As easy as it is today, anybody can pile 40 channels or more onto their songs, making todays computer power and the huge pletoria of software heaven for every musician and producer.

However, sometimes the challenge lies in some limitations to enhance your creative process. Probably you heard of Peter Schmidt and Brian Enos deck of cards, “Oblique Strategies“, wich is one way to push your creativity into new directions.

One easy way is however to limit the amount of channels or instruments you’re going to use in a project.
This is how “the Challenge” was born.
It was between Out Of Focus, Carl Arsenic and me.

The Challenge was to make a song with at most three instruments and five drum sounds. OOF also wanted a song track; as a result you can hear me “sing” for the first time…oh, well.

After the challenge was set I realised that Carl had and huge advantage, with his history in several renowned punk bands… so here we are, after one thing and another finally you are agle to enjoy the results, all three in different styles.

You have links to OOF and Carls songs  above, here you have my contribution: one original version, and one produced by Assemblage 23/Tom Shear.

Listen, download, enjoy and comment!

Commuterpop Hitmusik Maschine at Museum of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden

This is a lovesong to, and a parody of, german music; from Karlheinz Stockhausen and Conny Plank, to Kraftwerk and Rammstein, who all have had an influence on all modern music and musicians.

One version is produced by the futurepop/Industrial/electro icon Assemblage 23/Tom Shear; the idea started out in his crowfunding project.

This song is very different compared to what I have done earlier, and I bet this will surpise you in more than one way;
One thing is that I “sing” solo on an recording for the first time, also that I’m a into the land of EBM/industrial with some guitar combo. Inspired also by Ultravox, themselves inspired by the german krautrock scene.

The song started out as my contribution to “the Challenge” (read more about it here)

Listen, download, enjoy and comment!

Hitmusik aus Deutschland – original version

Commuterpop feat. Assemblage 23 – Hitmusik aus Deutschland

As I wrote here, I was working on mixing and some remix versions of “Värdighet” (Dignity in swedish) for the band Out of focus.

When I was ready with the dance version I forgot to post, so…. here’s your chance to listen to and download the song – enjoy!

I had the great honour to mix and remix of Out Of Focus‘ song “Värdighet” (“Dignity” in Swedish – they also have a lot of songs in english, so check them out!).

First, we mixed the original version, totally separate from each other, with very different result as you can hear. A practical lesson in how much the mixing process and different mixing engineers can influence a piece.

Then I couldn’t resist to make some more, so the result was “Värdighet – andra låten på B-sidanmix” (second song on the B-side mix).

Also a pleasure to do and, as those remembering physical records,  those B-side songs or remixes could be quite freely arranged or really out there, so hence the name, and – as you can guess – I did it quite in a spontaneous way.
I highly recommend it to you music makers out there, as it gives you a feeling of total freedom! 🙂

Also, there is a dance remix on the way…expect more news soon.
EDIT: I forgot to post it, you can listen/download the dance mix here.

Out Of Focus is two very talented musicians who has worked together since the 80s, and it was a real pleasure to do this with them. Their style could  perhaps be described as pop in 80’s arrangements but modern sounds, and the lyrics… are they dark humour or unhappiness for real?