Bassic

The musical name of Martin Lindhe, an electronic music maker born in Sweden. A good bit of his work is ambient sounding, and some gets more towards new-age techno. He strongly themes each track, so that each evokes certain feelings. There are several tracks with Tolkien-inspired music (Lorien, The Valar, Moria) and weather-based music (Rain, Percipitation, Elemental, The Wind). My favorite series is the Nightowl trilogy (Nightowl, Nightowl Searching, and Nightowl Hiding). He claims to have had no formal music training, only going by his own trial and error with making music.

He recently released his anthology, covering 10 years of artistry. The 5-CD set is titled "Audiology", and is quite nicely pacaged by the good folks at mp3.com (CD-playable, mp3s on the CD, multimedia). The cover inserts have short bits of information for each track, usually what his intent for the track had been and such.

His website is very good, even offers songs of his that have his commentary while it plays, and examples of his art he has leased to others. A full description of his hardware he uses in its creation is also nice, along with pieces that the hardware is featured in. He is also rather free about his music (the copyright line notes that you can make "a reasonable amount of copies for personal use"). Also is fairly open about licensing terms and commercial applications of his music.

Check him out at either mp3.com or his own site:
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/34/bassic.html
http://www.lindhe.com/bassic.html

Might I add that Bassic is one of the top artists on mp3.com, with about 5.5 million plays of his music (that comes out to a nice profit with mp3.com's Payback for Playback program).

Bassic has been a little inactive over the past half year or so (and still remains one of the top artists). He releases a new song every now and then. This node might become an "Audiology" of his music later on, but it is still being worked on, as Bassic has over 100 songs out.

At one point in time, Bassic put all of his songs, yes, ALL of his songs up for download on a channel he made on mp3.com, but took it down a while later (I wouldn't blame him-- his CDs wouldn't sell too well). This, however, turned out as a reward for his hardcore fans (like myself). I downloaded every single song he put up (a good 90 or so, with a 56k modem on a bad ISP). Even after 2 years, Martin's music still hasn't gotten old to my jaded ear.

His synth work is reminiscent of a master, and the fact that he developed his own style really gives his music a unique feel. Although all of his tunes are clean and crisp-sounding, one can really feel that a lot of love goes into every bit of his music. A magazine called him "The master of Electronica". I don't doubt that.

Martin Lindhe is the true artist. He offers his work to the people, and doesn't care about money. He is one of the few that contributes to society, rather than taking.

He also has an Ampcast site for his outtakes and unfinished work.
http://www.ampcast.com/music/7209/music.php
His main site is http://www.mp3.com/bassic