Kieran aka dblue a fellow friend and Renoise member passed away

General Discussion
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Kieran, aka dblue, has passed away. Death always finds a way, just like life does, but this just sucks.

Kieran was a long-time member of the Renoise team. He is the author of Glitch, a talented musician and creator of thousands of patterns that unfortunately never got piled up into songs. He had “absolute pitch” (I was jealous about that!). He was a Renoise user, supporter and influencer, but unfortunately influencer wasn’t a paid job back then :)

Let’s remember Kieran and share stories to keep his memory alive. Or at least nail some memories into this machine the Renoise forum is running on.

Here’s mine:

Many of you will know Kieran from this forum. That’s how I met him a long time ago too. He always had a strong passion for music, trackers, and obviously then Renoise. So he started helping out with various Renoise things. Spent a lot of time in the forums proving people wrong, taming the trolls, taking care of Renoise support emails, the website, testing, creating demos, doing sound design…

I then met him in person at Evoke 2007 (please, can someone share some pictures? Unfortunately, I never made any copies!). Apart from having a great time and getting drunk, we talked about this and that, and Renoise, and his Glitch plugin of course. I convinced him to come to Berlin, so we could work on Renoise and Glitch together. Just like, why not? Renoise wasn’t a company then - if it ever was - but a group of people with a shared passion, with me somehow in the middle.

So he moved from the UK to Berlin where we had a spacy office - offices were easy to get and pay for back then in Berlin - and started doing things together and hanging out. I badly tried to convince him that he should create a new version of his Glitch plugin. His initial Glitch was a PHP script, yep, PHP :). Glitch 1 was written in Delphi, if I remember correctly, and thus couldn’t be ported to macOS. And people really really nagged him to finally create a Mac version.

I think he hated me back then, because I really got on his nerves, convincing him to finish it. I offered him doing Glitch in parts of the Renoise framework in C++ and “helped” again by getting on his nerves and assisting with the rather boring programming stuff. At some point it was finished, including a mac version, and that became the famous Glitch2 plugin. From then on, he mostly did Glitch stuff while still being there for Renoise as he was before. The hanging around part was quite dominant though. I once saw him watching a “How to properly boil an egg” video on YouTube, or “How to properly add cheese at any stage of the cooking process”. Either way, he was always there, and it was a great time.

At some point he missed the UK more than feeling good here in Berlin. I think he never really felt at home here. Actually he said he was moving back to the UK mostly because he missed the sausages and groceries. Well, and his family, of course.

After that, he still did Renoise stuff from the UK. Glitch 3 never got released, but I stopped nagging him about that too. I think he finally went and felt home again.

What now, since decades, felt normal and granted: Kieran being there, doing Renoise stuff is now no more. You’ll be missed - in this small community - among all your friends - among your family. Rest in Peace!

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Oh man, that’s horrible news…I don’t quite know how I came to know him, but we have been in contact over IRC and forums for a very long time and I met him in person a few times and all I can say is that he was a really nice and intelligent dude.

The memory I can share is the original glitch.exe that I got from him before the plugin even existed and that gave me a bit of an edge for quite a while … It does not work on my machine any more, but maybe someone can do something with it, there are some .bat files in there that used to provide me a ton of crazy drum sounds created from drum loops.

RIP Kieran

Edit: Re Fotos: Slengpung has one: slengpung v3.5

slengpung v3.5 :: photo :cry:

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Crawling out of the woodwork for this one. Kieran was the shit. I met him through Renoise and chatted with him now and then over the years. Pretty sure he was the one who added me to the artists page.

These days, I’d been popping into his Discord occasionally to creep. Last I talked to him we were chatting about mutual friends and how cheap it would be for me to fly across the pond and visit. Really sad to have not jumped on that.

Such a rad human and talented creative. He will be greatly missed. :sob::heart:

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I feel you @taktik this one is tough on many who loved Kieran for who he was, an absolute legend.

I’ve learned to appreciate him since we first chatted on the renoise IRC channel, he was real, outspoken, not mincing words and at first, I was a bit intimidated but ultimately he grew on me. Those were different times and we would just be idiots online, posting videos, having fun with TRACKERCAPS bursts; the drama on the first renoise board, ho la la!

