Goto80 (born Anders Erik Carlsson, 9 February 1981) is a Swedish music artist and researcher. He has been described as one of the key players between

glitch A glitch is a short-lived technical fault, such as a transient one that corrects itself, making it difficult to troubleshoot. The term is particularly common in the computing and electronics industries, in circuit bending, as well as among pl ...

and chipmusic, as well as an active

demoscene The demoscene () is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off computer programmi ...

r. At the turn of the millennium he was one of the first to bring chipmusic to a wider audience, and was also an early adopter of live

Game Boy music Chiptune, also called 8-bit music (although not all chiptune is 8-bit music), is a style of electronic music made using the programmable sound generator (PSG) sound chips or synthesizers in vintage arcade machines, computers and video game co ...

. He has an extensive back catalogue of free music – often

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

– with a wide span of musical influences. He currently focuses on research and art, and maintains a number of blogs and labels such as Chipflip and the text-mode tumblr.

Career

Music

Goto80 released his first music in the

in 1993, at the age of 12. He founded the group ''Hack n' Trade'' and released his music for free in demos and on BBSs. The style seems to have been predominantly rave and electronica. His first live performances was with the pop group HT in 1998. The first formal Goto80-release was the cassette ''Lo Fi Mono Festival'' in 2000. The following year he made one of the first Gameboy live performances with LSDj together with Role Model. His ''Papaya EP'' was released the same year, combining pop, dub, vocoders and calypso. This led to some media attention, and him opening the

Hultsfred Festival The Hultsfred Festival () was an annual music festival held in Hultsfred, Sweden. It took place at the lake Hulingen for three days in June or July, from Thursday to Saturday. Since the first festival in 1986, its attendance increased from 7,5 ...

. He was also working regularly with famous demoscene groups like

Fairlight Fairlight may refer to: In places: * Fairlight, East Sussex, a village east of Hastings in southern England, UK * Fairlight, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney, Australia * Fairlight, Saskatchewan, Canada In other uses: * Fairlight (company), ...

and Triad. In 2002, he co-founded the band Superdöner to play a form of 8-bit punk rock. The following year he moved to

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

where he began to incorporate modern tools such as

Renoise Renoise is a digital audio workstation (DAW) based upon the heritage and development of tracker software. Its primary use is the composition of music using sound samples, soft synths, and effects plug-ins. It is also able to interface with MID ...

into his music making. Goto80 released his debut album ''Commodore Grooves'' in 2005. The same year he was selected as artist of the year at the Microdisko Chipmusic Awards, and was later one of three nominees for all-time C64-composer at

Commodore Commodore may refer to: Ranks * Commodore (rank), a naval rank ** Commodore (Royal Navy), in the United Kingdom ** Commodore (India), in India ** Commodore (United States) ** Commodore (Canada) ** Commodore (Finland) ** Commodore (Germany) or ' ...

's official 25-year celebration. In 2007, Goto80 made one release every month and performed once a week. The following year he tried to release one song every day together with Dan Brännvall at internet2008.se. This established him further as one of the top 8-bit acts. His next release, ''Breakfast'' (2009) has been listed as one of the top-10 chip songs of all time. Following this poppy song, he started to focus on darker sounds, often improvised completely on

Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in ...

. One

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

review described his music as microscopic bursts and stutters of atonal sound on which he eventually lays down some beautiful descending bass tones. Among his aliases, Extraboy seems to be the most productive one. Extraboy appeared on record for the first time in 2002 with a remix of Tim Koch. Other aliases include Johnny Location, Tomas Delin, GotoET, Susanne, Gordon Strombola, 4D Man, and Crystal Master. He has appeared in groups such as the synth pop duo HT (1995), the EBM-band Damitu Kuerpo (1997), the punk group Superdöner (2002), Goto88 and the Sunshine Band (2007), and the electro duo Kommando Knorr (2009).

