I’m not sure how to write this without sounding like a total dick, so I’ll just write it: I’ve always considered myself rather creative. As a kid I drew a lot, nothing particularly great, but my production was impressive. I’m guessing there are quite a few boxes hidden in my parent’s attic filled with my drawings, which was mostly, for no particular reason, of war. Huge theaters of killing and maiming made up of several drawings taped together.

This site is also a result of my sporadic creativity. Although my posting has become less and less frequent, I’m still pumping out a little something-something every now and then. I also have a job where I have to be creative or wither and die. As a computer programmer, you continuously have to solve intricate problems that all demand some sort of creative solution.

But I was on my most creative from 1995 to 2000 when I composed music. The Amiga and PC music scene was exploding with talent, and I rode the shock wave. With the help of FastTracker 2, tons of samples downloaded from the internet and the inspiration from thousands of other basement musicians, I - using the artist names HYPERSPACE, Milo and Timid - crammed out almost 40 tracks over that five year period.

But before we continue, let’s have a look at another guy who I guess looked at himself as a pretty creative guy expressing himself through music.

Yeah…

I had three heights in my short musical career. The first was when I went to a party where I was approached by a guy I’d never seen before. He was so drunk he could hardly stand or talk, but he was very happy to see me because they’d played some of my electronica at a party he’d been to earlier that night and they’d had a very good time. Of course might never have been another party, it could just have been him, drinking by himself in his mother’s basement - but the point was that he’d enjoyed listening to something I’d made, and that sure felt good to hear. The song was called “TechnoHead”.

The second peak came with lyrics and vocal. Except from a few vocal samples, all my music was exclusively instrumental. This is partly because I wrote unbelievable cheesy lyrics¹, but mostly because I can’t sing. I have a terrible voice, and there’s a fair chance I wouldn’t be able to sing a pure tone to save my own life. But there is still one exception to my “exclusively instrumental” rule. The second to last tune I ever completed was an actual song, with lyrics and all. Of course, I was not the one who did the singing, that was some random guy from Australia I met on an online forum. But I wrote the lyrics. Oh. My. God, the lyrics. The singer couldn’t actually sing very well, either, but the end result wasn’t that bad. The song was called “Breathe”.

My third and final height came with my brief appearance on the Norwegian radio show DJ Friendly. It’s a typical morning show, playing mostly chillout and ambient tracks from 5 to 7 on Saturday and Sunday mornings. As you can imagine from when it’s on, the show doesn’t have tons of listeners, but it’s been on Norwegian radio for as long as I can remember. I was unable to find exactly how long, but I’m pretty sure it’s been at least ten years, maybe as long as 15. To me, getting a tune played on DJ Friendly was a pretty big deal, even if it was just five minutes of a two hour radio show on a random Sunday. The song was called “As The Sunlight Hit Her Face”.

I’ve managed to salvage all my musical creations from old backup discs, and I’m putting everything here. I wouldn’t recommend that you download and listen to it all, because that would just be a waste of your time. But at least now I’ve saved everything from the inevitable doom of broken backup CD-Rs. Everything is listed in chronological order, and it’s actually possible to hear that things change for the better over the years.

The song files are available in both MP3 and their “native” XM format. They will probably sound their best when played as XM files using FastTracker 2. But it’s a rather obscure piece of software and you probably don’t have it installed. So MP3s might be a good option for most people. But if you want to use the XM files, you can use VLC, which you might already have installed. From what I can hear, it plays back the XM pretty accurate, but in some cases things might sound really weird even if it’s not intended - some samples are very out of tune. It’s also possible to use foobar2000 with the DUMB Module decoder component installed.

If I had actually pursued music, gone all in and learned to play an instrument, I honestly believe that I could have done not-too-bad, and been one of the many, many aspiring musicians you find on YouTube, all hoping to pull a Justin Bieber.

But in all honest, I’m sort of glad I didn’t, because not pursuing music enabled me to focus on being a nerd, and that has certainly taken me places I never imagined I’d ever go. And poor Justin Bieber turned into a dick.