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I fondly remember the Pete Shelley album “XL-1” which had a final track that contained a spectrum program.

You dropped the needle on the record and pressed ‘Run’ simultaneously and it would display an animated set of patterns in sync with the music - and the song lyrics

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For those curious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhKQy580STQ

Fascinating, here's the story from the programmer:

http://www.headen.com/XL1.htm

I'm not sure why he felt he had to write it all in machine code though, sadly he doesn't discuss that decision. Perhaps it was due to the time-dependency of the lyrics?

Without knowing the specifics of that platform, it is likely that the BASIC interpreter was not fast enough to generate the desired effects and animations.

My guess would be quite simply to overcome memory constraints

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