The Story in Retrospective

Xenon Disco toured on the finnish west coast during the 90's. The primary goal we had when we started was to be able to plan, build, experiment and maintain our own hardware & software for creating light & sound effects. Getting paid while playing the greatest music was of course also a big factor :)

The Start

Our very first "real" gig was at Övermalax UF Solhem youth organization sometime in 1990. At that time we had a quite poor excuse for a light organ, a 2*65W (duh..) amplifier and speakers and CD/vinyl players borrowed from our own home stereo systems. It should be mentioned that without Övermalax UF it wouldn't have been possible for xenon disco to grow from nothingness into perfectionness. In the beginning we relied heavily in the gigs we had there for funding new equipment.

The DeeJays

The DeeJays of Xenon Disco throughout the years were:

Peter Sandström (founder, project co-ordination)
Joakim Åkerback (founder, hardware specialist)
Michael Westman (founder, software specialist)
Lucas Snellman
Göran Höstman
Bertil Nygård
André Hemming
Thomas Majors

This is not a complete list but it shows the most active members

The Equipment

According to an old (WordPerfect 5.1) document, this was some of the equipment in Xenon Disco:

- Strobe & light logicunit (A/D, D/A)
- Subwoofer amplifier >1kW + cooling fan
- Sony TA-A300 amplifier (mid & high)
- Technics Multiband Equalizer
- Phonic MRT-70 Audio Mixer
- Microphones
- Technis 1200 MK2 vinyl player
- Technis 1210 MK2 vinyl player
- CD Players
- Sony DRP-2 Drumpad
- Subwoofer stack (4 boxes with two 12" speakers in each) g.t. 1.8 kW
- HI/MID-range speakers (2 boxes)
- JEM Fogger smokemachine
- Active parametrical equalizer, signal distribution amp, subwoofer pre-amp
- DeeJay Headset
- 220V 3-phase spliting unit
- Master AC powersupply with keylock
- Two Commodore 128 + floppy + monitor
- Triac powerbox for control of lights from computer
- Booms for mounting light effects on speaker stacks
- Light rig for mounting light effects on stage
- Two stroboscopes with xenon tubes
- Sweeping pinspots
- Rotating bluelights
- Pinspots
- Two passive gobos
- Lamps for the light rig (20 lamps * 100 W)

And of course we had the fabulous van; the Toyota HiAce 1977 year's model. It still remains a mystery why we never had a serious accident with that car. It had a tendency to never go straight forward. If you let the steering wheel go for a brief second (when for example trying to eject a stuck tape from the deck with both hands) you would always find yourself in the other lane or heading off the road when looking up again. Not to mention it's unpredictable behaviour when there was snow on the road. But hey - we all survived.

The Gigs

We played during the '90:s mainly on the finnish west coast, and did gigs from everything from small pubs, clubs to the biggest places on the finnish west coast. We also did some PA-service (e.g. on fashion shows, etc.).

The End

In 1997 Xenon Disco was sold off as my B.Sc. studies didn't leave me enough free time for the project anymore. Furthermore there was a strong feeling of "been there, done that" and it was time to move on to something new.