SYRiNX's Profile

Hi! I'm Keith F. Kelly. Between 1994-1999 (my high school and university years), I tracked modules and participated in the scene under the name SYRiNX, from my parents' home in Friendswood, TX, USA and from my dorm room at Rice University in Houston, TX, USA.

I was also a member of N.O.I.S.E. (New Objective In Sound Exploration) for about a year, during which I released a small number of compositions.

I was never a very prolific tracker, and to this day I still haven't written much original material or learned much formal music theory. I tracked everything I did mostly by ear, which is the same way I play various instruments. I didn't really fit into the growing trend of trying to produce commercial-sounding dance-club music. What I loved about the tracker scene was the huge variety of styles and talent, much of which didn't squarely fit into any commercial vibe or genre. There were tons of great songs -- written by undiscovered young people who were shockingly talented -- that were clearly only created to scratch a creative itch or personal fascination.

As of September 2022, I reside in Sammamish, WA, USA, work as a software developer, and play bass in a Seattle-area rock cover band I put together called Past Curfew.

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My involvement with Landslide, Nebula Music Works, and the original Trax In Space

In early 1996, Cylus (Morgan Page) and I started "project Landslide" to put some of the best tracker music of the scene onto standard audio CDs, to enable folks in the scene to promote their (and each others') work to a more mainstream audience and establish industry connections. In the summer of 1996, Landslide was officially registered as a business (for legal purposes, despite remaining a non-profit project), and in September 1996 we released our first and only self-produced compilation album of scene music, simply called "Trax". Meanwhile, on the other side of Houston, TX, USA, Nebula had just released its first album of scene music, "First Contact: Kawaiis From Outer Space". I don't know everything, but as far as I'm aware, these were the first two full-length compilation albums of tracker music released on audio CD anywhere, ever, that were entirely self-produced by members of the tracker scene.

In the summer of 1996, I (representing Landslide) and Mysterium (representing Nebula) first became aware of each other's existence, projects, and location (we were both in suburbs of Houston!), so we met up in person. We decided pretty quickly that we should work together, so we teamed up to create and release an even more ambitious double-CD compilation album of tracker music entitled "Parallel Dimensions". The first disc was called "Celestia" and featured more ambient music, while the second disc was called "Digitasia" and featured songs more suited to the typical dance club genre. This album was released in 1998.

I performed all audio engineering and CD mastering for both the "Trax" and 1998 "Parallel Dimensions" albums, and I was heavily involved in contract negotiations and artist relations with the musicians whose works were featured on these albums. I contributed one song to each of those albums. I also served as audio engineer for Nebula's their third album, "Interstellar Harmony: Volume One".

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Preserving the history of Landslide and Nebula Music Works

I am currently working on a restoration/preservation project, to reconstruct all assets, files, audio, metadata, historical information, etc, for all albums of tracker music released by Landslide and/or Nebula. This is extremely difficult work, because a lot of this stuff just predates the existence of the Wayback Machine (so no snapshots of the relevant old web pages or graphics/photos or articles or files), and nearly other information about these albums (especially "Trax" and "Parallel Dimensions") has been wiped off the face of the internet. I've gotten about as far as I can without help from someone who's still got physical copies or personal backups of specific things.

If you'd like to see which pieces I still need and how you might be able to help, please check out the OneDrive folder where I am working on all of this!