Elwood (Finnish musician)
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Elwood (real name Jussi-Matti Salmela) is a demoscene musician and electronic tracker from Kankaanpää, Finland. His alternative alias is known as Elwood79 which he used during his releases at the previous site of MP3.com, possibly because the Elwood-profile was already occupied. He has produced the soundtrack to a small short-movie called Teräskolikkoarkku, translated Steel coin coffin (recorded at a market apparently in the city of Turku).
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[edit] Music
Elwood released only 16 module compositions throughout the 1990s, written in Fast Tracker 2.
His mods are considered to be classics in the demoscene. Elwood has participated in several music competitions for Amiga modules, and his newer tracks can be downloaded at Estonian Demoscene. Older tracks (modules) can be fetched at different sites, but primarily at the Mod Archive. Most of them have received top rates by reviewers there, calculating an artist average of at least 9 out of 10 points.
By the end of the 1990s he stopped releasing for the tracking scene and moved to MIDI software, producing a number of tracks similar to his old style, though having a more "mainstream" flavor to them. Many of the MP3 tracks from the newer timeline were released at the previous site of MP3.com. Last tracks from that era that he has been known to release are Low Horizon and Waverider Remix 2003 from the mentioned year. Track release dates and years can primarily be found as sample titles in the actual module headers.
During late 2003 and early 2004 he organized the band LooM, which in spite of all the announcements hasn't yet released any completed material. Demo clips show that LooM music is very different from the style of Elwood's solo works - this time as a fusion with rock elements (possibly by Juuso Kemi), sometimes discouraging a few fans to continue supporting him. According to the previous contact info on the LooM project, Elwood now lives in the bigger Finnish city of Pori, attending a school to prepare a possible education in media[citation needed], while his cooperative partner Juuso Kemi (student buddy from his old high school) lives in Tampere. Juuso Kemi is featured as one of the producers behind the short-movie Teräskolikkoarkku, where he also made an actor appearance. Their album Electricities is apparently still under its way, since the site was updated again in 2006, standing still for almost two years.
[edit] Personal life
Elwood is not a public person and there is very little information on his personal life, the only sources being the bio section on his old homepage Elwood's World Of Music and scarce comments in MOD files themselves.
Bio from "Elwood's World of Music":
Here is a brief introduction to me and my past: I was born 11 August 1979. I grew and grew and got interested in making music by chance when my friend had bought Amiga 500 (wow!). I hadn't ever even thought that you could do music with computer! In addition to that, I heard Jan Hammer's song, Crockett's theme, for the first time in my life. I was totally awestruck and I got a tremendous inspiration: I wanted to make music too! I made my first mod when I was about 12 or so. Of course it sounded total crap, but to me it was a good start I had an ordinary Amiga 500 (!) running soundtracker (I can't remember the version). Then time went by and I got better and better. PC became a must because its soundcards and programs were able to play 16 channels simultaneously. Then came FT2, which became a milestone in my 'career'. At the moment, I am concentrating mosly on midi stuff. I still use FT2 also. It's great for creating breakbeats and all kinds of other loops. I get a lot of inspirations from my environment, simple daily events, other musicians and very much from my wonderful girlfriend, Sari.
Elwood is known not to answer fan e-mail.
[edit] Recognition
Elwood's music has received high reviews throughout the demoscene websites, such as ModArchive, Modplug Central, United Trackers and several other ones which had been active in the 90s but are now offline, such as Trax In Space and homemusic.cc His music is regularly remixed and brought up in the demoscene. Elwood has also been called "the king of tracking" at ModArchive (quote by XtremePain from a review of his track Sweet Dreams). D Fast, another Finnish demoscene artist has released a direct sequel to one of Elwood's tracks called Unknown Phuture 2 to state his dedication to Elwood.
[edit] Tracklist
[edit] MOD Releases
- The Vanishing Tower (the_vanishing_tower.mod)
[edit] XM Releases
- After Hours (hours.xm)
- Dead lock (DEADLOCK.XM)
- Experience (experience.xm)
- Fall from sky (fall.xm)
- Feats of valor (FEATSOFV.XM)
- Homecoming (elw-home2.xm)
- One Fine Day (1fineday.xm)
- Sick on Monday (elw-sick.xm)
- Experience (experience.xm)
- Inferiority complex (ICOMPLEX.XM)
- Little man (littlema.xm)
- Neutral Zone (neutralz.xm)
- Into The Shadow (SHADOW.XM)
- Sweet Dreams (sweetdre.xm)
- Unknown Phuture (unk.xm)
[edit] MP3 Releases
- Agony
- Beyond the Rainbow
- Far Away
- Feed Your Supermind
- I Can Seek
- Memorize (according to the original ID3-tag, otherwise a title confusion with the filename stating the track is called Memory)
- Low Horizon
- On the Run
- Outcast
- Past & Present
- Stompin Little Scouts
- Sunshine
- Take me there
- The Only One Left
- Waverider
- Waverider Remix 2003
[edit] LooM project demos
[edit] External links
- Elwood's World Of Music
- LooM Official Website
- Elwood at the Estonian Demoscene (http://www.scene.ee/)
- Elwood at The Mod Archive
- Video of a demo which features "Sick On Monday"
- Complete zip-package with all the XM and MP3 released material by Elwood, except LooM-related files
