Draft:Dubmood
Dubmood | |
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![]() Dubmood at the 2008 Blip Festival in New York | |
Background information | |
Birth name | Kalle Jonsson |
Born | 1985 Goteborg, Sweden |
Genres | Chiptune, techno, house, electronic music, rock, dubstep, electro house |
Years active | 1996-present |
Labels | Data AirlinesRazor 1911Roker PromocionWagram |
Website | Dubmood on Bandcamp |
Kalle Jonsson, born in Gothenburg in the Majorna district in 1985, aka Dubmood, is a Swedish producer and composer of electronic, pop and rock music, best known for their chiptune (or "8-bit") works, and within the Warez scene. They are a longtime member of Razor 1911, considered by the U.S. Department of Justice to be the oldest hacking group on the Internet. Dubmood has contributed to many musical productions both as a solo artist, in groups, and as a producer[1].
Dubmood gained exposure on the 8-bit scene in the late 1990s through the PC, Atari and Amiga demo scenes where their music was featured. Following a rapidly growing interest in chiptune from Europeans, Dubmood began touring in Scandinavia.
Since 2006, Jonsson has lived in Marseille in France, where they founded the Data Airlines label and pursued an artistic career, producing and touring in particular with Oai Star. Dubmood is widely known in the chiptune community for their initiatives and experiments with different musical genres.
Biography
Youth and the Demoscene
Jonsson grew up with computers, saying in an interview that their interest in retro computer hardware came both from their father, who had several Ataris and Commodores installed around the house, and from their older brother's shared inerest in thte demoscene and “crackart” as an ASCII artist. Although they did not have a traditional musical education, Dubmood tried to compose using GFA BASiC on an Atari 1040 STFM, until he received Fasttracker II for MS-DOS from their older brother. Later, Dubmood briefly used Protracker ST for a few years before returning to a PC platform. In the late 1990s they joined the Norwegian demo band Fadeout and was shaped by the highly creative but extremely competitive atmosphere of the Scandinavian demo scene. With Fadeout, Dubmood contributed to several demos, intros, chip disks and co-organized demo parties. However, when the group broke up, they joined forces with other Swedish composers from the chiptune scene of the same generation as him: they created a new, exclusively Swedish, demo group called Fyllecell. Other members included Zabutom, with whom Dubmood subsequently created many of their most popular works to this day. During this time, Dubmood was releasing music under different aliases for other groups like DiVINE, DEViANCE, TRSi and MYTH.
Razor 1911
Later, in the 2000s, Dubmood was recruited into the demo division of Razor 1911, which recently underwent major internal changes due to a significant number of team members moving to Fairlight. In Razor 1911, they teamed up with veterans such as Sector9, German coder Hetero and chiptune legend WoTW. Then joined by a French team of coders and artists, Dubmood became a big name in the chiptune community by participating in numerous Razor 1911 productions between 2001 and 2003. A Best Of album is also available containing music from this era . Due to a lack of activity in this division, however, the group saw its productions decline in the mid-2000s, followed by several hard blows in the Warez scene. But in 2006, Razor 1911 returned from hiatus and began to release games again. In 2010, the legend of the French chiptune scene, Rez, joined forces with Dubmood and their prolific duo gave rise to 64kb intros allowing them to win the Demo Scene Awards, in 2011.
Evolution as a music producer
Dubmood began its evolution into music production outside the boundaries of the demo scene by producing local rappers – the result is called Chiphop, and released on the Fyllecell label. These works received a lot of attention, even finding themselves smuggled (bootlegs) by a Swedish ragga and hip hop collective, called Svenska Akademien ("the Swedish Academy", in French). Dubmood would later feature on one of this group's official singles. At that time, Dubmood was touring Scandinavia, France and Switzerland, accompanied by rapper Boltes. On stage, Dubmood mixed their own chip music with two Atari STs while Boltes rapped and interacted with the audience.
Dance Music & Data Airlines
In 2006, thanks to the meeting of Sidabitball and Confipop in the south of France, Dubmood began producing music on Game Boys, using LSDj. Strongly influenced by the wave of electro house, Dubmood then changed its previous styles and released the album “C’tait better in the GDR”. This opus is a long mix of 16 tracks all composed and mixed together with two Game Boy Colors, and is very influenced by Cirez D, The Knife and Ed Bangers. The album was considered by some to be a turning point in the chiptune community, which had then only heard imitations of crack music from the 1990s. This earned Dubmood to be programmed at one of the most old and famous French festivals Le Printemps de Bourges, where they performed under the monkier “Découverte”. Dubmood contributed to the emergence of the fledgling demo scene and its new European audience. It was during this period that Jonsson moved to France and founded Data Airlines, a label solely focused on chiptune.
Discography
Album | Year |
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Lost Floppies Vol. 1 | 2006 |
Lost Floppies Vol. 2 | 2013 |
Bloodbags and Downtube Shifters | 2020 |