Melon Visuals started in the early 1990s in the Philadelphia area. Our roots are in the early days of the U.S. rave scene where electronic music and underground warehouse raves ruled the scene. Our beginnings were very humble. The very first gig we were hired for was for an event called Color Box at a nightclub in a shopping strip (near Spring Garden and Front St). It wasn’t even a paid gig at the time. We had a 60 inch (yes, 60 inch) screen in the back of the room and ran our visuals out of a single Amiga 1200.
From there we started getting more and more gigs around Philadelphia and its suburbs. This radius of work expanded quickly to New York City and as they say once you hit it big in NYC the rest is…almost history!
In NYC we had the pleasure of working with Joey Beltram on his video for Game Form (yes that is our video, read more about it here) and few years later met with Lady Miss Kier of Deee-Lite to create some funkilicious visuals for their performance at a famous NYC nightclub. Towards the end of the 1990s we did a video for Steve Stoll of Proper Records NYC but I don’t believe it was published anywhere. Those were our two “5 seconds” of fame moments! We shall never forget them.
We meet all the DJs we admired face to face and gave their set that additional “oomph” by providing extra insane visuals. Anyone who is old (like me) and attended any of these events will know that when Lenny Dee of Industrial Strength or Adam X DJed the Melon brothers went absolutely bonkers with the visuals. The Sputnik rave at the Newburgh Skate Park comes to mind, yes the one where God Almighty Lenny Dee spun….The sickest, most twisted, hallucination-inducing-visuals were displayed while these two idols of ours played rekkids. Those were the days! The two most memorable raves we performed at in NYC were under the Brooklyn bridge (Satellite Productions) and at the Manhattan Nation Guard Armory New Year’s rave.
As the rave scene slowly died so did our business. Half of the Melon team went to school, the other half went to work in an unrelated industry.
Interestingly, as our lives took different paths and as year 2000 rolled around we no longer were involved in producing visuals, yet we always had fond memories of the 90s rave scene and our contribution to it. We often talked about various parties and the craziness that went with them. I can’t tell you how many parties we were booked for ended up getting busted by the police or fire department. I also can’t tell you how many times people came up to use and asked “hey man, can I have some of the stuff you’re smokin’?”; assuming we were both high because of crazy shit we showed on the screens!
Many years have passed since those wonderful years. Our team of two is now a team of one as my dear brother Maciej, and the genius behind all of the fractal animations sadly….passed away. In his memory I plan on continuing the Melon legacy as Melon Visuals are resurrected in 2021, almost 25 years after our last adventure into the world of visuals WE ARE BACK!