Apidya music plaigiarised by acid-house band?

[Marco]

I was listening to some Lords of Acid (Belgian acid-house group) last night when it hit me that the song I was listening to: "James Brown is Dead" sounded almost exactly the same as Chris Hülsbeck's music for world 4 of Apidya, the level where your honey bee gets turned into a mecha-honey bee and fights through an R-Type-esque level complete with enemies copied stylistically from that game.

The music for that level is one of my favourite bits of Miggy music and I was very surprised to hear basically the same chunks of melody slightly re-arranged with some weird vocals about James Brown over the top.

I also checked Chris Hülsbeck's remake that he did for the Apidya Soundtrack album, imaginatively named "Techno Party"; on that even the samples used sound identical.

Something was afoot, what's more there are vocals on Chris' remake that I recognised from somewhere else... Additional investigation led me back to LoA to find that at least one line on the remade Techno Party which has a woman singing/moaning 'the ultimate seduction' came from the LoA song "I'm F*cking Beautiful" (you can imagine the tone of the lyrics, which I can't repeat on a forum where younguns might be reading).

Clearly someone was ripping off someone else, but I don't know which way round, I know a lot of music on Amiga games was copied from other artists - most of Lemmings for example, but I doubt anyone would want to cover such an obscure song for an Amiga game... Chris Hülsbeck knew the guys behind LoA?

Anyway it was a nice discovery for me to be reminded of a great game like Apidya after all this time.

Anyone else hear Amiga game music re-used in places they never would have expected to hear it? I think I read somewhere that a black metal group from Norway covered Tim Wright aka CoLD SToRAGE's title theme for the side-scroller Agony without giving him royalties or even acknowledging the song was his, I've not heard their remake though...

[Marco]

Hmm, I may have a misnamed track then, I got that one particular LoA track on a compilation CD a friend burned for me, oh well, I guess it was odd they avoided talking about sex for an entire song. :lol I better rename the track.

For those who don't remember Apidya, it was fairly standard side-scroller in the R-Type vein, including japanese anime-style characters in the intro and outro, your character turns into a honey-bee to get revenge on a sorceror who poisoned your girlfriend. The title had Japanese kana spelling out 'Abidya' presumably a the closest you can get in Japanese to 'Apidae' the name of the species-group that bees are in. Exotica have the soundtrack on their site at here: http://www.exotica.org.uk/tunes/unexotica/games/Apidya.html. You'll need Deliplayer to listen to it on a Windoze, as it is in the original 'TFMX' format.

Re: Agony and Dimmu Borgir, on the Unexotica page for Agony (http://www.exotica.org.uk/tunes/unexotica/games/Agony.html) they provide a couple of quotes from Tim Wright in which he says that the band were uncooperative and it wasn't worth him sueing them for 'the pennies' he'd get in compensation. I haven't listened to the album as I said (not really my kinda thing) so I don't know for sure if the later versions have the track or not. Wikipedia is not exactly the most reliable source of information, there're a large number of idiots there with fanboyish obsessions; though a few good articles do get through the mêlée occasionally.

[Marco]

Oliver wrote:
Hey Marco, thanks for the link to the Apidya music.  I just had a listen to the track for world 4.  I'm pretty sure it's not only borrowed from James Brown Is Dead, but also from some other tracks.  I think I recognise some Joey Beltram in there as well, and also perhaps some Warp records influence in the use of the bleeps.  Anyway, to my ear, it sounds like a compilation of styles, mostly Belgian.

Those crazy Belgians know how to make some damn-good music!

btw, you know Apidya is being remade for PC, right?

Yeah... I saw that site back when it was only 2 years over-due and thought it'd never be finished, now it's 4 years late... I had pretty much forgotten about that. Besides it looks like a straight port, with no alterations, not really something I'd play when I can just boot up UAE and play the original. The T2002 Turrican clone at least offered some new level layouts.