(thing) by Carthag Sun Nov 11 2001 at 17:55:10
"Old school friends Ed Handley and Andy Turner first started working together in 1989. They helped form Black Dog Productions and in 1991 released an album called 'Mbuki Mvuki' as Plaid. In addition to their work as Plaid they have released solo projects under the names Atypic, Balil and Tura and collaborated on several albums under the pseudonyms The Black Dog and Repeat."
From the linernotes

Trainer is a collection of early tracks by the members of Plaid, released as CDs and LPs in 2000 on Warp Records as catalog number WARP74. The tracks were released under many different pseudonyms, and the tracklist is as follows:

Disc 1:

  1. Uneasy Listening - Plaid (unreleased, 1989) - (5:35)
  2. Anything - Plaid (BDP, 1991) - (5:01)
  3. Slice of Cheese - Plaid (BDP, 1991) - (6:00)
  4. Link - Plaid (BDP, 1991) - (6:02)
  5. Perplex - Plaid (BDP, 1991) - (4:05)
  6. Summit - Plaid (BDP, 1991) - (4:37)
  7. Bouncing Cheeks - Plaid (BDP, 1991) - (5:29)
  8. Yak - Plaid (BDP, 1991) - (5:49)
  9. Scoobs in Columbia - Plaid (BDP, 1991) - (5:33)
  10. Chirpy - Plaid (unreleased, 1991) - (4:52)
  11. Prig - Atypic (unreleased, 1991) - (4:52)
  12. Eshish - Balil (unreleased, 1991) - (4:41)
  13. Blah - Atypic (Art, 1992) - (4:46)
  14. Norte Route - Balil (Art, 1992) - (5:15)

Disc 2:

  1. Fly Wings - Plaid (unreleased, 1992) - (4:04)
  2. Whirling of Spirits - Balil (Art, 1992) - (5:54)
  3. Choke and Fly - Balil (Art, 1992) - (5:51)
  4. Small Energies - Balil (Fuse, 1992) - (6:08)
  5. Jolly - Atypic (unreleased, 1991) - (6:05)
  6. Letter - Tura (A13, 1994) - (5:18)
  7. Soft Key - Tura (A13, 1994) - (5:17)
  8. Reishi - Tura (Likemind, 1994) - (9:00)
  9. Uland - Balil (unreleased, 1994) - (4:07)
  10. Tan Sau - Plaid (unreleased, 1994) - (6:07)
  11. Android - Plaid (Clear, 1995) - (6:58)
  12. Angry Dolphin - Plaid (Clear, 1995) - (8:13)

The quality of the album is varying, but generally on the right side of good, though many fans were dissapointed with the release. I particularly like the first disc, but the second disc is quite good as well.

The CD-release comes in a weird cardboard case with earth-tone artwork that looks like it's made from vector-graphics. Inside is a poster with the cover art on one side and the Plaid Television Set on the other.

A trainer is also what game crackers inserted into computergames from the early eighties to the early nineties, before the cheats were put in the games by the developers themselves. Back then, the crackers, while breaking the copy protection, and writing intros for the games, also found out which variables or memory locations stored the number of lives and energy, and locked these or removed the commands that modified them. Sometimes, they added the ability to jump levels or other fancy things like having all weapons from the start.

Usually, the trainer-mode also locked out the highscore, and it was thus used to train the game so you could later make a highscore without the trainer on.

The game Commando was so easy that crackers actually added an "un-trainer" that made the game harder!

Audited April 30, 2002

I like it!