Huge Artist Lineup Pays Tribute to Late Elektron Founder Daniel Hansson
Few names inspire love from digital musicians quite like Elektron, makers of the Monomachine, Machinedrum, and SIDstation drum machines. So when Elektron’s founder Daniel Hansson passed away in an auto accident last summer, it came as a shock to the tightly-knit, passionate musical community who loved his work and lost him too young. (It didn’t help that it came within weeks of the loss of Argu, the ingenious discoDSP and Image-Line software developer, also in a car accident.)
Tragedies like this are doubly sad, because in that loss we miss the opportunity to celebrate people whose work we love. So I’m pleased to be able to talk about a celebration of Daniel Hansson today.
The artist community who use Elektron’s stuff have put together a really epic compilation of music in tribute to Daniel. It’s all user-driven — Elektron didn’t do the organizing; the musicians did. The lineup has some of our favorite people contributing, famed and obscure alike:
Autechre, Beautiful Planet Earth, Boom Bip, dDamage, Daedelus, Dntel, Erase, Emnine, Future Image, Honey Claws, How Dragons Disappear, John Starlight, Jon Martensson, John Tejada, Kero, Landstrumm, Material Object, Micronaut, Music International, Orsan Kart, Pelektor, Proxy, scutopus, TS3K, and The Brown Moth, Tiga, The Sea and Cake, TreD Grp, Van Basten, AEVSVS, Wanker’s United
Many of these (The Sea and Cake, Boom Bip, Tiga, Proxy, John Starlight and others) are exclusive tracks.
You get 30 songs for US$5, donated to Daniel’s favorite charity, the World Wildlife Fund. (Additional WWF donations are welcome.) You’re even entered to win a SIDstation. (Yeah, I know — some of you are still smarting from not having won a Tenori-On, just as I am from having had to give it away. At least here, you can lose for a good cause, which is what I intend to do.)
Another 25 songs are available free — really free, licensed Creative Commons.
(25 + 30 does not add up to 45, it’s true — 45 was Daniel’s favorite number and was in the name of his C64 group, Zone 45.)
Help Spread the Word
The organizers don’t have a PR budget for this, so we’re their PR — and, hey, I’ll bet we can do a better job, anyway. So do spread the word around.
Thanks to Ryan Faubion, the project manager and curator, for putting this together and letting us know about it, and to forum member / compilation contributor Wendell Edwards aka scutopus for the heads-up.
11 Comments
Leave a Commentpeter
I donated, and I dont even like any of the artists, or own the hardware. Its just a cool idea.
April 14, 2008 @ 12:04 pm
dead_red_eyes
Hell yeah. I love Dntel and Boom Bip. I’ll donate and put this up on my blog as well to help spread the word.
April 14, 2008 @ 12:13 pm
actuel
thx so much peter for cover this!
cheers
April 14, 2008 @ 12:29 pm
45 - A Tribute to Daniel Hansson, a 30 tracks compilation to pay homage to the late Elektron Music Machines
[...] Visit the 45 Tribute website for more information. (Link via CDM) [...]
April 14, 2008 @ 12:37 pm
aerotone
Yeah, let´s do some PR.
April 14, 2008 @ 1:54 pm
gwenhwyfaer
You need these tracks! :D
If you like synths, do it to honour someone else who liked them enough to start a company. If you like electronica, do it because there’s not a dud track amongst those 30. And… well, who doesn’t like cute furry endangered species? (Particularly with ketchup and a nice pinot noir… *ducks* look on the bright side, the more money the WWF gets, the more likely you’ll be to be able to celebrate your 60th birthday with a leg of giant panda… I’d say that’s worth donating for ;) ) And it’s only $5 - what’s that, about a third of a euro these days? Don’t think about it, just buy ‘em :)
April 15, 2008 @ 7:37 am
philip
I just bought these tracks even if I don’t know if I will like them. But the chance of winning a SidStation for €3.25 and the good cause are worth it anyway.
(And, on a side note @gwenhwyfaer, to me, this is not ‘electronica’. I know, musical genres and their names and characterisics are far from standardized, but to me it seems that ‘electronica’ is just used as a very broad term today, especially in the US, as was ‘techno’ ten years ago. From my perspective (Europe), ‘electronica’ is only used for a narrow subgenre of electronic music, not as a broad term.
April 15, 2008 @ 9:58 am
Peter Kirn
Philip, that’s fair… and that tends to be true in the US, as well, that electronica is more narrow than electronic. What it means exactly, though, is getting vaguer.
Electronical?
Electrical? :)
I do think it’s natural for terms that once had specific meanings to broaden, especially if the appetite for music increases in a healthy way.
April 15, 2008 @ 10:02 am
gwenhwyfaer
Sorry to offend your hip sensibilities, philip. Thou are truly indier than I.
April 16, 2008 @ 4:56 am
Wes
i bought it too! great collection for an absolute bargain price! well worth coughing up for the great man
April 23, 2008 @ 1:04 pm
#news//daniel.hansson.tribute | [audioauxiliary]
[...] this was a story from CDM if you don’t know but, after reading specific parts of the report, i thought that maybe i [...]
April 24, 2008 @ 8:33 am
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