I was interviewed for creating the game Cybergames for the Commodore Amiga in the mid-90s.
Just got my copy of the book Svensk videospelsutveckling (Swedish computer game development), where I’m one of the 150 people interviewed for their contribution to game development in Sweden from the 50s to the 90s.
It’s available to buy at Bokus and several other Swedish bookshops.
Haven’t decided yet if that is enough or if I should aim for a couple more tracks until I’m done. The ten tracks I have now totals in at 65 minutes. Hmm.. I guess there’s truly not something called a full length album anymore. When I released my last real CD album in 1999 a full lengther meant around 72 minutes. I’m not sure there’s a limit anymore, as long as it’s a digital release. I should get around to start the search for a label now though.
Here’s a better version of my new track called Deep Strategy. Now I just need one more track for my (full length) album. I’m starting to search for a suitable label, so please do hit me with any suggestion you might have. The style will mostly be electronic dance music on the deeper, more atmospheric side, with a mixture of progressive, deep house, modern techno and a dash of ambient. Think Lost and found, Bedrock, Sudbeat and Microcastle.
https://soundcloud.com/knatter/deep-strategy-clip
Which will of course be part of my next album which now is aaaaalmost finished.
I was digging around in some of my old boxes and came across a big bunch of cassette tapes. Most of them are more or less irrelevant today – they contain the normal stuff a young man would record from the radio and LP:s in the early 80s to mid 90s. But some actually have tunes that I produced in the early to mid 90s, when I was part of this company / band called Cyberpunk Development. That music was never released so it will be fun to listen to it again, some odd 20 years later. If it’s any good I will put it up on my Soundcloud page.
Oh, and there is also a DAT, but I don’t have any way of playing it, since I don’t have a DAT-player. Just had a look at Ebay and they are super expensive. Like 5000 SEK and upwards for a portable Sony DAT Walkman. What the hell?!
I might get another drum machine. Just wow Arturia. You just made a lot of producers salivate, all at once. Now where, in my tiny studio would I be able to fit this monster?
Grayness and depression.
Dear Esther: Landmark edition for PS4 could very well be the most boring game I have ever played. This narrative driven exploration game literally put me to sleep. Yes, after strolling around a grey and ugly island for about an hour, listening to a man reading from his letters to Esther, I fell asleep in my chair. Actually, calling this a game is a huge overstatement, because it doesn’t seem to have any interactions at all. There are no puzzles or mysteries to solve, except holding the joystick forward and and listening to the emerging story once you reach certain points on the map. Oh well it’s my own fault for not checking it out you Youtube before buying. Wasn’t really that expensive anyway.
Many people seems to like the track I posted a preview of on Instagram the other day, so I’ve decided to finish it. Been working on it today and I think it’s turning out great. Still have to name it though…
Somebody asked my why I don’t do remixes anymore. Well I did a lot of them, for quite a while. You can listen to most of them here. I’ll try to explain why I stopped. When I started remixing other artists it was more or less just for fun. This was back in the early days of mp3.com, when independent artists actually could make a buck from their music by uploading it to the mp3.com web site. Think late 90s, before the first internet bubble. Through that site and a few other I got in contact with artists like Mystical Sun and Dimbodius. I would do “swap-remixes” which meant I would remix someone and they would remix me. No money involved and I only remixed tracks that I liked. Although I’m still waiting for my Mystical Sun remix, Richard. ;)
One thing led to another and suddenly I would get requests to do more high profile stuff, like cover “remixes” of Klaus Schulze and Jean-Michel Jarre. Then when I started to produce more dance oriented music I got requests to do those kinds of remixes, which I did.
But the thing is, it was always more or less for free. The deal was I would get 50% of the income, but there was always a floor of say $100. So I wouldn’t get any money until my remix made at least $100. Being this was remixes of usually lesser known artists on lesser known labels.. Guess what I made from remixing all these tracks from the mid 2000 onward. You guessed right. I made $0.
Please don’t misunderstand me. If you’ve produced electronic music for as long as I have, you’re not in it for the money. The green I’ve made from my music during all of these years are about the same amount that I make one month working with web design and development. But you get to the point where it’s not fun anymore to put all this time and effort into making these remixes. You get zero payment from it and once the remix has been delivered to the label, that’s that and you basically never hear anything else about it. No feedback, no nothing.
Still I thought if I keep doing this long enough someone important will notice and I will get that brake, that chance to do a remix that really matters. Well that didn’t happen. When I started thinking about how I instead could have produced a couple of my own albums, the decision to stop doing remixes wasn’t that hard to make.
So there you have it. I quit remixing other artists because it didn’t lead anywhere. I rarely got any feedback and it took away time and inspiration that I could have used for my own music.