Wednesday 14 March 2012

Do "The Wriggler"...

Back in 1985 I was 15 and heavily into my ZX Spectrum and Electronic Music (as well as in the throes of my burgeoning "Smiths" obsession!).
One particular item from that time satisfied my needs in both departments...it was "Wriggler"
"Wriggler" was a game released in 1985 by Romantic Robot (more info here) and basically consisted of manoeuvring a worm (the eponymous Wriggler) around a variety of environments avoiding various beasties.
The graphics were good (for the time) and I remember being particularly impressed with the animation of the spiders...
So all in all not a bad little game....but....turn the cassette over (that's right games used to come on compact cassette back then!) and there was a musical track called "Moons of Jupiter'. This was a great little electronic piece, bouncy, with some nice FX and interesting sounds going on throughout and even a little electronic drum solo in the middle...and it suited the game perfectly.
I soon wore my tape out rewinding the track time after time and ended up having to buy the game three times in order to maintain a working copy!
Anyway, time moved on and I forgot all about this game and it's musical partner until I spotted a copy of Wriggler at a Car Boot sale a few years back...I snapped it up took it home and shoved it in the tape deck, pressed play and the memories came flooding back....sitting in my bedroom, "Empire Strikes Back" Wallpaper on the walls, tapping machine code into my ZX Spectrum and listening to this track...
The music still sounded good (if a bit dated) so I started to dig a bit...the track was written by Alexander Goldscheider who also owned and managed Romantic Robot.
There's lots more about Mr Goldscheider in his Wikipedia entry and across the Web in general, but he's a very interesting and accomplished Czech Musician credited with pioneering the use of the Synthesiser in that country. He also had a stint working for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
He released a couple of library LP's on the "Red Bus" label in the early 80's and it's on one of those, "Themes for a One Man Band - Vol.1 (1983 Red Bus Music Library RBML 103)" that the track "Moons of Jupiter" originally appears.
I managed to track down a copy (along with Vol.2) and it's really rather good...very much of its time but if you were ever a fan of Jarre, Vangelis, Mark Shreeve, Koto, Tomita, Tangerine Dream, etc. then there is plenty here to like. In my opinion Side A has the advantage, Side B seems a bit uninspired in comparison (with the exception of the last track "The Star Gate" which has a nice Tangerine Dream feel to it).

I've made the usual High Def Vinyl rip (24/96 FLAC) and also a 320MP3 version, links in comments and please leave thoughts and ruminations...




8 comments:

Mark Morb said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Hello Mark, a long time since this was posted, but did you ever do a transfer of the wriggler music?

I remember it being better than the game ...

Mark Morb said...

Just follow the links in my previous comment, all the music is there :-)

Anonymous said...

Mark,

Thank you for the reply, I am iPad only at the moment,
So will check the links this weekend.

Cheers,

Mike.

Anonymous said...

Hello Mark,

Moons of Jupiter.......

What can I say, apart from a big thank-you.

Takes me back,

Thanks again. Mike.

Mark Morb said...

NEW LINKS

24Bit 96KHz: http://bit.ly/Onemanband_24_96

320 MP3: http://bit.ly/Onemanband_320

Anonymous said...

played Wriggler as well on my zx spectrum in the 80s
Onemanband - the tracks are out of phase but thanks for this upload anyway - nice blog cheers

Mark Morb said...

Thanks for the nice comment :-)
Can you explain what you mean by "out of phase"? Thanks.