Year End Sale

Sheep Hour Records is the official home of Sidewinder – former Protracker composer and synthesizer musician, as heard in the cult-classic computer games Scorched Tanks, DX-Ball 2 and Rival Ball – now returned to leave the final legacy of his music with all new remastered tunes!

Year End Sale

Sheep Hour Records is the official home of Sidewinder – former Protracker composer and synthesizer musician, as heard in the cult-classic computer games Scorched Tanks, DX-Ball 2 and Rival Ball – now returned to leave the final legacy of his music with all new remastered tunes!

Year End Sale

Sheep Hour Records is the official home of Sidewinder – former Protracker composer and synthesizer musician, as heard in the cult-classic computer games Scorched Tanks, DX-Ball 2 and Rival Ball – now returned to leave the final legacy of his music with all new remastered tunes!

DX-Ball 2 Studio Soundtrack

★ ★ ★

What’s new?

★ ★ ★

Today marks 25 years since the release of the iconc 1998 PC game that…

If you are a true-blue DX-Ball 2 fan, you probably know that…

Today is July 17, marking our third anniversary and exactly one year…

It’s been a while since we posted a news update, so we want to…

the Sidewinder remasters

★ ★ ★

DX-Ball 2
Studio Soundtrack

16.12.23

15 Tracks

Digital

Orbital Dreams

17.07.21

1 Track

Digital

Timeless

17.07.20

20 Tracks

Digital

Lollybomb EP

21.02.20

6 Tracks

Digital

Concerto Tragedia

25.10.19

1 Track

Digital

Strike A Panzai

20.09.19

1 Track

Digital

Wonderfull

 

26.07.19

2 Tracks

Digital

Technobee

14.06.19

3 Tracksb

Digital

Arisan

22.03.19

2 Tracksb

Digital

DX-Ball 2
Sound Selection

14.12.18

4 Tracks

Digital

a Includes a bonus track in the download after your purchase on Bandcamp

b Features an excluded track on YouTube, available for streaming only

The Sidewinder Remasters

★ ★ ★

DX-Ball 2 Studio Soundtrack

16.12.23

15 Tracks

Digital

Orbital Dreams

17.07.21

1 Track

Digital

Timeless

17.07.20

20 Tracks

Digital

Lollybomb EP

21.02.20

6 Tracks

Digital

Concerto Tragedia

25.10.19

1 Track

Digital

Strike A Panzai

20.09.19

1 Track

Digital

Wonderfull

26.07.19

2 Tracks

Digital

 

Technobee

14.06.19

3 Tracksb

Digital

Arisan

22.03.19

2 Tracksa

Digital

DX-Ball 2 Sound Selection

14.12.18

4 Tracks

Digital

a Includes a bonus track in the download after your purchase on Bandcamp

b Features an excluded track on YouTube, available for streaming only

The Sidewinder remasters

★ ★ ★

DX-Ball 2 Studio
Soundtrack

16.12.23

15 Tracks

Digital

Orbital Dreams

17.07.21

1 Track

Digital

Timeless

17.07.20

20 Tracks

Digital

Lollybomb EP

21.02.20

6 Tracks

Digital

Concerto Tragedia

25.10.19

1 Track

Digital

Strike A Panzai

20.09.19

1 Track

Digital

Wonderfull

26.07.19

2 Tracks

Digital

Technobee

14.06.19

3 Tracksb

Digital

Arisan

22.03.19

2 Tracksa

Digital

DX-Ball 2 Sound Selection

14.12.18

4 Tracks

Digital

a Includes a bonus track in the download after your purchase on Bandcamp

b Features an excluded track on YouTube, available for streaming only

Who are we?

★ ★ ★

We’re Sheep Hour Records – an independent record label founded on the premise of creating and securing the ultimate legacy from veteran musician Eric “Sidewinder” Gieseke.

Established July 17, 2018, we’re the new official Sidewinder label, continuing the path where Sidewinder previously let off back in 2005. It’s our passion and our goal to bring you the ultimate selection of pristine Sidewinder studio remasters, picking up old classics and unfinished works from Sidewinder’s past and presenting them as revised and completed high-fidelity versions for the future. If you already know the classic Sidewinder sound of the 90s, be sure to check out our super-hot demo mix for a better scope of our remastered Sidewinder catalogue.

An avid composer of tracker modules on the Commodore Amiga between 1991 and 1995, Sidewinder’s MOD archive lists well over 100 songs, sporting thousands of downloads from all around the globe. Sidewinder also hit big in the Amiga community in 1994 with his self-published debut album, Future Shock 2, being featured in rave reviews by magazines like CU Amiga, Amiga Computing, and Amiga Report.

After making the switch to the PC in 1996, moving on with the evolution of home computer technology, Sidewinder’s musical endeavour proceeded by the use of MIDI equipment, soundfonts and more expansive audio software, giving life to a new and richer sound of Sidewinder. The accumulation of his successive works eventually resulted in Sidewinder’s second album, 2BadSheep, in 1999, also featuring a selection of some late tracker modules. Aside from promoting a few songs through various online indie-music portals during the following years, we haven’t really heard much from Sidewinder since then…until now.

Although Sidewinder has technically retired from the music production side of things, label owner-manager and producer Zephyrean has been granted an executive role of reconstructing Sidewinder’s old music from scratch, to present it anew and alive, while staying true to the original character and sound. With the aid of Zephyrean and his delicate passion for Sidewinder’s music, we strive to achieve a robust catalogue of superb studio quality Sidewinder jams, picking out only the best of the best and bringing them to their fullest potential.

Much of Sidewinder’s music originally started out on a digital synthesizer, the Ensoniq SQ-2/32, but was then sampled and compressed to pieces of 8-bit audio, that could be used to compose so-called “tracker modules” or MODs on the Commodore Amiga. This ancient computer music format from the 80s only supported playback of monophonic 8-bit samples, with a maximum of 4 voices playing simultaneously, mixed to a hard-left and hard-right stereo output. Although it was considered a state-of-the-art home computer technology at its time, the audio quality was a far cry from professional audio reproduction.

Our remastering process involves the reconstruction of Sidewinder’s old tracker music within a modern digital audio environment. With Zephyrean in charge, equipped with his SQ-R/32 Plus edition of Sidewinder’s long departed SQ-2/32 synthesizer from 1992,  this allows us to revive many of these songs and restore them back to an unrestricted 16-bit format, which means they will sound amazing in comparison to the original tracker module versions.

We kicked things off at the end of 2018 with the release of DX-Ball 2 Sound Selection, having since followed up with a careful selection of remastered releases. After more than 2 years in the works, being quietly assembled in the background of everything else, we are also proud to present Sidewinder’s third album, Timeless, featuring a bunch of killer synthesizer tunes, ranging from well-known classics to some underappreciated gems – all given new life as renovated high-fidelity studio versions. It’s been a wild journey of rediscovering and reviving some of Sidewinder’s most invaluable treasures from the 90s thus far, so be sure to keep track of us in the social universe and subscribe to our newsletter!

All our releases are published via Bandcamp, where you can buy and download the latest official Sidewinder music

We promote new releases and publish content for streaming on YouTube, so be sure to subscribe to our channel

Catch the latest news from us on X and stay up to date with everything Sidewinder

Got any comments or questions for us? Drop us an email and we'll get back to you quick-like