A poem:

Package for me,
What can it be?
I'm filled with glee,
Let's open and see!

Feit shoes!

A few weeks back indie production company world wide mind films (in Los Angeles) contacted me and asked for permission to license one of my songs for a documentary about indie sneaker company Feit (in Australia). 

The film is about the owner's long struggle for his art - to create the ultimate sneakers, facing global behemoths like Nike et al. I've seen a rough edit and the film looks great.

As payment I decided for a BRILLIANT pair of Hunter Black - street sneakers, so neat and ninja I can also use them at finer dinner parties.

Making a living of music is great, and never the way you expect it to be. When it comes in doses like this, incredible shoes as barter for a license, it is awesome.

I'll update with a link to the film when it's out.

A sign of ice crystal importance!

I found this, far into the wilderness, on one of my daring ski expeditions.

Lots of things happening lately, amongst them is a stern reduction of THINGS.

I'm happy to get rid of stuff - and heavy hardware is the easiest to wave off. Still, a touch of sadness when old friends travel separate paths alone. A little obituary is in place.

Roland JD-800

The Roland JD-800 was a synth I dreamed about as a kid with Protracker, I remember reading the brochure over and over and over again. At the time, I was clueless to hardware setups, I had no idea a rompler was not really what I should get - I was just fascinated with the size, the sounds and the sheer number of controls and buttons.

A few years ago, I had some room in my budget (WTF). I knew I didn't really need the beast, but I found a cheap one in Japan, and bought it for myself as a present - fulfilling a misguided wish in my youth.

So this become a huge, unnecessary but dearly loved toy. I enjoyed programming the fat-ass. The wave memory is full of new agey waveforms, but you can build and manipulate them into weird, sci-fi'ish soundscapes with all the modulation and envelope opportunities. As long as you keep the unit in monotimbral mode, you can also spruce it up pretty good with the onboard effects.

Can't think of any track where you can really hear it, but I made sure to sample all my own sounds and edits before parting ways. Some of the material suits an upcoming project perfectly.

Korg Prophecy

The Prophecy I've had on and off over the years, in multiple units.

The first Prophecy was my third synthesizer, I bought it while studying, and I remember eating only instant noodles for half a year, sacrificing food and party budget to afford it. I loved the myriad of virtual synthesis models available, the Prophecy taught me a great deal about synthesis.

But the most valuable lesson I got from this unit, was to realize that sequencing synths via MIDI is daft - it's much better to just sample them and keep everything "in the box", particularly for hassle-free total recall setups. This was probably spurred on by the fact that the Prophecy was monophonic. 

I sold the first one to fund going all-computer based, but got another one recently when I found a cheap used one. Mostly I just used it as a controller, because of it's smaller size and strong durability. 

The Prophecy is quite noticeable in my late 90ies material. After that not so much, but like the JD, I have now sampled most of my sounds and they're now more approachable.

Thanks so much guys, it's been a blast. Best of luck, I know you're in good hands.

I did a cover version of track Russerne Kommer, together with the brilliant Calle Hamre on vocals. The original song is a legendary punk-synth track by Zimmermann, from the early eighties. If you grew up in Bergen you are certain to have shouted the chorus at some superbly chaotic party, regardless if you are communist or capitalist or social democrat or pastafarian.

I put a lot of stuff in the cover, using a nice palette of references. I'll type out a production note later, right now just excited to see how it'll work live - the song is quite simply a bad-ass song, and now it also has bad-ass beats.

The track is part of a brand new compilation album "Bergensbølgene", where various artists from Bergen cover other classic artists from Bergen. This coming Wednesday there's a huge release party for the album, and I'll be performing the track together with Calle Hamre - and perhaps also Mr Zimmermann!

Other artists performing: Nathalie Nordnes, Ove Thue, Fjorden Baby, Pogo Pops, The Soul Express Orchestra, Tor Endresen, Chickendales, Karoline Krüger, Christine Guldbrandsen, Mads Berven Sekstett, Tarmer, and more.

• Bergensbølgene - Et dykk i Bergens pop og rock historie
• Russerne Kommer (Ugress feat Calle Hamre/Zimmermann)
• Venue: Logen, Ole Bulls Plass
• Date: Wednesday March 24th, 20:00
• Tickets: NOK 210, presale Logen and Apollon

More info at Logen website.

Now A Depth Is Reached.

Let's go exploring!

"Oppskrifter på aktuelle surrogater av ville vekster."

Hah, this is super neat, I got the best present ever yesterday: "Ugress er også mat", a book with recipes for meager times... how to cook and fix food with wild plants and weeds. Translated the title means "Weeds are also food", with funky subtitle "Recipes for available substitutes of wild growth".

The book is printed in 1941, during World War II, where our ancestors made coffee from wood, and they had to watch Youtube on the village cinema. I love the font, and the feel of the paper, it feels like an ancient artifact.

