Kjell Nordbø, We Miss You

In January 2005 the C64-composer Zyron got a package with a 5.25″ floppy disk from his friend in Norway. The disk didn’t work, which was annoying. The guy who had sent the disk, Kjell Nordbø, had been active in the demoscene since 1991 but always seemed to operate in the fringe of this fringe subculture. He mostly made what he called “music demos” - executable audiovisual albums - for C64 and sent floppies to a few people who would spread them to the public. This music disk was only given to Zyron, but since the disk didn’t work and he was in the process of moving, the music disk was forgotten. Some time later, Zyron got an e-mail from Kjell’s father who told him that Kjell had committed suicide by hanging himself. Shock. Zyron found the disk again and managed to fix it. He loaded the disk and saw that the title of the music demo was “Larger Than Life”. Hrmmf. When he loaded the music disk he was in for the next shock as he saw the intro screen - Kjell’s logotype was hanging from a tree….

For those of us who had been following Kjell’s work, this was a terrible loss. After his passing away I couldn’t listen to his songs for a long time, since the dark nature of his work really took a new level after he said goodbye to the world through his last C64-production. I find Kjell’s work to be among the best 8-bit work, ever. I think his music disks are amazing works, combining artistic and technical skills and creating very eerie feelings with music, graphics, programming and text. His way of experimenting and surprising, the way he creates the mosty spooky atmospheres but sometimes also almost disturbingly happy songs. Often his works have very surprising changes aswell, so they are hard to grasp by just fast forwarding through them. I think his music has inspired me a lot, and I would like to make other people discover his work. That’s why I am trying to promote him so much. His first solo music disk starts the scrolltext with “Welcome to my world of prejudices, schizophrenia and pure perfection.” It’s a good introduction to what is to come. Here’s a list of his solo music demos to show his productivity (each collection contains >a lot< of music) and his tradition of naming his collections…

Does Not Compute (1994)
The Magic Flute (1994)
Born Alive Dead (1995)
Relationship Across the World (1995)
Total Insane OK (1996)
Pioneers Are Lonely (1996)
Iron of Steel (1996)
Outsider Seek Safety (1997)
Death or Hell? (1998)
Forces in Alliance (1999)
The Big Leap (1999)
No Compromise Touch (2000)
A New Life (2001)
Journey Through Mirrorland (2002)
Mad Mans Dream (2002)
Ghost Escapes Body (2003)
Larger Than Life (2005)

(note that some of these cannot be run if a cartridge is not in the C64 or the emulator)

A composer with a wide spectrum of styles such as Kjell is hard to get into when there are more than 400 songs to download. I asked Zyron to make a selection of his favourite tracks by Kjell. First he said “it would be easier to select the ones that aren’t that good” but finally managed to get it down to 80 tracks. After Zyron’s list I will also put a less comprehensive list for people with less time. All of the links are to MP3-files at 6581-8580.com which means that unlike the original SID-format 1) the songs won’t loop 2) the ending of the songs are a bit weird 3) the songs are taken from HVSC 4) and most importantly, they are not emulated but played on the 8580R SID-chip (the way Kjell composed them) on a real C64-setup. Hail authenticity!

A Change For
A Length
Trying the Carousel [A New Life #17]
A Place
After Real
All the Time
Best to You, The
Business
Cakes Taste Good
Carry My Weight
Classical
Commodore
Crime
Crunch
Dark Force
Died
Dream Runner
Drifting Away
Dunk Bang Kraesj
Ekorn
Exhausted
Explorer
Fantastic
Frihetsrock
Frode
Future
General
Goes
Happiness Room
Happy Days
Hard Times
Heat, The
Here I Come
Hiding My Face
Holding a Hand
Honey Soup
Hope
Hurry (Someone Needs Help)
I Hate You
I Wave Goodbye
If It Ain’t Love
I’m Fonkey
In a Funky Place
It
Jungle
Kick
Killer
Left Lane
Life Is a Game (But It Isn’t)
Like a Player
Little Big Man, The
Lunatic
Mad About It
Into My Picture [Mad Mans Dream #10]
Master of the Universe
Mind Escape, The
Mysterious Dance
Never Die
Nor Art or You
Over the Edge
Rockhard
Rope of Plastic
Sea Boble
Seek the Truth
Slow Reactions
Snapper
Snofnugg
Spy Spied Me
Starting an End
Struggle
Surrounded
Temptation
That’s MY Girl
This Chair
Touches of Magic
Unlimited Mind
Unlock Your Doors
Use My Fire!
What a Chance
Where Are You

Here’s some suggestions from yours truly, hoping that you can find your way into the world of Kjell. If you like it, I recommend to run his music demos aswell to see his graphics, read his texts, and get into one of the most interesting blends of a human mind and a set of chips.

