“Surprisingly enough, this caught on and people asked for more,” Jean-Marie Cannie told the anti-piracy lobby group IMSTA in 2008. Spotting a niche in the market, their first was called Porntris – an adult version of Tetris – that was sold on floppy disks via classified ads in the back of Computer Magazine. In 1995, two Belgian programmers called Jean-Marie Cannie and Frank Van Biesen left their jobs at Pavell Software, creating computer programs tracking the stock market, to try their hand at videogames. This is the story of FL's unique beginnings, why it continually found itself at the crossroads of sonic innovations and why community has come to define “the most influential beat program since the MPC”. Genres and sounds that went on to define and shape electronic music – and pop culture – more than once.
But for FruityLoops, later FL Studio, it found itself at the core of the conversation across the development of multiple genres and styles all across the world. And to an extent, that's the case with the humble DAW – after all, the idea at least is that they're just a series of tools to turn ideas into creations, as seamlessly as possible.
How much credit can you give a tool for creating art? Surely it's like praising the paintbrush for a great painting, or the typewriter for a best-selling novel.
