Hi, i am CONS, normally known under the name of Raphael Ludwig. I was born in 1973 and after some weird turns and false decisions I made in the past, I am now a psychologist.
My Scene activity began somewhat around 1988, when my dear friend Virgill taught me how to use soundtracker (and later all the other trackers I used). After a few months I came in contact with a group called Tracheen. I remember painting a logo for them, but never saw any use of it anywhere. Lucky me.
Shortly after that – it must’ve been around 1990 – Virgill had already joined the forces of Panic and I was invited to join the group, too. I came in contact with the guys very fast and due to the massive positivity I felt there, I started getting real productive. Unfortunately we were 4 to 5 musicians, so there was not much to release. I remember driving to regional demoparties (Pegasus Animators Party, Treacl Panic Party, Action Autumn Conference, Venlo Meeting, and: The Party 1!! yay!!), and competing in the music competitions, which honestly didn’t do any good. But I didn’t care about that much, because it was the atmosphere and the people that fascinated me.
My first big release was the demo “1000 Wasted Dreams” in which the track “Sado Goredon” was used, which is a co-production between Virgill and me. Due to the fact that Virgill left for Coma shortly before the release, they did not give out the proper credits in the demo. That’s how I think it must have been. Anyways. The demo won the competition and suddenly many people were all over me. I had a lot of fun talking to them and making friends. After that, I concentrated on working for the next big demo release, which was to be coded by Jesus with grafix by Dust and Skytec. It was said, that 5 of my tracks should make it into the demo, so I composed a huge main theme and together with newly joined friend “Crazy Maze” four other tracks for that demo. To make it short, the tracks were finished, the code of the demo never was. Some of my short introtunes were used as packmenu tunes for the Blackpack and Trashpack series and 2 other tracks for more or less official Panic presentations. Around 1993 the group split up and I did not know where to go.
Around 1996 I got interested in the scene again and got in touch with Hellfire of n-Factor which I shortly joined after a few letters and a small presentation of my tracks that I had composed over the years. I had a good release there with Autark Issue #1, which featured my “Heartbreak Helicopter” track, but nothing more in the end. Most of the productive guys left n-Factor and left the group dead.
I joined Diabolic Force, a young, not so well known group which reminded me of Panic with respect to the friendship that I felt there. I did a few tracks and released them monthly to the scene, not in any production. The group planned a big demo for the Mekka-Symposium Party 1998 and asked me to compose a track for the introduction. And so I did with “The Return of Sasha”. Unfortunately, they changed their minds shortly before the party to use someone elses track, so that mine got left behind. I somehow lost confidence in the scene and the people at that time and somehow quit.
But do sceners ever quit? I stopped making music in 1998, because most of my tracks at that time went into techno style and I disliked that very much. So stopping was the logical step to take. I focused more and more on shooting films and started writing poems and short stories. In 2004 it caught me again. I had changed, from making music for fun, to using music as an outlet of my feelings and thoughts, like a mirror of emotional situations I had been in. And that’s what I am doing since then. I did fewer tracks for the demoscene, but better in a way that I think I improved my skills in composing and arranging. And if nothing helps, I still am friends with Virgill today, so i can go there and get some “virgillization” for my music ;).
As of March 2009 I am officially a member of TRSi, the group I dreamt of being in, in the first days of my scene activity. But who didn’t. I wasn invited and welcomed very warmly and the best thing was, to see my old Panic colleague Warhead again, who left for TRSi after Panic died. Although the group seems to be only losely structured, I don’t think that I will every be in another group. I know, don’t say ever, but there have to be serious reasons why I even should consider leaving. Since the mid of 2011 I am getting more and more interested in the oldschool platform and I am trying to come up with something for them.
On 20th january of 2012 I joined the C64 group Onslaught as a graphician. The reason for that is, that I wanted a home for my C64 pixelstuff and participate in upcoming projects. As I had the feeling that this wasn’t possible in TRSi, I made that choice and took the offer that came to me as a huge surprise. I am happy and feel honoured.
Its now 2019 and I am still part of TRSi and Onslaught. My productivity took a massive hit in 2016 when I was really disappointed with the scenen and had a creative pause for two years. I did only a very few small things, like the PICO-8 Demoe “2 and 1/2 men” with Virgill and his son and I am just getting into the demoscene again with releasing stuff at parties. There were no major demoprojects until today and I don’t see some happening in the near future, so I am concentrating on the music I do outside the demoscene.
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Filming Career
It started very early, when I was about 14 something or so. My cousin bought a VHS camera and I had some ideas, so we started shooting. Of course nothing of that material is worth mentioning today, but it was the time when I made contact with the matter. A few years later, in 1991, some of my friends and me shot our first ambitiousness scenes. The rest of my development and my history can all be read on my film-page.
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Writing Ambitions
Those ambitions started together with my ambitions to film. I was fascinated by the idea that I can transform my own stories into pictures. I started by writing loose scripts for small movies but developed in a concrete scene writing with characters, dialogs, action, camera movements, and such stuff. Until today i wrote about 10 to 15 movie scripts, full length and short films, and have many more ideas in my head. Some day, i think in 2000, i came in contact with poetry in a general form. I liked the way language was used, transformed and stuffed into verses and i liked the pictures that i drew in my head while reading them. Somehow i recognized that a part of my feelings and thoughts urge to be let out in written form, so i began writing poems, short stories, book-chapters and later, when i picked up making music again, song texts.
This is all ongoing in 2019. I am still writing songtexts and my novel, which probably will take another while to be finished.
It is 2022 now, freshly started. In 2021 i finished by first book, a drama, which has since then undergone a second look with some rewriting, rephrasing and all that nonsense. It is in the process of being reviewed for general readability, logic errors, continuity and all that stuff. In the meantime, also 2021, a second book is in the making, since I couldn’t get enough from writing.
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Game-Development
The idea to invent, conceptualize and actually built a tabletop game came during my time at civil services. I strongly felt that those games available were lacking depth. I disliked that there were limited possibilities and that you were able to do all things right after the start. I wanted to combine a few ideas into a greater concept, making the player able to develop through the game-play and enhancing possibilities during this development. So i started writing the concept for my first game, called Capital, which is a business simulation. As my co-worker had his own wood-workshop with a lot of tools, i was able to built all necessary parts for the game myself. During the years, i invented a few more games, some of them still in developmental phase, some in the testing phase, and some finished ones of course. What characterizes my games in general is that it takes more time to play them than the normal games do, speaking of 3 hours plus x at least. I know that it is not everybody’s cup of tea, but its mine and so i stick to it.
In 2019 this part of my life has largely come to a standstill. I have ideas from time to time that I work on, but I am not putting that much energy into it anymore.
And here we are in 2022 and you can see on this page what i did with my time.
CONS / TRSi^Onslaught 