Stefan Strand

New reviews & webography launched

I found two new nice reviews of my album Radio Silence. The first one is written by Alejandro Hinojosa from Amazings.com.

This composer succeeds in creating an unusual kind of Ambient with this album, with beauty and mystery at the same time, and inspired by the indefinible charisma of the radio as a pioneering means of telecommunication as well as one of the most important ways, if not the main one, through which music has been popularized in the last century.

Laying bare the imagined world “From a Silent Surface” opens the album with effects like sonic stonefalls on a synthetic lake while strange rustling and distorted non-human voices lurk just beyond the foreground. This builds up to a moody drum-esque rhythm and constantly passing air pads and refrains briefly rippling as if they're decayed sirens.

The mood gets thoughtful in the next track “Wishful Thinking”. Voices, including brief operatic vocals, and music are heard intermittently over the white noise of a radio being tuned while pads reverb around the soundscape. A lovely rippling melody on some kind of plucked instrument sound then comes in to finally be joined by a laid back rhythm.

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Summer communication

Believe it or not, I'm still here despite the lack of updates lately. Last month was extremely busy and little time was spent on this site. Since last update, beautiful summer has arrived in Sweden, I'm now a proud university graduate, and moreover this site was featured on CSS Impress recently. Yay!

For those of you on the Northern Hemisphere, I wish you a great summer; for those down below - have a great winter! Stay tuned!

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Refreshed design, and more

While switching my web host for this site, I started to think about refreshing the design as well - after all it's been over a year since last time, and I've learned many new tips & tricks since then. My aim is to present a site that's pleasant to look at, easy to navigate and that works fine for most users, regardless of their operating systems and web browsers. I'm sure I'll find some bugs along the way, and I'd be happy if you report them to me if you find any.

I also decided to add a new section, "Webography", a portfolio-like page where I'll show some of the web related work I perform. It could be anything from a new web design, an ASP.NET or PHP driven site, or a simple JavaScript or Flash application. For now the section is empty, but there'll soon be some nice stuff online so keep your eyes open!

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Database recovered

Yes! :) All posts and comments are now back!

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Starting over

As I might not be able to get my previous blog entries back, I reckon I'd better move forward with the site as if nothing happened. Maybe it's actually good with a fresh start. To make a long story short, my previous web host all of a sudden decided to cause some disaster by shutting down my account without warning. This included no less than six different sites/domains, including all e-mail accounts connected to these. It took me a few days to set everything straight again, getting a new web host and changing DNS servers for my domains. I still haven't heard anything from the support crew of my old web host, so I don't even know WHY they shut me down. Highly unproffessional, in my opinion.

Anyway, what I was saying just before disaster struck, was that the Italian magazine New Age Music And New Sounds recently featured an article about me and my music. Great fun! Included with the magazine is also a CD compilation, containing, amongst other tracks, my The Tides of Time, from my album Autumn Continent. Many thanks to the editors of this magazine!

Moreover, Remix Romance, the Sally Shapiro-remix album, is out now and featuring my ambient remix of Sleep in my arms. Listen to the preview here:

Sally Shapiro - Sleep in my arms (Between Interval remix) (preview)

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