)     
           BOMBO, RINO (1986)           
        KETTLE, ALLIGATA (1986)         
   THING BOUNCES BACK, GREMLIN (1987)   
THEY STOLE A MILLION, ARIOLASOFT (1986) 
        ARK PANDORA, RINO (1986)        
   WILLIAM WOBBLER, WIZARD DEV (1985)   
RETURN OF THE MUTANT CAMELS, MAD (1987) 
 FOOTBALLER OF THE YEAR, GREMLIN (1986) 
         ZARJAZ, REAKTOR (1986)