One of the most popular "old-timers" of the 4-track mod glory days of the Amiga and later the pc demoscene, Jogeir Liljedahl wrote some truly classic and memorable music which in some ways characterizes a now-bygone era of computer enthusiasts, graphicians, trackers, and coders.
Born in 1974, in Aalesund, Norway, Jogeir got his start making SID music and counts some of the greats among his early inspirations, and Martin Galway in particular.
Joining the group Razor 1911 in '91-92 with the handle "Maniac", but quickly switching to the use of his own name,
Jogeir made composing a long-term pursuit. He was active in the Amiga scene with the demo groups Spaceballs, Virtual Dreams and Scoop, and later entered the PC scene with the demogroup "Pulse".
In his career, he's released over 100 modules, having written with Amiga Protracker for several years, and switched over to the PC on FastTracker 2. Most of his well-known and classic works were done on Protracker in 4-track format in the early 1990s -- in many ways, the golden age of the demoscene.
His older tunes and albums-in-one mods are almost instantly recognizable, with the oldskool sound of 8-11khz mono samples and lots of now-clichéd Protracker instruments and musical styles. Concealed within that now-primitive sound, however, is some real skill in musicianship, tracking, and a talent for composing memorable melodies.
Jogeir is still an active musician and released a CD in 1999 called "The Wanderer" through Lynne Music, Bjorn Lynne (aka Dr. Awesome)'s music label.
Some personal favorites:
Even today, with a library of gigabytes of mp3s and hundreds of cds to choose from, I find myself firing up a mod or sid player to listen to the music which to me really epitomizes an earlier generation of computer enthusiasts who were also passionate artists and musicians. Tinkering away on proprietary and ackward tracker programs with primitive samples played on three or four tracks, and pixel-based graphics editors like Deluxe Paint 2, they occasionally produced some truly amazing works of art.
for further reference:
- http://www.lynnemusic.com/jogeir-thewanderer.html
(information about Jogeir's cd, "The Wanderer")
- http://tihlde.org/~madsjm/mod/jogeir/
(more biographical information and a collection of Jogeir mods, including all those mentioned in this article)