''Cipher'' is the debut album by

The Alpha Conspiracy Andrew Gregory Sega ( ; born May 20, 1975), also known as Necros, is an American musician best known for tracking modules in the 1990s demoscene as well as for composing music for several well-known video games. He was a member of the synthpop d ...

, released in 2001. Splendid E-Zine's Ron Davies called the album "easily one of the best electronic releases of the past year", and later wrote, "Whereas a great deal of electronic music is best described as icy and repetitive, Sega's compositions are completely engaging."

History

Andrew Sega Andrew Gregory Sega ( ; born May 20, 1975), also known as Necros, is an American musician best known for tracking modules in the 1990s demoscene as well as for composing music for several well-known video games. He was a member of the synthpop d ...

had previously written music using

music tracker A music tracker (sometimes referred to as just tracker for short) is a type of music sequencer software for creating music. The music is represented as discrete musical notes positioned in several channels at discrete chronological positions on ...

s like FastTracker and

Impulse Tracker Impulse Tracker is a multi-track music tracker ( music sequencer). Originally released in 1995 by Jeffrey Lim as freeware with commercial extensions, it was one of the last tracker programs for the DOS platform. In 2014, on its 20th anniversary, ...

. At that time, he felt that it would be silly to try to release an album using Impulse Tracker's 8-bit samples and its other limited features. However, after discovering

Jeskola Buzz Jeskola Buzz is a freeware modular software music studio environment designed to run on Microsoft Windows using MFC. It is centered on a modular plugin-based machine view and a multiple pattern sequencer tracker. Buzz consists of a plugin arch ...

, he felt that he could finally write songs which would sound "professional". Inspired by some of his friends who had already self-released records, Sega wrote material which would eventually become ''Cipher'' and released it using his newly established label, Diffusion Records. "Martian Love Song" was the oldest song on the album, having been written by Sega in 1997 — with the title "martian lovesong" — as a veteran entrance for the Hornet Music Contest 5 tracking competition, where it finished second.

Track listing

References

External links

Cipher review at Splendid E-zine

Cipher
at

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...

{{Authority control 2001 debut albums Andrew Sega albums