Complex 99, And The East/West Divide

              Complex 99, And The East/West Divide

                         By Gasman / RA 

A recent  issue of  the PC  disczine Hugi  included a  report on
CCOO0, in which  Raver explained that  Russia has an  'internal'
scene which mainly works separately from the rest of the  scene,
because people  prefer to  use the  Russian language  instead of
English.  However, I've  recently come  to the  conclusion that
there is more than just language separating the two sides of the
scene.

I've seen a lot of argument about Russian and western musicians,
and I decided to try and find out some facts from the results of
the Complex 99 competition.

First, an explanation: I know that it's not totally accurate  to
talk about "the Russian scene" - I really mean all the countries
of the former USSR, but 'Russian' is a bit easier to say, that's
all. Maybe other people see  it differently, but for me  this is
where I've always imagined  the boundary between the  two halves
of the  scene to  be -  some time  in late  1996, Russian  demos
arrived suddenly in the UK, and it was a shock to discover  that
so much activity was happening unknown to the west.

Anyway  - the  organisers of  the Complex  competition took  the
unusual step of publishing the individual votesheets along  with
the  full results.  This meant  that I  was able  to count  the
results again,  but making  two lists  this time  - divided into
western voters and Russian voters. This is what I found:

"What if only western sceners voted?"
  1 Sad Tune   Yerzmyey   (W)122
  2 For Majam  Andy Fer   (R) 92
  3 Twister's  Andy Fer   (R) 88
  4 Startrash  TDM        (W) 80
 =5 Eliminator X-Agon     (W) 78
 =5 I'm A Powr Ravager    (R) 78
  7 Peace      TDM        (W) 73
  8 Driver     Kriss      (W) 66
  9 Memories   Mast       (R) 63
 10 Nothing    Zhenya     (R) 62
=11 Utopia     Catman     (W) 61
=11 Seeing     MMcm       (R) 61
 13 Seduction  Factor 6   (W) 59
 14 Satellite1 Black Lord (R) 53
 15 Broken Joy A.Gobuzov  (R) 50
 16 Back2Life  Blk Groove (R) 48
 17 Kettary's  Siril      (R) 45
=18 Draw       Kriss      (W) 40
=18 Concept    Sector     (R) 40
=20 Flowers    Siril      (R) 37
=20 Needle     McMaker    (R) 37
 22 IWTEnlight Black Lord (R) 35
 23 Shock      Phant Lord (R)  2


"What if only Russian sceners voted?"
 =1 For Majam  Andy Fer   (R) 59
 =1 Twister's  Andy Fer   (R) 59
  3 Nothing    Zhenya     (R) 54
  4 Memories   Mast       (R) 53
  5 Flowers    Siril      (R) 47
  6 Satellite1 Black Lord (R) 33
 =7 Kettary's  Siril      (R) 31
 =7 Driver     Kriss      (W) 31
  9 Peace      TDM        (W) 25
 10 Seeing     MMcm       (R) 22
 11 IWTEnlight Black Lord (R) 21
 12 Eliminator X-Agon     (W) 18
=13 Seduction  Factor 6   (W) 17
=13 Startrash  TDM        (W) 17
 15 Back2Life  Blk Groove (R) 16
 16 Utopia     Catman     (W) 14
=17 I'm A Powr Ravager    (R) 13
=17 Needle     McMaker    (R) 13
=17 Concept    Sector     (R) 13
 20 Sad Tune   Yerzmyey   (W)  4
=21 Broken Joy A.Gobuzov  (R)  0
=21 Shock      Phant Lord (R)  0
=21 Draw       Kriss      (W)  0

Incidentally,  these  results suggest  that  the overall  winner
should be "For Majam", whereas  the compo was officially won  by
Andy  Fer's  other  entry, "Twister's  Dance  Machine".  This is
because the crucial vote was made by a South African scener  who
wasn't included in either of my lists :-)

So, what can we see from these results? Firstly, we can see that
the Russian voters gave the top 7 places to Russian entries.  In
fact, the  average score  given to  the Russian  music was 28.9,
while western music only received an average of 15.8.

With the western sceners,  it's a different story.  They awarded
significantly  higher votes  to western  tracks -  on average  a
western  entry scored  72.4, compared  with 52.7  for a  Russian
entry.

But  the most  surprising difference  between the  lists is  the
place reached by Yerzmyey's entry "Sad Tune". This attracted top
scores from  many of  the western  voters, bringing  it to first
place in  that chart,  but on  the Russian  side only  one voter
mentioned it at all.

At this point, I should remind you that the voters did not  know
the identities of  the  musicians. But I think it's  true to say
Yerzmyey  has one of  the  most  recognisable  styles  of  music
in  the scene  - whether  you love  it or  hate it  - and  it's
possible that this  may have influenced  the voters. Maybe  some
people weren't even conscious of it, and they'd just  associated
that style of music with good or bad.

Or maybe you can explain it by saying that people found out  the
authors  of  the  entries,  and  voted  for  their  friends. OK,
"friendly voting"  will happen  at any  party (just  look at the
Eurovision Song Contest ;-) ) - but we can't allow it to  become
a major reason for the scene being divided.

I don't know  what to believe  - either there's  a deep cultural
reason   that   makes  Russian   and   western  musical   tastes
incompatible, or the two sides are just being unfriendly. Either
way, it shows  how hard it  is to encourage  co-operation in the
scene. We're seeing real evidence of the split already - I would
have liked to investigate other party results in the same way as
this one,  but sadly  very few  parties have  attracted as  much
East-West co-operation  as Complex.  Only Forever  2e3 has  come
close, and those results tell  the same story - a  Russian entry
won the compo, but on  average the western tracks received  more
votes  from the  (mostly) Czech/Slovak  audience. Other  parties
have only  been supported  by one  side of  the scene,  and this
sends out a  bad message -  for example, Russians  might look at
the  results  of  Paradox  and  think  that  there  are  no good
composers outside Russia, while  westerners look at Doxycon  and
come to a similar conclusion.

I  hope that  my research  has shown  that there's  no sense  in
saying that  one side  of the  scene is  better than  the other.
Instead of arguing, there are two things we can do.

The first one is my suggestion to compo organisers. If you  want
to preselect entries, that's fine - nobody wants to judge 30  or
40 tunes at a party. But  why not invite people from both  sides
of the scene to be on the preselection jury? Otherwise. how  can
you claim  that your  compo is  really showing  the best  of the
scene?

And  to  everyone  else  on  the  scene  -  musicians,   coders,
graphicians or just voters  - don't just discard  the activities
on the other  side. Contribute to  the whole scene.  Observe the
whole scene. And most of all: Open your mind.

Gasman / RA

- Full results of Complex 99 are at:

http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/emacs/49/f_compo.html

PS.  One  more  thing...  don't  believe  any  of  those   party
organisers who  claim that  counting results  is very  hard work
that takes several weeks. I counted this lot up in about an hour
:-)

Другие статьи номера: