“Scoopex and Silents are two of the best teams,” Amiga Shopper told its readers in its first issue, in May 1991. By then The Silents was less one group than a name shared across Europe. It began in Sweden in 1987 and gained sections in Denmark, France, Norway, Britain and Germany. The Silents helped run The Party in Denmark, which drew 2,500 people in 1992, and its demos filled British public-domain catalogues. Four of its members founded Digital Illusions, the Swedish studio now known as DICE, and a team that included the Danish musician Jesper Kyd came second at Assembly ’93 with a PC demo.
Fast facts
- From: Sweden, with sections in Denmark, France, Norway, Britain and Germany.
- Active: from 1987; the last group releases are listed in 2003.
- Platforms: Amiga first, with Commodore 64 and PC productions.
- Best known for: Hardwired (1991), with Crionics; Global Trash and Ice (1991); Optic Nerve, second at Assembly ’93.
- Members included: the Swedes Goofy, SinCos, Chevron and Blaizer, who founded Digital Illusions, and the Danish musician Jesper Kyd.
A name across borders
According to the scene database Demozoo, The Silents formed in Sweden around the spring of 1987. Most of its founders came from a group called XL-Crackers, and its first Amiga production, Welcome On Amiga, is dated October 1987. Numbered megademos followed in 1988.
The name soon travelled. Andreas Axelsson, who was Goofy in the group, told the interviewer Kim Wild that when some of the Swedish members met at a summer house in 1989, “one of our Danish members” brought drawings of pinball tables. Demozoo records a French section formed in June 1991 around members of the French group Concept. Its first production, Ice, reached British libraries that autumn, and Phil South gave it 9 out of 10 in Amiga Shopper: “In the same way that a Crionics demo is always going to be worth looking at, a Silents demo is always worth having.” He credited the code to Ronan and Performer, the graphics to Walt and the music to Audiomonster. A Norwegian section followed in November 1991, and a British section and a German subgroup, No Soul Produkktions, around the turn of 1992.
Sections came and went. Mark Hellewell, who ran the British group Anarchy, recalled that the whole French membership asked to join Anarchy, along with a Danish division that included Sunjohn, “the famous coder of the epic Silents production Global Trash”. Demozoo dates the French departure to December 1991.
Parties and charts
The Silents helped to run the largest parties of the period. The organisers’ results name The Silents among the hosts of The Party in Aars, Denmark, in 1991, when 1,252 people came, and again in 1992, when 2,500 did. In 1993 The Silents organised The Party in Herning with Lemon and Spaceballs.
The group’s demos were popular well beyond the scene. In December 1990 CU Amiga reviewed the music demo Sound of Silents, “featuring music by Jesper Kid” (Kyd). Jimmy Maher’s history of the Amiga notes that Global Trash II, made on videotape rather than run live on the computer, was reportedly shown on MTV Europe. The scene also kept score in the Eurochart, a disk-magazine chart voted by sceners, and Hellewell recalled that The Silents held first place among groups in January 1992.
Hardwired
At The Party in December 1991 the demo competition banned greetings scrollers, the scrolling lists of hellos that ran through most demos of the time. Hardwired, which the results credit to The Silents, came second behind Alcatraz’s Odyssey. It was made with the Danish group Crionics. Crionics’ coders wrote the code, and The Silents supplied the artists Mikael Balle and Sionic and the musician Jesper Kyd. When Crionics broke up in early 1992, Demozoo records, three of its coders joined The Silents.
Digital Illusions
The summer house in 1989 had another result. Axelsson told Kim Wild that he, Olof Gustafsson and Fredrik “had been thinking about moving away from demos to games”, and that the Danish member’s pinball drawings “was the igniting spark”. Four members of The Silents, Andreas Axelsson (Goofy), Ulf Mandorff (SinCos), Markus Nyström (Chevron) and Olof Gustafsson (Blaizer), made Pinball Dreams with a fifth partner. The name came later: “Digital Illusions was formed from the five guys making Pinball Dreams as it became apparent that we needed some kind of company name.” 21st Century Entertainment published the game in 1992.
Maher writes that the move “inspired many sceners”, because The Silents designed and coded their own games instead of working for other developers. The scene still cracked the result. The group Fairlight spread a crack of Pinball Dreams, and Animal of Digital Illusions reflected that “considering the amount of people that played this game on copy parties, I guess I could have been retired by now!” Digital Illusions carried on as DICE, which Maher, writing in 2012, describes as a subsidiary of Electronic Arts responsible for the Battlefield series.
Optic Nerve and later years
The Silents also worked on the PC. At Assembly ‘93 in Finland its demo Optic Nerve came second to Future Crew’s Second Reality. The organisers’ results file gives it 334 points to 381. Future Crew’s own count, which the group called “the final and true results”, gives 403 to 472. Demozoo credits the code to Henning Semler, Martin Grøftehauge and Rasmus Bertelsen, the graphics to Mikael Balle and the music to Jesper Kyd. Kyd later told Wireframe that he met the future founders of IO Interactive in the demo scene and started the Danish game developer Zyrinx with them.
The Amiga work carried on too. The AGA demo Soulkitchen followed in December 1994, and British libraries were still selling it in 1995. Demozoo lists a short revival in 2002 and 2003, and no group releases after that.
Sources
- Amiga Shopper issue 1, May 1991, public-domain column: “Scoopex and Silents are two of the best teams”.
- Phil South, public-domain column, Amiga Shopper issue 6, October 1991, p. 131: review of Ice, 9/10, with its credits.
- CU Amiga, December 1990, public-domain demos feature: Sound of Silents, with music by Jesper Kyd.
- Kim Wild, “Pinball Dreams”, interview with Andreas Axelsson, in The Amiga Book, revised edition (Imagine Publishing, 2015), pp. 116–117: the summer house in 1989, the Danish member’s drawings, the four founders’ handles, and the naming of Digital Illusions.
- Mark Hellewell, “Anarchy & the Demoscene”, in Chris Wilkins and Roger M. Kean, The Story of the Amiga in Pixels (Fusion Retro Books, 2017), pp. 75–79: the Danish and French members who joined Anarchy, The Party’s organisers, and the Eurochart in January 1992.
- Jimmy Maher, The Future Was Here: The Commodore Amiga (MIT Press, 2012), pp. 190 and 200–201: Global Trash II on MTV Europe; The Silents and Digital Illusions; Fairlight’s crack of Pinball Dreams and Animal’s comment.
- CU Amiga, April 1992, p. 47: review of Pinball Dreams.
- The Party 1991, 1992 and 1993, results (web, secondary copies of the organisers’ files): hosts, visitor numbers and the Amiga demo competition. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1991/theparty91/results.txt, https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1992/theparty92/results.txt, https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1993/theparty93/results.txt
- Assembly ‘93, official PC competition results (web, secondary copy of the organisers’ file): Optic Nerve second with 334 points. https://files.scene.org/get/parties/1993/assembly93/results.txt
- Future Crew, information file FCINFO10.TXT, 7 October 1993, in the Second Reality source release: Optic Nerve 403 points. https://github.com/mtuomi/SecondReality/blob/master/MAIN/DATA/FCINFO10.TXT
- Matthias Sundström, interview with Jesper Kyd, Wireframe issue 23, September 2019, pp. 18–20: the demo scene and Zyrinx.
- Public-domain library advertisement, CU Amiga, May 1995: “Silents – Soul Kitchen AGA (2)”.
- Demozoo, group entry for The Silents and its production entries (web, secondary): founding, sections, members, release dates, and credits for Hardwired and Optic Nerve. https://demozoo.org/groups/101/