Then we met at the evoke 2007 and I was even more impressed, never have I seen someone bust so many moves so late in the night. I have pictures of him, you @taktik , @looza , @keith303 and others, looking at them feels weird, once again… an other time (seeesh, almost two decades wtf).

We met some times around 2012, or what is 2013, in Berlin and later in 2018 or so. Always a bit in a rush, always too short.

After the IRC diaspora and all the Real Life™ happening we had lost contact a little but Discord made it possible to chat again, that’s when I knew he had moved back to the UK and we kept trying to figure plans how to see each others; we even discussed him coming over for the weekend, I kept postponing for many different reasons not thinking this would matter… in my head, we still had time.

Dang, where is that photo of all of us at the evoke 2007 eh?

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My first contact with Kieran was here, through the Renoise forums, back in 2004/5.
He would give people advice, tips, tricks, and explain technical stuff in an easy to understand manner.
He taught me so many things over the years, and we became close and talked regularly over MSN messenger and IRC and in later years Discord too.
He was always encouraging me with my personal issues and creatively also.
We had good times gaming together in Rocket League and DayZ.
When he returned to the UK from Berlin, we finally got to hang out together, and I will cherish those moments, and we of course still regularly spoke online, and had planned to hang out again and watch movies together.
On numerous occasions I witnessed his kindness and generosity. He’s the kind of person that stops to get homeless people food, instead of ignoring them. I know he helped other people online when they needed it too.
His creativity was boundless. He was always making something, painting something, doodling. Tinkering with gadgets and toys!

I will miss him so much, and I will always remember and take to heart the things he told me while he was around. The things he gave me advice on, I promise I will take action on.
Thank you for being my friend :heart:

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I’m so extremely sad to hear this. I was just talking to him a few months back.

He was always such a nice guy.

I remember coming out to Berlin to visit with you guys, and us going off and getting pizza.

I also remember him reaching out to me about “bears” and the artists page

That guy not only left an indelible mark on my life, but gave a lot of people an amazing plugin.

RIP Kieran. :headstone:

I expect to see an afterlife edition of dblue glitch far in the future.

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Rest in peace. He was a very helpful, friendly and polite person. For years I have used his VSTs in my work, he will be missed.

Hope his close ones are able to find solace in these difficult times.

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I didn’t know him personally, but he was always kind and supportive in the interactions we had. He listened to my first shitty Renoise demos when nobody cared, so that means a lot to me. Glitch is all over my first attempts on music making (and also my friends’). I’m sure I will think of Kieran every time I listen to those.

RIP.

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I met Kieran in 1997-98 when he was in the states. He was roommates with a friend of mine, whom introduced us. We were fast friends and he got me started on trackers. Lots of raves in the back desert and tons of party favors. I had a baby in the way and he had to go back home across the ocean. We always kept in touch. Something I rarely did and I still don’t with other people. Last time I talked to him I told him I love him. I’m glad that was the last thing we said.

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I became… let’s just say… aware … of kieran back in the 90s. I don’t recall the exact date, but around '95. I ran a couple of trance-inspired tracking groups that were off-shoots from Chill. Onyx Trance and Blackhole. The venn diagram intersection of people making tracker music, having internet access, and trying to make trance or goa trance back then was tiny, so I always tried to befriend anyone I could. Immediately Kieran, or madhatter as his artist name was back then, seemed like he was built different, in all the best ways. He was able to work wonders with fast tracker2 beyond what others in the group were doing, could also easily turn his hand to most any genre, was a genuinely nice guy and really fucking funny to boot. We spent years on IRC chatting at all hours, and running those groups together until around ‘98/’88 life tore the groups apart. All the artists went their separate ways.

I have a distinct fond set of memories jamming on early PCs with the first release of Rebirth with Kieran. Spending what seemed like hours getting shit setup in my house, no concept of how to wire stuff up or keep things in sync but when we finally got it sorted we jammed for what must have been days. Probably the most intense musical feeling of flow state, being in the zone, and harmonising musically with someone else I’ve ever had. The happiest of times, albeit so fleetingly. We spoke recently on the phone and we laughed about this - he didn’t think I’d remember it, but when he bought it up memories from 30 years prior came rushing back as clear and as fresh as it having just happened. Our lives went in drastically different directions, but here was this moment in time that had anchored us together. Two middle ages guys reminiscing about 303 emulation and jamming.

