Dubmood

Dubmood
Dubmood live at the Blip Festival in New York 2008
Background information
Birth name	Kalle Jonsson
Origin	Gothenburg, Sweden
Genres	chip music 8-bit Instrumental music, electronic music, techno, electro house
Occupations	Composer, musician, music producer, arranger
Years active	1996–present
Labels	Data Airlines Jahtari Roker Promocion/Wagram [1]
Associated acts	Razor 1911, Massilia Sound System, Oai Star, Svenska Akademien

Kalle Jonsson (born in Majorna, Göteborg, Sweden) aka Dubmood is a Swedish composer and producer of electronic, pop, rock and dance music best known for his works in the chiptune (8-bit) genre and within the computer piracy movement known as the Warez scene.^[2] He is a long-time public member of Razor 1911, referred to as the oldest piracy software ring on the internet by the US department of justice ^[3] and has a long list of musical works, both as a solo-artists, with numerous bands and as a studio-producer and remixer.^[4]

He grew to notoriety in the 8-bit scene during the late 90s from being featured in a lot of demos and crack intros on both the PC, Atari and Amiga demoscene and started touring Scandinavia when the first wave of micromusic exploded in Europe in the early 00s. From being an old-timer, Dubmood is considered somewhat of a style-originator and reference in the chip music community and has brought much mainstream popularity to the genre. In 2006 he permanently moved to Marseilles in France where he founded the label Data Airlines and has been pursuing a music-career ever since and has been producing and touring with south French notorieties as Oai Star and Massilia Sound System.^[5]

Biography

Early Years & Demoscene formation

Dubmood grew up with computers, in interviews he has stated that his found interest in vintage computer hardware came from both his father who had several ataris and commodores around the house and his elder brothers activities in the demo and crackart scene as an ASCII-artist.^[6] He prefer watching crack intros to playing computer games and recorded each games music-score to be able to listen to it elsewhere. Spite not having any traditional musical education, Dubmood tried to compose music by using GFA BASiC on an Atari 1040 STfm until his elder brother supplied him with Fastracker II for MS-DOS which he had picked up at a local demo party called ICING96. Dubmood later switched to Protracker ST for a few years before going back to the PC-platform. In the late 90s he joined the norvegian demo group Fadeout and got formed by the very creative but extremely competitive atmosphere of the Scandinavian demo scene at this time. With Fadeout Dubmood contributed to several demos, intros, chip disks and co-organised demo partys but when the group split he joined forces with other Swedish demo scene chiptune composers from the same generation and created an all-Swedish demo group and net label called Fyllecell. Among the other members were Zabutom with whom Dubmood created many of his must popular works until today. During this time Dubmood released music under several different pseudonyms for cracking-groups like DiVINE, DEViANCE, TRSi and MYTH. ^[7]

Razor 1911

"We Have Accidently Borrowed Your Votedisk", a 64k intro from Razor 1911 with music by Dubmood released in 2011

Late 2000 Dubmood got recruited to the Demo division of Razor 1911 who had recently had some big changes to its line-up due to a big chunk of the crew had walked over to Fairlight. In Razor 1911 he joined forces with oldschoolers like Sector9, the German coder Hetero and chip music legend WoTW. Later joined by a French team of coders and artists, Dubmood become a big name in the underground chip music community by being featured in numerous Razor 1911 productions during 2001-2003 and there is a Best Of album available with music from this period. Due to lack of activity in the cracking-division the group saw a drop in releases during the mid 00s following several busts and general increased precaution in the warez scene but in 2006 Razor 1911 did a comeback and has been releasing big titles ever since. In 2010 the French chip scene legend Rez teamed up with Dubmood and as a prolific duo they have been putting out 64kb intros and won the Demo Scene Awards public choice on Revision 2011. ^[8]

D-bug/Automation

In 2007, Dubmood came full circle by joining the Atari ST crew that had made the intros back in the 80s that founded Dubmoods interest for the demo scene and chip music and he has been featured in several new releases on the Atari ST platform. At the same time Dubmood put out two well-received mixtapes called The Mighty Pirate Sessions with a a blend of his Atari-music and famous Amiga chiptunes re-composed on the Atari platform.

Evolution as a music producer

Dubmood started his music production outside the demo scene boundaries by producing local rappers in making what he called chiphop and releasing it on the Fyllecell label. He got a lot of attention from a series of bootleg chiptune remixes by a Swedish hip hop and reggae collective called Svenska Akademien and was later featured on one of their single with an official remix. At this time Dubmood could be seen touring Scandinavia, France and Switzerland together with Jönköping-based Rapper and radio-profile Boltes. The shows consisted of Dubmood mixing his own chip music with two Atari STs and Boltes rapping and interacting with the audience. ^[9]

Dance Music & Data Airlines

Dubmood on stage with Oai Star in 2010

In 2006, Dubmood, thanks to meeting Sidabitball & Confipop in southern France, started making music on the nintendo Gameboy using LSDj. Dubmood, heavy influenced by the new wave of Electro House changed from his previous styles and put out the album C'etait mieux en RDA (French for ”It was better in DDR”). The Album is one long mix of 16 tracks all composed and mixed together with two game boy colors and is heavily influenced by Cirez D, The Knife and Ed Bangers. The Album is considered a big turning point for the game boy chip music community that had until the point sounded more or less the same imitations of crack intro music of the 90s and it earned Dubmood a spot on one of France biggest and oldest music festivals Printemps de Bourges and helped the chip music scene to reach out to a more mainstream dance music audience in Europe. By this time Dubmood moved to France and founded Data Airlines, a label dedicated to the blend of 8bit in dance music and the label organised a festival with some of the biggest names names the international chip scene had to offer in Marseilles in 2007. He also made performances with French reggae artist Papet-J from Massilia Sound System and a bootleg of one of their concerts is circulating on the internet. Oai Star In the summer of 2008, Dubmood was asked to produce two songs on the upcoming Oai Star album after the tragic death of one of the singers and founder of the group Lux B. The collaboration with the group went well and in the end Dubmood produced all the tracks on the album and went on a two year tour with the group. The blend of French rocknroll, southern ragga muffin and Dubmoods eclectic electro even made it on national television and several songs from the album got extensive radio-listings in France.

