PTZ - Life in the Sewer

The group Penitenziagite was formed in 1985 by Jens Petersen, Oskar Kovacs and John Hansen. They all met at their school in a suburb of Copenhagen. 

At the time they didn't have any instruments or equipment, but they wanted to make electronic music inspired by Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk, nonetheless.

As the years went by, a few instruments were added to the group's arsenal, but they didn't really know how to write songs and they didn't have a proper rehearsal space plus they were still busy with school.

Henrik Jensen joined the group in 1987 after having met Oskar and Jens in high-school and was very eager to just start producing tracks - although he too didn't have any instruments or composition knowledge. 

After another year with no real output an opportunity suddenly emerged: The group was offered an entire apartment at a very low rate in central Copenhagen! They accepted the offer, but there was one significant catch: The apartment was a complete mess and required a complete make-over to be usable in any way. In fact, it was so bad that a friend who was visiting at an early stage couldn't help but compare it to a sewer!

The apartment and the studio now had a name: The Sewer. 

The group spent more than a year trying to fix up the sewer since none of the members knew how to do anything practical with their hands. 

In 1990, John decided to leave the group, which along the way was renamed from Penitenziagite to PTZ. 

The year after, Jacob Neis joined the group, and helped setting a clearer direction for the group's musical style. PTZ played their first live gig at "Den Grå Hal" in Freetown Christiania. The track Clone was used as an intro, then Impetrance and Tintin followed.

The tracks were produced on very little equipment:
* Yamaha TX16W sampler
* Bit One synthesizer
* Korg DW-6000 synthesizer
* Crumar DS-2 synthesizer
* Korg VC-10 vocoder 
* Roland TR-808 drum machine
* Alesis 1622 Mixing console
* BOSS SE-50 Effects processor
* Amiga 500 computer with Dr. T KCS software

Another gig was performed in "Pumpehuset", Copenhagen in 1992 where FRS was added to the set. Oskar left the group later that same year.

The group was renamed to Neotek in 1993.