He’s actually the only member of those groups I was in touch with after all these years, but we didn’t hang out or talk as much as either of us would have liked in the decades since. In the last few years we rediscovered each other’s soundclouds, socials, and reconnected on discords together. I always admired not only his musicality and creativity, but that he’d forged out a path of his own that seemed so free-spirited; so full of the cavalier attitude of possibilities and freedom. I was just happy this guy existed; making me aware of how life could be, and that in some tenuous way… I knew him and I experienced it through him. The tales of his times in new mexico and how he got there, kicked out, and got back always felt like something from a movie, a dream of a life that could be had. But this kieran guy, he’d got it! He figured it out and did it! and then when the fun in new mexico had all been had he came back home and made one of the most influential bits of music software. “I know that guy!” I’d say if ever Glitch ever popped up in polite conversation, which oddly, it did.

crying.

He’d want me to remember the fun and stupid geeky shit we did together, and all the music we made along the way. The mad genius. the mad hatter. RIP.

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I didn’t personnally know dblue, I used dblue glitch years ago when I was starting music and exchanged just a few words with him on this forum over the past years (without even realizing he was the man behind dblue glitch)

RIP Kieran, and bravo @taktik for this message, I understand it might be a hard time for you and his close friends/family but you managed to give him a perfect homage. My condolences to anyone that knew him..

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I didn’t know him personally, only from here on the Renoise forum. At least, I think so – you never really know for sure. In any case, I wasn’t aware of any of his aliases. But since @taktik suggested we should share our memories of him…

I think we got into a few heated discussions here on the forum. The last one I remember was this post of him, during one of my ‘piano roll campaigns’. :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: :wink:

I was one of the few to stand up against many here on the forum, and through my efforts here, I ultimately inspired someone to give us a brilliant Renoise piano roll extension to enhance Renoise. (Shout-out to @dufte) And that fills me with pride! I’m sure many here on the forum don’t like me because of this, and because of my very direct and sometimes brusque manner, but I’ve spent almost my whole life standing alone against the crowd, and I’ve always stood my ground. And for that, I’ve been respected. Often hated too, but always respected! In today’s society, this is unfortunately often the price innovators and free thinkers have to pay.

On dblue
I don’t know whether he liked me or didn’t like me, or whether I was just another run-of-the-mill forum troll to him. (I suspect the latter.) I can’t really say that I loved him, but I always respected him! And in my world, that’s what counts!

Rest in peace, and really shake up the tracker heaven!

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Really bad news, I’m kinda shocked :frowning:

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Not a single day goes by without bad news. RIP mate!

There’s not much I can share here story-wise. We were on the same side during the piano roll wars initiated by NPC1 and in terms of other discussions in the forum. He first contacted me via PM while I was dealing with an annoying troll, and at this point he told me about the backgrounds what’s going on in the forum and what is being done by the mods to deal with it. He also shared some stories about toxic people in this forum he had to deal with in the past. And we’ve exchanged some mastering stuff. Based on his comments alone I can say he was a good guy. He will be missed.

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a great loss…

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Much to young to go, my condolences to everyone close to him.

I’ve never met him in real life, but throughout the years had the occasional pm contact, possible remix and or Renoise demo track discussions, shared some track files & ideas, but nothing ever materialized. Sorry for the procrastination Kieran!

So much this :slight_smile: , I fondly remember random users gut feelings crushed with facts.

Rest in power :folded_hands:

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Here’s an appreciation thread for him from back in the day:

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Didn’t know him, but was aware of his work and presence here. Really sad news. Condolences to those more personally affected by his loss, thoughts are with you all.

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@taktik I am very sad to read this. I wish you and Kieran’s family all the best during this difficult time. His creativity and open-minded nature will be greatly missed.

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I didn’t know him other than in passing but Ive had respect and appreciation for his tools since my early Fruity Loops days. And it might not seem like much but i was so excited to see his name here when i picked up Renoise while getting into trackers. And when I needed to learn how to do triplets, it was dblue’s post that helped me. Wish i could have gotten to know him a bit more. He seemed super cool.

I also got a laugh out of it when he shut down a pianoroll thread (if im remembering right). He just wasn’t having it. Good times. Going to miss his him being around.

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