The successfull Ticon grooves comes from Filip Mårdberg of vintage year 1979 and Fredrik Gilenholt of an equivalent 1977. The story of their musical involvement dates long back as they in 1991 found the mutual interest for underground dance music and became friends. Fredrik had already been listening to hardtrance and acid techno for a while and introduced Filip who, probably due to the size of their hometown Malmoe – Sweden (and maybe his age), had never heard anything like it but was immediately addicted. It didn`t take long before they both started to dream about making this music themselves and with an Amiga 500 they where on the go.
Ok!!… the first tracks sounded more like a cat stuck in a car engine than what was intended to come out of the speakers (to quote Filip in an inteview for Australian magazine Techno Renegade) but after some practice they started to learn the basics so a newly bought PC and an old rock module became the base for their first project, Sector. During this time both of them frequently went to techno and trance parties where they got a lot of inspiration which led them to start buying records and dj’ing at underground psytrance parties. Sector went on for a while without any more progression than when they got the chance to play the track out as djs.
Around 1995, as the homestudio was growing with the salary from a hotel where they both worked, the new moniker Tripticon was born. This was the new step and they sent a lot of demos to different labels but other than some vague promises of release they mainly built a network with people all over the world, swapping dat tapes to get new stuff for their dj sets. But then in 1997 (korrigera artalet) light was at the end of the tunnel when they through a local contact were offered to release an album on Stockholm based Tsunami records (hence not the one of New York). Tracks were gathered and approved, artwork was made and so in ??? 1999 (korrigera manad o artal) Tripticon – ‘the seventh portal’ was released and they had finally released something!!
The time after the release became a hard period for them musically cause they were getting tired with the Tripticon sound and there was no obvious path to take. A lot of new stuff was tried but it wasn’t until Malmoe based label Digital Structures in the summer of 1999 contacted them and proposed that they try to make trance of a more groovy nature, that things started to get clear. They got in for a heavy studio session and out of it came the track ‘mona bone’, later to be released on Digital Structures together with ‘deep fried cricket’ as a 12”, which is today a classic Ticon track but more important, they had found the path they were looking for.
After successfull realases of now classic tracks like ‘ass-tronaut’, ‘monkey business’, ‘rattlesnake lollipop’, ‘lo mi hi’ and ‘input, output, kaput’ on lables like TIP World, Hadshot Haheizar, Transient rec, Dragonfly rec, Surround Sounds and of course Digital Structures, they had earnt a spot in the growing group of respected tranceproducers.
By mid 2000 an obvious need for a debut album had risen and the boys started the work of what was to become the full length ‘rewind’. Released in april 2001 it received waves of acknowledgement from all over the world with rave reviews and important djs calling it one of the most important trance albums. With no concept of how the album was to be received, Fredrik and Filip were more than pleased to see tracks like ‘we are the mammoth hunters’ enter the history of trance music.
Along with these productions they had gotten more and more equipment and the bedroom studio in Fredrik’s appartment (which he by the way shares with his father) was on the verge of making him homeless with consoles, synths, cables and effects covering every surface but the bed. Needless to say, a studio was needed to solve the space and the angry old lady upstairs. After a lot of ads reading and many phone calls they finally found the good place and at the beginning of 2002, Noze Noize Studio moved in and will hopefully stay, happily forever-after.
Today they have both quit their dayjobs and although not always easy, they manage to live of their music. In addition to Ticon there is a lot of other music made in the studio; with New Disco Science Alliance they try to bridge over to a clubbier style of tech house; with Qlap, which is a project with Son Kite, main idea is to fuse the two groups to get something new. Then there is also a downbeat project without a name so far (although 2 tracks have been released under the Ticon name) and at last a new experiment which in lack of other definition must be called a pop project with a songwriter and a vocalist.
Last but not at all least for Ticon comes the unforgettable experience of playing live. After their first release in may 2000, requests soon came and they had to come up with a solution to meet their own demands on how a good live act should sound like. The definition of what is a real techno livset is almost impossible since the music is made/recorded on a computer and it is not very easy to bring the whole studio with you on an airplane, just imagine the excess luggage cost!! Not to speak about the work involved with disconnecting the whole studio once a week. Well not wanting to just press play on a dat or laptop and then drink beer during the live act, they came up with the set up of a Fostex 16 channel harddisc recorder, a Novation Nova, a midi keyboard, a microphone (!?), a cd player and a dj mixer. The tracks to be played live are recorded to the Fostex on 16 different channels with for example the kick on channel 1, bass on channel 2, drumloop on channel 3 and so on. The process is then that every other track is played from the hard disc recorder and the rest from cd and it is all beat mixed by Filip to give the dancing crowd an impression of a flowing journey. The Fostex has a built in mixer for a live arrangement so the live tracks can take new forms every time played and together with Filip’s talking through the mic & vocoder makes every performance unique.
Happy faces have been shining back at them from Australia to Mexico, Japan to numerous festivals like VOOV, Samothraki, Fusion and to play live is what they really love to do, “working in the studio is wonderful but playing at a nice party beats everything” says both Fredrik & Filip
to book them or check where they are playing next …. have a look at www.mpdqx.com/booking
