andreasviklund.com

Back in 1997, when TSEC had become an established act on the small but very creative tracker music scene, I was amazed by the music many other trackers had made. Artists like Jogeir Liljedahl, Björn Lynne and groups like the amazing Destiny Music (with members like Sonic, Heretic, Keith 303 and dynamix) were a huge inspiration. And then there was the biggest group of them all, with some of the best artists on the scene: the Kosmic Free Music Foundation (also called KFMF or just Kosmic).

I was a big fan of the Kosmic music, and spent many hours on my slow 33.6 kbit dial-up connection downloading songs. I also spent many hours chatting with Kosmic members and other fans on the classic IRC channel #trax. And one day in 1998 I decided to try my luck and ask Maelcum, the founder and organizer of the group, if he could listen to a few of my songs and say if I would be a possible future member. He did, and to my great surprise (and happiness!) he invited me to join the group. It was a huge step forward for me, and it brought a lot of inspiration. I wrote more songs than ever. Mostly for TSEC but also a few exclusive tracks for Kosmic, like "Daydreamer" and the experimental "Traxah Symphonee" which I competed with in the multichannel compo at DreamHack 1998 - as a KFMF member (both songs can be found on my own music page). It was also at DH'98 that I got a chance to meet Björn Lynne and exchange albums with him, another thing that provided a lot of inspiration at that time…

In 2000, TSEC had become Lagoona and Kosmic fell into the darkness. Tracker music lost a bit of its popularity as the MP3 format became more popular, and many of the old artists and groups disappeared. The last thing I did for the tracker scene was an interview for AMP, Amiga Music Preservation, in 2002. But the music is still alive! While the KFMF has been silent for years now (see the official website), the Kosmic releases can still be downloaded for free. And it is a LOT of music, hundreds of songs, and several complete albums and musicdisks. Dive into the Kosmic Archives and you'll find a world of interesting music! Not to mention the classic Modarchive which has been online for as long as I have been online…

Now, this is a really long shot, but if there are any previous musician members of the Kosmic Free Music Foundation out there who happen to read this, please write a line and let me know what you do today and if you have new music that can be heard somewhere. It would be interesting to see how many of the members that became professional artists and producers, and if someone is still active on the tracker music scene…

And finally, I would like to post a related link: Return to stage 9. RTS9 is a musicdisk, and when it was released in November 1999 it was without any doubt the largest and most amazing musicdisk that had ever been released. It took 1,5 years to compile, features 62 songs by 37 artists (almost 5 hours of music - including my "Everlasting smile") and it is simply an amazing piece of internet music history for anyone who was involved in the demoscene or tracker music. The songs can be downloaded directly from the Scene.org FTP.