Research

Goto80 has been called a demoscene historian. His main research topics are chipmusic, textmode graphics, and the

. He published his first text in the book ''From Pac Man to Pop Music'' in 2008, where he described chipmusic as a

medium Medium may refer to: Aircraft *Medium bomber, a class of warplane * Tecma Medium, a French hang glider design Arts, entertainment, and media Films * ''The Medium'' (1921 film), a German silent film * ''The Medium'' (1951 film), a film vers ...

and

form Form is the shape, visual appearance, or configuration of an object. In a wider sense, the form is the way something happens. Form may also refer to: *Form (document), a document (printed or electronic) with spaces in which to write or enter dat ...

. Carlsson received his master in Media and Communication in 2010 with his thesis ''Power Users and Retro Puppets – a Critical Study of the Methods and Motivations in Chipmusic''. Other published texts include a history of demoscene music for Rhizome.org and ''Future Potentials of ASCII Art'' together with A. Bill Miller.

Art

His art works are often focused on live performances (2SLEEP1, Gotozilla, Punk Potemkin, Data Jam) or computer violence (HT Gold, Polybius, 44422435 To Nowhere). He has worked together with artists such as Raquel Meyers, Jossystem, Otro, Videogramo, Entter, Rosa Menkman, Shojono Tomo, and Jacob Remin. Since 2011, he has been focusing on textmode aesthetics together with Raquel Meyers. In 2012, they claimed to be the first to make a performance using only

PETSCII PETSCII (PET Standard Code of Information Interchange), also known as CBM ASCII, is the character set used in Commodore Business Machines' 8-bit home computers. This character set was first used by the PET from 1977, and was subsequently use ...

-based graphics and music software.

Music distribution

Following the practices of the

, Goto80 releases most of his music for free. By 2007, he had 1000 songs online. In the same year, he left

Myspace Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

and later criticized fellow musicians for trying to be present on too many Internet platforms, advising them to use their own distribution channels instead. He is vaguely connected with hacking and piracy, having performed at

Pirate Bay The Pirate Bay, commonly abbreviated as TPB, is a free searchable online index of Film, movies, music, video games, Pornographic film, pornography and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank , The Pirate Bay facilitates the connection ...

parties like Spectrial and in several

hackerspace A hackerspace (also referred to as a hacklab, hackspace, or makerspace) is a community-operated, often "not for profit" (501(c)(3) in the United States), workspace where people with common interests, such as computers, machining, technology, sci ...

s. His early C64-songs were distributed as

executable In computer science, executable code, an executable file, or an executable program, sometimes simply referred to as an executable or binary, causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instruction (computer science), in ...

files and not

recording A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, re ...

s, and they sounded different every time they looped. In the

netlabel A netlabel (also online label, web label, digi label, MP3 label or download label) is a record label that distributes its music through digital audio file format, formats (such as MP3, Vorbis, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, or WAV) over the Internet. While s ...

context, he made low

bitrate In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (bitrate or as a variable ''R'') is the number of bits that are conveyed or processed per unit of time. The bit rate is expressed in the unit bit per second (symbol: bit/s), often in conjunction ...

releases such as ''Copyslave'' (2004) and also mixed his music together into a

megamix A megamix is a remix containing multiple songs in rapid succession. It often features various artists. There may be only one verse or even just a brief chorus of each song used, sometimes in addition to samples of the same or other songs. It i ...

with ''Monkeywarning'' (2002). More recently, ''Open Funk Sores'' (2007) was an audiovisual

release in

MOD Mod, MOD or mods may refer to: Places * Modesto City–County Airport, Stanislaus County, California, US Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Mods (band), a Norwegian rock band * M.O.D. (Method of Destruction), a band from New York City, US * ...

and

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

for web and PSP. ''Cherry CD'' (2011) was released in an envelope and distributed as a form of

mail art Mail art, also known as postal art and correspondence art, is an artistic movement centered on sending small-scale works through the mail, postal service. It developed out of what eventually became Ray Johnson's New York Correspondence School and ...

. ''Acid Burger'' (2011) was a mini-DVD inside a cheese burger. ''2SLEEP1'' (2011) is a collection of audiovisual performances in textmode, but was only available as streaming video. All these releases were made together with Raquel Meyers.

