Pulsing like a dot-matrix beat, dancing straight out of the '80s.

PRINT TO MEMORY

I was born in Ferrara on September 7, 1973. I’ve always been instinctively drawn to electronic music, but in the ‘80s, musical instruments and keyboards weren’t easily accessible to me due to my humble origins. However, with significant sacrifices, my parents gifted me a Commodore 64 as a reward for moving up to middle school. At that time, I didn’t yet realize it housed what was likely the most advanced lowcost sound chip of the era. But I discovered it soon enough through three unforgettable moments in my childhood.

The first was the music from the game Penetrator, created by Andrian Pertout. For various reasons, that music has stuck with me for 40 years; in fact, you can find a modern version of it on my SoundCloud. The second was the music of International Karate by Rob Hubbard; saying it impressed me doesn’t fully capture a moment that has stayed with me ever since. The third was an interview in Zzap! magazine in September 1986, featuring Ben Daglish (RIP), Rob Hubbard, David Whittaker, and Anthony Crowther. That interview gave me the drive and inspiration to start programming music on the C64. It took about three years before I could produce something listenable, and that demo became a sample I sent to Simulmondo, a software house in Bologna, which contacted me to start a collaboration. This was the beginning of my dream to create music for video games on the Commodore 64.

Over the years, I also collaborated with Ubisoft and Playstos Entertainment. I was known in the PC demo scene by the nickname DustBin, especially as part of the independent, non profit label Charlie Brown Records. With simple searches, you can find almost all my music from that period on Modarchive and similar sites. The demo scene allowed me to form connections and friendships that last to this day, over 20 years later.

From 2009 to 2014, I was the lead singer of one of the most representative bands of the Italian metal scene, Crying Steel, and from 2015 to 2017, I was the frontman of Blindrage, a Power Metal band with a self-titled album that was very well received by critics and fans.

Recently, I’ve decided to revive my SoundCloud page, which had been inactive for several years. I’ll aim to publish everything I’ve composed but never released over the past five years, along with remastered versions from my archive of .XM modules—a popular music format in the demoscene of the ’90s and 2000s.
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PRINT TO MEMORY

Stefano Palmonari a.k.a. DustBin