#coolpunk

[skridz]

Hypnospace..

I luv yoi. Hypnospace

[stimmy-scary-skeletons]

CH1LL 1T R1GHT!

Coolpunk stimboard!

❄️-❄️-❄️|❄️-❄️-❄️|❄️-❄️-❄️

[huperk]

[janmisali]

best FRE3ZER track

Colder than the Rest (1998)

Chill It Right (1999)

Icy Girl (1999)

(coolpunk sucks fungus scene is way better bwl)

[show results]

Voting ended onSep 23, 2023

links to listen to the songs (if you haven't heard them):

Colder than the Rest

Chill It Right

Icy Girl

[mismaxx]

Visit Original Link

[coelpts]

Hello everyone, I have a Hypnospace Theory (but as far as I'm concerned it's a Hypnospace Fact) about Coolfest '99. I'm sure everyone else has already come to the same conclusion, but I haven't actually seen anyone talk about it so I'm putting my thoughts here.

Spoilers for Hypnospace Outlaw! Please do not read this until you've finished up the story for the game!

Here's my thesis: FRE3ZER sabotaged Coolfest '99.

Okay let me back up. Obviously FRE3ZER couldn't mess up all of Coolfest. The unfortunate tragedy of the Chowdercopter was not his fault, nor was the colossal mismanagement of the entire event from Gray's Peak, but the lip syncing was intentional. FRE3ZER wanted to drive the final nail into Coolpunk's coffin.

Why do I say this? Let's lay out the facts as they're initially presented.

During Coolfest, FRE3ZER- also known as Jan Wolf- was seen lip syncing to the song 'Icy Girl' on stage. After the convention, Jan clarified that this was a mistake; he had been singing along with the song, but he accidentally queued up a work-print of the song that had extra lyrics. This excuse is recognized as being weak at best, and shortly after he announces a hiatus from songwriting and performing. From this point, Coolpunk as a movement completely implodes, and by Y2K MerchantSoft intends to transform the Coolpunk Paradise into an all-purpose music Zone called The Venue.

However, missing from this summary is the real identity of FRE3ZER. This fact will likely missed on first-time playthroughs; it's found in chapter one through the incomplete and mostly inaccessible Fungus Scene about page. The pioneer of Fungus Scene, FatherFungus, known for making music under the pseudonym Basidia, is the true FRE3ZER- Ray Dolan. Ray reportedly has terrible stage fright and so signed on with Esotonic Records as a songwriter and producer. Jan Wolf hired as a 'face' to play Ray's music onstage. This fact is removed before the Cavern becomes publicly available, citing a contractual prohibition against divulging the info.

How can we tell this is the truth? FatherFungus has unlisted page in Coolpunk Paradise dated November 20th of 1998, the generally agreed date that the defining song 'Colder Than The Rest' was released, with the song playing and downloadable for free. Said page is nearly completely taken down by Esotonic by the second chapter, the title song being replaced with the Basidia track 'Ghost of the Grotto'.

Additionally, although the singers voice in 'Colder Than The Rest' is significantly distorted, there's no denying that it sounds very similar to the voice in Basidia's song 'Ghost of the Grotto'. Even more, 'Ghost of the Grotto' is a song about a creative struggling with the idea of being unseen and unheard while someone else plays their music.

The connection isn't exactly subtle.

Okay, so now the situation is thus: Ray Dolan, aka FRE3ZER, signed a deal with Esotonic Records and hired front man Jan Wolf to perform his music live. Jan's first performance was at Coolfest '99, where the lip sync incident tanked FRE3ZER's reputation and crashed Coolpunk square into the ground.

But we can go deeper.

There's another character at play here- COOLPUNK_IS_DEAD. This user made a page as an ode to Coolpunk and its demise sometime after Coolfest and it's deleted in December. It notes that Coolpunk has fallen, killed by corporations that were exploiting it. To quote, 'They've identified what makes us US and are selling it back to us'. This user is distributing the lip syncing video and the immediate aftermath, and advises that people turn away from this co-opted movement to find their own freedom.

COOLPUNK_IS_DEAD is FatherFungus, Ray Dolan. Aside from the fact that this page directly links to Fungus Scene, these two users share the same headband ID: 04886A. COOLPUNK_IS_DEAD is therefore a sock puppet, made by Ray Dolan to widely distribute the video of Jan Wolf failing his performance.