This is a great follow-up to the Ugress soap I got a few weeks back:

Most heartiest thanks to Maria for soap and Magnus/ Kamilla for the book!

Of course, I'm out of town, the bits come rolling in one by zero.

8-bit Music Party at Landmark, organized by BEK. 8-Bit The Movie, lots of great artists, an interactive Tomb Raider installation, VJs... There are also workshops right now at BEK, for Nanoloop and LSDJ.

Sucks not being there.

Just got the numbers for the fourth quarter of 2009 from my aggregator Artspages, now I have complete overview of 2009. Did some quick stats on downloads vs streams, per quarter.

These are based on actual INCOME from each type, not number of downloads / streams.

• iTunes and Spotify are by far the biggest players.
• First quarter I made all my money on downloads.
• Sharp rise in both downloads and streaming when Reminiscience was released.
• As expected, slow decline in downloads since release (less exposure over time).
• Except, STREAMING actually continues to grow, even with less exposure.
• Last quarter, 1/4th of my income is from streaming .
• Last quarter, income from streaming is almost up to 50% of first quarter's downloads!

Streaming is picking up steam.

I'm certain, this has more to do with the fact that a growing number of people are streaming, than my music growing more popular. But it does indicate, following the invisible lines indicated - in a year or two, streaming will surpass downloads as my primary source of income from digital distribution.

Rarely do I miss the Windows platform, but this little box stings my retro 8-bit heart just a little bit.

The delicious HyperSID is a synthesizer built on the C64 soundchip, remotely controlled (with total recall) by a VST plugin in your host. Alas, Windows only for now.

My photo-documentarian Eivind Senneset shot a new batch of great moments from the latest live show.

We also took some new promotional photos. I uploaded a selection to my Flickr account.

Popround, a mixtape collective, is featuring a neat amounts of my music on their "Beyond The Fjord" compilation. 

"This was fun – I went on a little mission to find out what’s going on in Norway, and found all sorts of really interesting stuff. In particular there’s Gisle Martens Meyer, a kind of… musical David Lynch?"

That has to be the best compliment I have ever had. Thanks Yari!

Listen to mixtape at Popround, lots of great Norwegian electronics.

I am currently getting rid of much old hardware. Some of it is hard to part with. I spend most of my waking time with technology, in particular computers. They become parts of your life.

Today BEK adopted my beloved old G5, I am happy to know it has found a new home where it will be put to good use. Though, even if I know the little fat-ass will have lots of fun, lots of friends and be very much loved, it still is sad to part ways with such a good and trustworthy friend.

I bought this computer just around the release of Cinematronics in 2004, and it was my main studio workstation until late 2007, when I got a Macbook Pro. All of the NDG films, the film music album, Shadow Of The Beat albums, Ugress - Unicorn and much of the EPs was done on this box. 

In 2007 I decided to become location free, and started moving over to mobile technologies. But ever since, I have kept the G5 standby, mostly because it was a portal back to PowerPC plugins and projects - often the only way to open old projects. But it was also a backup, like when my MBP screen kaputted during the Reminiscience preproduction a year ago, the G5 saved the day.

I have now spent the last week together with my old friend, talking about the good old days, exporting tracks and rendering instruments from the old guy. At first I did this just in case I'd might need it up ahead. But then I realized - I was actually taking farewell, remembering the times we had, the music we made.

It was good to have these last final moments together. For the G5, there are new challenges to met in a great, young environment. For me, I'm off to the clouds, there is not turning back. The final string has been cut.

Thanks for the memories, fatso.

Just a quick note: My excellent webhost Webhuset is (was?) upgrading and moving their datacenter today, there could be static for a moment or two while your browser searches for the new and improved channel.

I did a quick interview with Mike for amigaz.org, a few questions on retro computing, and a mention of me smashing my Amiga. The memories...

There's also a link to some of my earlier music, in module format.

I keep forgetting, some of my tracker music is actually available here and there in the tubes. I still have all of it stored in my digital vaults. One fine day I should find time to collect and somehow present my pre-2000 music.

"Virtual musicians are already real, and they’re only getting realer."

Wired describes Zenph Sound Innovations, which takes existing recordings of musicians (deceased, for now) and models their 'musical personalities' to create new recordings, apparently to critical acclaim (PDF).

The company has raised $10.7 million in funding to pursue their business plan, and hopes to branch out into, among other things, software that would let musicians jam with virtual versions of famous musicians. This work unites music with the very similar trend going on in the movies — Tron 2.0, for example, will clone the young Jeff Bridges. If this goes on, will the major labels and studios actually need musicians and actors? In the future, it could be harder to make money playing guitar with all of the competition from dead or retired artists."

(Via Slashdot.)