Amiga Mods are a subculture genre of music production for the demoscene, having had its peak during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Mods are created by taking audio samples using a sampling peripheral and then looping with effects such as pitch shifting in "tracker" software. Notes, parameter changes, effects and other commands are entered with the keyboard into a grid of fixed time slots as codes consisting of letters, numbers and hexadecimal digits. While technically not all "mods" are in the .MOD format, this is the popular name for the genre.
Markus "Captain" Kaarlonen
Kaarlonen's early break in the music industry was in the Amiga Mod music scene of the early 1990s, under the pseudonym Captain - a nickname that has stuck around ever since. During that period he released some of the most well known Mods ever created including Space Debris and Beyond Music.
Space Debris was created in 1991, when Kaarlonen was aged 17, with no musical education of any kind. The track was sampled using a primitive home enthusiast sampler connected to Captain's Amiga. Sampled instruments included a Roland D5 synthesizer, Roland R-8 drum machine and preset sounds that came with the tracker. Captain entered the track in the Anarchy Easter Party 1991 (a music competition in Sweden) and won the first prize. In 2011, he remade Space Debris as the "Spacesynth Remix" for the soundtrack of the game Rochard.
Captain has made homages to his Amiga Mod days in some of his work with Poets of the Fall, such as in the synth-heavy track Choice Millionaire.
Mods by Captain
- Space Debris
- Beyond Music
- Mickus
- Broken Dreams
- Spacemuzaxx
- Acid Toxid
- Apuva Megamix
- Disco Mix
- Disk Mag Piece
- Eye of the Tiger
- Hurricane
- Mega Kool Musik
- Mozartpiisi
- Pavimix
- Popcorn
- Star Wars
- Voices from Heaven
(note - these are not all in "MOD" format, some are in "OKT" or "S3M")