Now we circle back to Coolfest, and the excuse provided by Jan: he mistakenly queued up a different version of the song with more lyrics. This excuse was already flimsy; the version of 'Icy Girl' that was distributed across Hypnospace was the same one that played during Coolfest, so the idea that FRE3ZER had intended to play a different version is about as strong as wet tissues. And now that we know that Jan isn't FRE3ZER, this series of events is called into question even further. This isn't his music. Did he even organize the set list to begin with? Does he actually know the FRE3ZER discography? Did he know what he was playing at all?

This line of questioning lead me to two answers. Option one: Jan Wolf is in on this. He's a friend of Ray's and the two of them collaborated to cause the failure of FRE3ZER live. Option two: Ray intentionally sent Jan the incorrect copies of the song to practice, and the live set list was designed to throw him off guard and under the bus.

Personally, I believe option two. Why? The answer lies with the final piece of this puzzle: FR33ZIECHIKA. This account belongs to one Amanda Price, and she's an astroturf account. The tells are obvious; she links to Gray's Peak with sponsored soda images all over her page, her style of writing is bizarrely corporate and sterile, and her review of Coolfest is out of touch with reality. It mentions none of the horror and drama of the real event, refusing to comment on the tragedy of the Chowdercopter and making reference to an extended set list from FRE3ZER when he only performed one song before being booed off the stage. But if that wasn't enough, the proof is once again in the headband IDs. Hers is 04902A, and she shares it with the official FRE3ZER account.

Her account is quietly deleted sometime in December.

This all leads to my final conclusion. FRE3ZER sabotaged Coolfest '99 to kill Coolpunk dead. After seeing what Gray's Peak were doing with the movement he signed a deal with Esotonic and let them hire Jan Wolf as his public face, only to send him a live set that exposed him as a fraud. He took the evidence and distributed it across Hypnospace, letting his former artist brand and hired face take the fall. From the ashes of his act he developed Fungus Scene, a musical movement that truly embodied his ideals- no brand sponsorships, no big names, just the unbridled creativity that the darkness of the caverns provide.

And, I mean. I can't say it didn't work, but I can't help but mourn. What Coolpunk was, how it was eaten alive, and the kids and young adults that just wanted to belong somewhere.

[disjenyamembra]

I’ve seen an old post today about whether or not it was Fre3zers fault that Coolpunk is dead. And by Fre3zer I mean the original one, not the hired performer. How he was supposedly a sellout himself and ignored the hypocrisy of his actions, yada yada

I’ve been thinking about this the whole day and well. We don’t know much about Rays life, his financial status and whatnot. I don’t think it was bad or immoral or hypocritical of him to want to monetise his music and to sign a record deal. An anticapitalist still should be able to get compensated for their labour. And if he wanted to potentially live off his music there just wasn’t another option back in the day. We are witnessing the dawn of streaming during the events of the game. Signing might have seemed like only viable option for Ray to keep developing as an artist. That’s why Capitalism killed Coolpunk, if not for the economic forces at play there wouldn’t have even been a need to “sell out”. An artist taking part in the system they criticise doesn’t make them a hypocrite, especially for a lack of options. And even before that the message was lost, because capitalism tends to absorb criticism of it into itself, the movement gets lost in aesthetics and irony. From Fre3zers perspective I sort of understand seeing Coolpunk as almost dead in the womb and yet I don’t fault for him for trying to make best of the bad situation.

However after his experience with Esotonic it’s completely understandable why’d he want to distance himself as much as possible from making music commercially. He felt like his identity was striped from his art and there was no purpose behind it. He made something beloved and then got to see a puppet of his own creation take credit for it. He got to see his already dying vision change into something irrecognizable. And that’s even before Coolfest. Yeesh.

So no, I don’t think Fre3zer killed Coolpunk. I think Coolpunk was already dying and Ray was first to see it and has decided to turn its death into a positive. To see him moving on as him inadvertently killing the genre he created is in my opinion a very uncharitable reading of his character and the narrative itself

[metropolisyuri]

Noelle would def listen to Coolpunk

... and Kris would love Fungus Scene