In 1999, Anton Maiden appeared on the internet with his covers of Iron Maiden. He downloaded MOD and General MIDI-files and put vocals on them. He received plenty of attention, and most of it made fun of him. His singing wasn’t great, and the combination with the lo-fi music was an obvious LOL-magnet. Some of it is very FM like Hallowed Be Thy Name but most of it is more normal GMIDI/MOD-trash like Run to The Hills:
Following all the online attention he released a CD and a DIY double-CD (torrent). After too much negative feedback, fuelled by a TV-segment and various media attention, he stopped his career to focus on other things. In October 2003 he looked for ways online to end his life and was found dead shortly after.
So, it’s a bittersweet enjoyment to listen to his music. He wasn’t the best singer, but in the style of true data it’s just about “downloading MOD and MIDI and just go for it, straight into the soundcard” like he says in the interview. There’s something very hardcore about it, compared to contemporaries like the art-project 386DX. Anton Maiden is not art, comedy or pop – it’s just good data.
CHIPFLIP 
January 14, 2011 at 4:20 pm |
Oh man he was in Argentina!
Evidently “working in the fish business” pays big bucks, he’s travelled so damn much! :P
January 14, 2011 at 4:46 pm |
I think this is the first time I had really heard of mod music in the us.. but I thought it was earlier than 99? more like 97-98? Either way its a pretty sad story of one of the first real memestars and how the internet can hew people up and spit them out.
January 14, 2011 at 4:47 pm |
Oh yea didn’t the mod authors raise quite a fuss about it as well? Perhaps the first chiptheft controversy?
January 14, 2011 at 6:41 pm |
Makes sense that it would be earlier than 99, since that was when he released the CD, but I don’t really know. Funny, the idea of chiptheft never crossed my mind with this. But I’ve added it to my shame of fame list @ https://chipflip.wordpress.com/plagiarism now. He was contemporary to Monotrona, but a few years after Hardsequencer’s bite of Jester’s Amiga-mod (but, yeah, that’s a bit different).
January 15, 2011 at 4:29 am |
lol, dude, that guy
jeez
January 17, 2011 at 10:19 am |
R.I.P.
January 18, 2011 at 9:14 am |
Is 386DX even contemporary? Any idea what is happening with that guy? I contacted him a lot, trying to book him for Microdisko, but never got an answer.
January 18, 2011 at 11:37 am |
He *was* contemporary, in the General-MIDI-Rock-Like_Its-1999 kind of way. I remember reading about some russian ex-net.artist who retired somehow, maybe it was him.