Stefan Strand

And then the snow came

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Autumn Panorama

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Theme for Musikmagasinet Ljudland

I'm happy and proud to announce that my track Submerged, from the Autumn Continent album, is being used as theme tune for Musikmagasinet - Ljudland in Swedish Radio P2.

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Halftone - Stranger now on YouTube

I thought it was about time to upload this nearly-forgotten track to YouTube. Stranger was composed by myself and Olof Lönnroth back in 2006, under our one-time pseudonym Halftone. The track was later on remixed/modified by Johan Agebjörn and released on his album Casablanca Nights. However the YouTube clip above features the original version.

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Rainy Saturday rant

It's late September 2012 and it feels like I haven't updated this site for ages. With a busy dayjob and busy weekends as well, time tends to fly just a bit faster than I'd wish for. Summer 2012 is over and autumn made its entrance with gray skies and heavy rain – a great time to spend in the studio as well as taking some time to update this blog! So what's been going on since my last album, The Edge of a Fairytale? After all it was released back in 2009, and besides the Johan Agebjörn/Olof Lönnroth collaboration Halftone, featured on Agebjörn's album Casablanca Nights in 2011, things have been pretty quiet. Less production, more thinking and reflecting – for better or worse. Now, prepare for the rant :-)

I've more or less come to the insight of leaving the trance music genre. I've produced music under the pseudonym Sublunar roughly since 1999 or so, heavily influenced by the trance genre. Starting out as a tracker project, releasing modules on sites like United Trackers and Trax in Space later on followed by mp3.com, I left the tracker scene in the early 2000's in favour of a midi based sequencer. In 2004 and a couple of the following years, I released some tracks "officially" on the Bonzai/Banshee label. Despite the awesome feeling of finally getting some stuff out on vinyl (Sublunar – Sanctuary), I felt myself drifting further away from the club music genres associated with that label. Trance music just had nothing more to give me, and I had nothing more to give to trance music. Moreover, the minimal return in royalties was quite discouraging. Around eight signed tracks or so (I'm counting my alias Section 9 as well, since those tracks also were released on Bonzai), released both digitally and on psysical records, featured on roughly 10 – 15 compilations or so, haven't even given me enough money to pay one month's rent. Actually, it's nowhere even close to one month's rent, not even half. "But Stefan", one might say, "you shouldn't be into the music business for the money". And I fully agree with that. But having someone else making money from my music, not giving me a fair share of the earnings, is indeed very discouraging. In 2007 I made one final track that would fit in under the Sublunar-alias. It was supposed to be released on Bonzai, but I eventually said no to their offer and the deal was off. The track remains unreleased, laying around on my hard drive. I might just put it up for free download one day, we'll see.

The story goes pretty much the same for the tracks that I released under my Monodrive-alias on Existence Records. However I still love house music, so it's not unlikely that we'll see more Monodrive tracks in the future.

What about the ambient? I love ambient music, it's the kind of music that speaks to my inner being. And as a nice bonus, the ambient labels I've been in touch with all seem like good people treating their artists in a nice way. Very encouraging! I'm aching to compose more ambient music, although it's quite time consuming. One hour in the studio doesn't do that much for me, I'm the kind of person that would like to spend at least one day, if not even a couple of days in a row, in the studio. Finding that kind of time is not always easy. I might have to rethink the way I'm working with music. Do you have any hints or suggestions on how to do this? If so, let me know!

Time to wrap it up for this rainy day rant. Signing off with the first official Sublunar-release: Sanctuary, from 2004:

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