Stefan Strand

Composer & producer of electronic music & otherworldly sounds

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Biography

So, who is Stefan Strand? To keep it short, I'm currently 31 years old and I live in Southern Sweden where I spend a lot of time composing electronic music - usually within progressive house, deep trance and ambient/space music genres. I think it's important to keep an open mind though, and let myself be influenced and inspired by loads of music within different genres as well.

While not composing music, I work as a web developer within areas such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, usability, SEO and social media.

A few selected musical milestones

1982

• Born

Early to mid 90's

• First introduction to music making through a friend's Amiga computer, using tracker software

1996

• Aquired my first own PC and started playing around with FastTracker 2

2001

• Left FastTracker 2 in favour for midi based sequencer software

2002

• First national radio play (that I know of)

2003

• First two record contracts signed:
  • I signed my trance music project Sublunar to Belgian record label Bonzai Music/Banshee Worx and...
  • ...four house tracks signed to London based production music company West One Music. Through the following years these four tracks have been used in productions by Mercedes as well as The Oprah Winfrey Show and many others.
• First attempt to create something outside of the club music genre: ambient space music.

2004

• First 12" vinyl feature: Sublunar - Sanctuary, on Banshee Worx, together with three other tracks by other artists.
• Finalized the composing of Radio Silence, a long form album format ambient mix that eventually was featured on Digitally Imported, and furthermore self released on black CD-R.

2005

• Second 12" vinyl release: Sublunar - Sanctuary (Antidote's Tech Mix) on Banshee Worx. Sanctuary (Antidote's Tech Mix) also became featured on several club music compilation CDs, including Ferry Corsten's "Passport: Kingdom of Netherlands".
• Third 12" vinyl release: Monodrive feat. Beca - Premonition on Existence Records.
• First official CD album release: Between Interval - Secret Observatory, a long form ambient space music album, released on Spotted Peccary Music. Secret Observatory was selected "Best of 2005: Editors' Picks in New Age" at Amazon.com.
• First CD compilation feature for my ambient music; Between Interval - Wishful Thinking was featured on a compilation named "Albedo", released by Ultimae Records.

2006

• Second official ambient album release: Between Interval - Autumn Continent, on Spotted Peccary Music. Autumn Continent was selected "Best of 2006: Editors' Picks in New Age" at Amazon.com.
• My track Aerolith was featured on another Ultimae Records compilation, called Oxycanta.

2007

• My first, originally self released, ambient album Radio Silence was re-mastered and re-released on Spotted Peccary Music. Radio Silence was selected "Top New Age of 2007" on Amazon.com.

2008

• Changed my legal name from Jönsson to Strand, hence all my releases after 2008 credit Stefan Strand instead of Stefan Jönsson.

2009

• Fourth official album release: Between Interval - The Edge of a Fairytale, released on Spotted Peccary Music.
• Music from Autumn Continent was heavily featured in a Swedish radio drama for kids and youth, called "Bollebygd goes Armageddon". The show was divided into 7 episodes and produced by Unga Radioteatern, broadcast in Swedish Radio P4.

2011

• Co-produced track Stranger was featured on Johan Agebjörn's album Casablanca Nights, released by Paper Bag Records and published by Universal.
• Music from my albums Secret Observatory and The Edge of a Fairytale was featured in the NHK production Mega Tsunami - Hidden Perils, a documentary about the tsunami that tragically struck Japan in 2011.
• My track Submerged, from the Autumn Continent album, was used as theme song for 8 episodes of Musikmagasinet - Ljudland in Swedish Radio SR P2.

2014

• My track The Tides of Time was featured on a two disc compilation, compiled by Schiller and released by Klassik Radio (Germany)

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My studio

People (other musicians, mostly) often ask me what my studio looks like, what kind of equipment I use and so on. Basically my studio is all software based. The main tool I use is called Propellerheads Reason, together with an Axiom 25 MIDI keyboard. I'm running Reason on a Pentium 3,2 Ghz computer with 3 GB RAM and an M-Audio Audiophile 24/96 soundcard. For monitoring I use a pair of ESI nEar05 eXperience studio monitors and a pair of AKG K240 Studio headphones, both connected through a Soundcraft Compact4 mixer. For reference I also have an old hifi stereo from JVC. It's a somewhat minimal setup, however it works well for me.