Badlands

In 2011 Dubmood released a new four track EP called badlands where he again has change styles and all four songs included vocals and guitars. He has expressed a willingness to reach out beyond the limits of the chip tune sounds and Badlands is heavily inspired by Gorillaz, The Knife and LCD Soundsystem. Since then, Dubmood is touring as a live band playing his mix of old and new chip music together with Swedish game boy artist Maskinoperatör on drums and Gem Tos on guitar and vocal duty.

Gear and Software

Dubmood is frequently asked during interviews what gear and software he is using and here is a list of what he has claimed to use.

Software

Fasttracker 2
Sidsound Designer
Protracker
MaxYMizer
STj
LSDj
Ableton Live
Skaletracker

Hardware

Atari ST
Gameboy
Casio DG-20
Moog Liberation
Yamaha DD12
Korg VC-10

Discography

Album

• 2004 – Best of 2001–2003 – Razor 1911 (Samling) (Chipdisk)
• 2006 – The (Mighty) Pirate Sessions #1 – Razor 1911/Fyllecell Records FLC010
• 2006 – The (Mighty) Pirate Sessions #2 – Razor 1911/Fyllecell Records FLC011
• 2007 – C'etait mieux en RDA – Razor 1911/Data Airlines/Rebel Petset DATA001
• 2008 – Data Airlines Promo Spring 2008 – Data Airlines DATA04P
• 2008 – Traverse De RN85 – Data Airlines DATA005
• 2008 – Toffelskater Remixes – Data Airlines DATA007

EPs

• 2004 – The Message RMX feat. Zabutom – Fyllecell Records FLC006
• 2004 – Shook Ones RMX feat. Zabutom – Fyllecell Records FLC008
• 2007 – Live at Microdisko Marseille feat. Papet-J & Capitaine Armenie – Razor 1911/Fyllecell Records FLC013
• 2007 – Crackmusic Best of 2004–2007 – Razor 1911/Data Airlines DATA002
• 2008 – Atari-Ska L'Atakk – Jahtari JTR EP05
• 2011 - Badlands - Data Airlines DATA020

Featured In

• 2001 – Bastard Artists from Hell – BAFHpack #1 (Artpack/Chipdisk)
• 2001 – Bastard Artists from Hell – BAFHpack #2 (Artpack/Chipdisk)
• 2001 – Razor 1911 – Chipdisk #1 (Chipdisk)
• 2002 – Bastard Artists from Hell – BAFHpack #3 (Artpack/Chipdisk)
• 2002 – Chemical Reaction – cROtesque v1 (Samling) (Chipdisk)
• 2002 – Chemical Reaction – miCRO (Chipdisk)
• 2002 – Bastard Artists from Hell – BAFHpack #4 (Artpack/Chipdisk)
• 2002 – Razor 1911 – Chipdisk #2 (Chipdisk)
• 2002 – Chemical Reaction – cROtesque (Samling) (Chipdisk)
• 2003 – Chemical Reaction – miCRO.v2 elek.tro (Chipdisk)
• 2003 – Razor 1911 – Chipdisk #3 (Chipdisk)
• 2003 – YMRockerz – Popstars! YMR03 (Chipdisk)
• 2003 – Fyllecell & Friends – and then we went to DH 2003... – Fyllecell Records – FLC003
• 2004 – Razor 1911 – Chipdisk #4 – The Essentials (Chipdisk)
• 2004 – Fyllecell & Friends – and then we went to DH 2002... – Fyllecell Records – FLC007
• 2006 – YMRockerz – warptYMe YMR06 (Chipdisk & Floppy)
• 2007 – Svenska Akademien – Akut! Akut! – Swingkids Productions/Bad Taste Records BTR117/SvAK014
• 2007 – Goto80 – Zyndabox – Candymind Records CANDY033
• 2007 – Det Funkar – All eventuell uppvaktning på min 50års dag undanbedes – Swingkids Productions
• 2008 – Hypnodisco – Data Airlines DATA006

References

1. ^ Discography site Retrieved 22 August 2011
2. ^ Review of Atari-Ska L'Atakk, The Wire Issue 289, March 2008. Online copy
3. ^ US Department of Justice on Razor 1911 busts
4. ^ "Dubmood". Jahtari homepage. http://www.jahtari.org/artists/dubmood.htm. Retrieved 2008-02-06. 
5. ^ Jeudi 20 décembre 2007 - ARTE
6. ^ Interview with Amiga Music Preservation in 2002
7. ^ Interview with Piratbyrån read 2006-02-22
8. ^ Scene Awards 2010 webste
9. ^ Interview with Designfederation.net February 2008

• Dubmood's Official Website
• Interview with Dubmood at designfederation.net, February 2008
• Dubmood at last.fm
• http://www.elapse.se/dubmood/biography/