A song to start with, including many of his styles: Unlimited Mind
Crazy funk: 1001 Ride & Let’s Work
Happyjumpy: The Best to You
Dark action funk: Died & Crime
Rock: That’s MY Girl & Use My Fire! & Atom Guitar
Squirrel jam: Ekorn
Metal funk jazz: The Little Big Man
Rock twist: Out of Nothing
Abstractish: Snofnugg & Surrounded & Touches of Magic & Ann Kristin (Anti Krist) & Clowns & Genuine Madness

Enjoy Kjell, Larger Than Life.

Hardcore Data Crafting and Demoscene

Linus Akesson, whose hardware chiptune project I’ve mentioned earlier, has done it again!

A few weeks ago, Linus (aka lft) won the wild compo at the demoparty Breakpoint in Germany. This is one of the biggest demoparties that does it the oldschool way, rather than having huge arenas full of LAN-gamers and mega corporate sponsorship (yes, yes, yes). Demoparties are gatherings of people in the demoscene, meeting, coding, drinking, composing, data-dancing, and competing with music, graphics, and demos. It’s complicated to explain what the demoscene is, but in short something like “a rather closed subculture making geek-art for geeks, with their own aesthetics, copyright, status-making, communication systems” - keeping underground since 20+ years. Now, imagine walking into a room full of obscure old computers, an air full of sweat and a myriad of square wave vibrations, and people watching a big screen shouting wildly as a scrolling text says something about IFLI, unlimited bobs, lamers, side borders, etc. It’s really something worth living for. : )

So, Breakpoint is a big demoparty (something like 700 people). Reading on their website, they say that girls no longer get in for free as they are so “many” now. “The goal of attracting girls to the scene clearly has been achieved - girls no longer are second-class sceners.” I remember a certain Swedish C64-party where the entrance fee for girls was doubled, but that’s another story. Anyway. Among the entries to the compos (competitions) at Breakpoint this year was a new release from Linus Akesson. It’s another release that blurs the borders between software and hardware, as he programs chips directly and puts them together into a micro-computer or personal computer, in its true sense. He uses an 8-bit CPU with 1kb RAM and 8,5kb ROM and basically nothing else: no special circuits for video or audio. It’s all hand made. Pure code. Mega data action!

Maybe it is the most hardcore demo ever made, as demos is traditionally about maximising hardware in any way you can. Demos on contemporary hardware has to be system friendly if it’s supposed to work on different hardware set-ups. The old tradition is to make everything yourself with no regard to what you are “supposed” to do. The Commodore 64 demoscene is notorious for exploiting undocumented features with trial and error - ie, utilizing features that the engineers didn’t put there consciously. I am not a programmer and I do not know what is using undocumented features and what is not, but here’s some of the C64-releases I liked at Breakpoint:

• #2 Graphics: Leon - Wanderer [ gif, exe ] For proof of handpixelling, see the workstages
• #1 Demo: Exceed, Resource, The Dreams - Cauldron [ mp4, exe ]
• #13 Music: Lft - Nymphaea [ exe ]

( how-to-run-them )

As we can see, my taste doesn’t always correlate with the demoparty-voters’ taste. But I still like compos at parties, since it’s an interesting challenge to try to win demosceners’ votes. It’s also interesting to see how much noise they can put up with. He he. Anyway. Back to Linus. Check out his page about the demo Craft here, with detailed information, schematics, video downloads, etc. The youtube video has been a bit crowded, but if you’re lucky it is working here. It includes many of the standard effects of the demoscene, but the combination of MHz, little RAM and many colours, makes it look fresh - especially considering the hardware.