Sm0gtom80 Live at DATASTORM, September 2
For the past few years I’ve been doing jams together with Sm0hm (aka Simon Mattisson) and his magic wizardry with his weird machines and custom software. We haven’t released any of it yet, but now we’ll perform live at the summer edition of DATASTORM under the well-tasting name “Sm0gtom80”. More info here.
8bitklubben, Copenhagen, August 23
Tomorrow I’m showing a new robot music project I’m working on together with Jacob Remin. It’s at CPH loves Chipwrecked at 8bitklubben in Copenhagen, at the amazing Illutron boat where me and Jacob did a residency last week. Expect to see more of this project in the future, but for now I’ll just leave you with a little gif of this:
Live w/ Krispr, Umeå, July 16
I’m doing an improvised set together with these two good-looking guys in Krispr at Gröna Älgen in Umeå tonight. We’re not really sure what’s going to happen yet, but I know that I will play the defMON.
Screening at Vector Festival
Vector Festival in Toronto will show Fist of Trade, a C-64 PETSCII-demo with my music in it, as part of their demoscene exhibition Execute! From Scene to Screen today. Fist of Trade was originally released at Datastorm 2014, and was on my latest album, Floptrik.
The DATASTORM is Coming
DATASTORM is one of the best 8-bit demoparties around, and this year I’m helping out with the organization. We’ve got some pretty major plans that will be revealed soon enough. But for now I can say that it will be twice as big, with a huge tent outside for concerts, screenings, DJ-sets, drinks, food, etcetera. The inside area will be for more focused on, you know, actually doing all that computer stuff. And there’ll be talks from some pretty amazing old hackers and crackers. Yep yep!
DATASTORM is in Göteborg, Sweden 1-3 September. Don’t miss out!
V/A: Let’s Kill Quality
It’s been a while since I released a low quality MP3, but now I’m back with a 24kbps MP3 on the compilation Let’s Kill Quality on Feed Me Glass Records. 74 tracks by 43 artists in 252 minutes – all in 43.5 megabytez. My song is a C64+TR-808 that you haven’t heard before.
Floptrik
Floptrik is an album with Commodore 64 electro/acid/funk songs available as normal recordings for download, and as executable C64-programs on a 3.5″ floppy. Everything can be downloaded from CPU Records. The floppy is available at bleep.com, but might disappear fast.
█ Stream and download at Bandcamp
█ Promo-mix at Soundcloud
█ YouTube playlist
– “Birds On Fire Note” captures what sets Carlsson apart from gimmicky chiptune artists. The heaving bassline on “Monday Night,” for instance, rivals any modern techno or dubstep track. Floptrik sounds like literal computer music. It’s not always easy listening, but it’s a fascinating extension of the CPU aesthetic.”
– Andrew Ryce, Resident Advisor
The programs are remixes and visuals, all contained in a 170 kilobyte disk image. They can be played on a Commodore 64 or in an emulator (instructions here). The remixes sound different every time they are played, by re-arranging the song and changing the instruments. The visuals are all in C64’s colourful ASCII-mode, PETSCII, and were made by Raquel Meyers, Linde, and Johan Kotlinski aka Mathman. See below. Originally released in the demoscene.
The audio recordings are in stereo, where the left channel uses the new SID-chip (8580), and the right uses the old one (6581). Both play the same 3 voices of the original song, but since the chips are different you get these cool hi-fi stereo lifestyle defects.
“Bet you didn’t know the Commodore64 could make dance floor jams like this.”
– Sedge808, including Floptrik in a Best of June list.
Academic Article on Text Graphics
A new issue of the academic journal WiderScreen was released today, and includes a text by me. The theme of the issue is text art, and my text takes a critical look at the terminology surrounding text graphics. In short, I look at ASCII, PETSCII, Unicode art and Shift-JIS and ask whether these encoding terms are the most relevant way to categorize them today.
Read the article: full article or my shorter comment on Chipflip.
There are some very good contributions by e.g Raquel Meyers, Tommy Musturi, Gleb Albert, Dan Farrimond, Markku Reunanen, Daniel Botz and many more. So you should check out the whole issue, if you’re into this texty stuff.
Soundtrack for BBS-documentary
I’ve made the music for Simon Klose‘s documentary BBS – nätet innan webben (the net before the web). It’s a brief look into Swedish BBS-culture, before the web took over. It premieres at Internetmuseum in Stockholm 13 June.
Interview for Slovenian TV
Here is a clip about me in the Slovenian public service station RTV. I’m not sure what they’re saying, but the interview felt good afterwards (for a change) so hopefully it’s all good.