Discography

Studio albums

* 2005: ''Commodore Grooves'' * 2007: ''Digi-Dig'' * 2007: ''Made On Internet'' * 2007: ''Bortabra'' * 2008: ''Son Of Music'' * 2008: ''Open Funk Sores'' * 2011: ''Cherry'' * 2013: ''Cйbзя Tсaя'' * 2014: ''Files In Space'' * 2015: ''_, ￣, ○'' * 2016: ''80864'' * 2019: ''Shirbum'' * 2020: ''808642'' * 2021: ''S T A L L O'' * 2021: ''G L O S O N'' * 2021: ''Hardcore Family'' * 2021: ''S H Y G G A'' * 2022: ''Goto80 and his Jazzband'' * 2023: ''Basen I Botten (DATA115)''

Compilations

* 2016: ''0407''

EPs

* 2001: ''Papaya'' * 2002: ''Monkeywarning'' * 2002: ''Bushrunner'' * 2002: ''Philemon Arthur and the Vic'' * 2004: ''Copyslave'' * 2005: ''Contech'' * 2005: ''Bravo'' * 2007: ''Zyndabox'' * 2007: ''Updown'' * 2007: ''Ximplef'' * 2007: ''Barryland'' * 2007: ''Wet Pulse'' * 2007: ''6'' * 2007: ''Unlimited Edition'' * 2007: ''_2_4x4 (with Entter)'' * 2007: ''Little Tittle'' * 2009: ''Breakfast'' * 2012: ''Acid Burger (Menu 1)'' ''(with Raquel Meyers)'' * 2011: ''Summer of Seven 5/7'' * 2012: ''Virtual 7'' ''(with Warren Myles)'' * 2012: ''The Ferret Show'' ''(with The Uwe Schenk Band)'' * 2013: ''Come Together / Warm Leatherette'' * 2023: ''We Call It SJ (DATA116)''

Remixes

Goto80 has contributed to several famous remix compilations such as 8bits of Christmas (2003) and Wanna Hld Yr Handheld (2009). In the 1990s, Goto80 did many tongue-in-cheek remixes based on 1980s pop culture. This can be heard in ''Lo Fi Mono Festival'' and ''Papaya EP'' where he covered music from Yazoo,

Kikki Danielsson Ann-Kristin "Kikki" Danielsson (born 10 May 1952) is a Swedish country music, country, dansband and pop singer. Sometimes, she also plays the accordion and she has also written some lyrics. She has gained notice for yodeling in some songs. Danie ...

The Incredible Hulk The Hulk is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in the debut issue of '' The Incredible Hulk'' (May 1962). In his comic book ...

, Megaman,

Depeche Mode Depeche Mode are an English electronic music, electronic band formed in Basildon, Essex in 1980. Originally formed with the line-up of Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, Andy Fletcher (musician), Andy Fletcher and Vince Clarke, the band currently consists ...

Barbapapa ''Barbapapa'' is a 1970 children's picture book by the French-American couple Annette Tison and Talus Taylor, who lived in Paris, France. Barbapapa is both the title character and the name of his "species". The book was the first of a series o ...

, etcetera. In 2002 he released Italo Megamix for C64, with remixes of Miko Mission, Scotch, Laserdance and others. In 2007, he made a C64-version of '' Deep Throat'' together with Role Model. The full movie was converted into chunky pixel graphics, which was streamed from the C64 datasette in realtime. He has also remixed more contemporary artists, such as Monster Zoku Onsomb,

Icarus In Greek mythology, Icarus (; , ) was the son of the master craftsman Daedalus, the architect of the labyrinth of Crete. After Theseus, king of Athens and enemy of King Minos, escaped from the labyrinth, Minos suspected that Icarus and Daedalu ...

, Tim Koch, Psilodump, Damn! and

Best Fwends Best Fwends are a musical group from Fort Worth, Texas. All but unknown in the United States, the duo have attracted much more notice in Europe, having been featured in a Bacardi commercial in the United Kingdom and performing at Iceland Airw ...

References

External links

*
chipflip.org
{{Authority control Demosceners Electro musicians Swedish electronic musicians 8bitpeoples artists Chiptune and tracker musicians