Essence was a German based Amiga demo group, formed in late 1992 by Touchstone (code), Groo & Rufferto (gfx), Dascon (music), Slicer (swap) and PowerSwap (swap) all previous members of Delicious Designs, who wanted to form a German friendship group with members all living close by each other. Their first production Dreaming (originally prepared for Delicious) was released in december, in the days before The Party 1992. Within the intro, the joining of German swapper Elric (previously known as Speedhawk/Rebels) was announced. At The Party itself, Groo and Rufferto scored a strong third place in the graphics competition with Attack.
In early 1993, German musician Chromag - a friend of Dascon's - left Dual Crew to join. The first official meeting was held in february, at Slicer's place, and the Meeting Intro 93 was released. Next the group started working on a music disk for Chromag, but a few things did NOT go according to plan. Dual Crew organizer Red Devil was very upset at Chromag leaving, and extensively tried to get him to rejoin, promising him an awesome music disk. As a result, Chromag finally reconsidered, and rejoined Dual Crew Shining (the merge had happened in the meantime), and the result was released later that year as Chromagic. So Essence stood with a nearly completed musicdisk of their own, and no musicians who had enough good tunes lying around to justify a musicdisk for any of them - so a decision was made to rework some of the routines for a trackmo instead, and so work started on "A.S.S." In march, the group produced two pack menues for Elric Broken Tankard and Slicer (Brainfood). Then Slicer decided to leave the scene, and Powerswap changed his handle to P$ and stopped swapping to concentrate on organizing the group. The one remaining swapper in the group was thus Elric, who around the same time got very inactive, and released just one single issue of his pack. Finally he was asked to leave, and left both Essence and the scene. So, in april, the swapper problem was resolved when Slam was recruited from X-Trade. He was given Elric's pack, slightly reworked it - the name changed to Broken Tankard - and released many issues. Then the group grew even bigger, as three new members were recruited - first Storm (swap) came from DCS in may, and he brought in WOTW (music) from The Silents and Roman (code) from Agnostic Front the following month. Roman's first production for Essence was the intro Cardiac Arrest in july. Touchstone also made a quick production for WOTW to publish his chip tunes, and thus Talktime 1 was released - unfortunately it became a one-off. At 680xx Convention 1993 at the very beginning of august, the pack Broken Tankard 15 welcomed Raw Style as a new member from DCS. Later in august, WOTW's close friend D-Sign (gfx) followed from The Silents. The group's first major demo production, A.S.S., was then released in august. After failing to complete it for two parties in a row, the demo was finally released outside of any competition. After this followed a more quiet period, and a 40k intro was prepared for the competition at the big The Party in denmark in december. Roman, Touchstone, Slam, D-Sign, CAT, Dascon and WOTW all went to the party, and the intro - D - finally reached second position in the competition, and was thus the group's biggest success yet.
Mop joined from Alcatraz in february 1994 since he wasn't content with the way the diskmag he was editor for there, Compass, was heading. Essence thus launched their own diskmagazine, ROM 1, in August.
Around the middle of 1995, they recruited German musician Blackthorne from TRSI, who soon changed his handle to Poldi and contributed music to ROM 5 - the very issue where his joining was announced.
After persuading two famous artists of times past (musician Chromag and graphicians Gfx-Twins) to return to the scene under their wings during 1996 they strengthened their German section considerably. They further boosted their abilities with the recruitment of the entire French Skarla crew in the late months of the year - Horus (3d), Jamie (code), Marvin (music) and Norm (graphics). Their demo Makaveli reached the second place at The Party 1996, which was the highest placing of an Essence demo ever.
ROM 9 reported that, after releasing their last demo for Essence, Thug Life at Mekka & Symposium 1997 at the end of march 1997, the four ex-Skarla members that had just joined up last year decided to move on to Mystic. The end of the year saw Essence recruiting their first ever Spanish members; the two remaining active guys from the old Spanish group Goblins - Lentium and Phornee. These two simultaneously joined Network, to still have roots in the Spanish scene.
For a while, Frame and Origo were double members of C-Lous and Essence, but later stepped down from their Essence memberships.
