Nightcore (partially found music from Norwegian duo; 2003): Difference between revisions

From The Lost Media Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search
 
(No difference)

Latest revision as of 16:20, 20 March 2023

Nightcore-face1337.jpg

Cover for Nightcore's debut album 'Energized'

Status: Partially Found

Nightcore were a music duo from Alta, Norway, comprised of Thomas S. Nilsen (also known as DJ TnT) and Steffen Ojala Søderholm (also known as DJ SoS).[1]. Their music is notable for inadvertently giving birth to the eponymous musical subculture of nightcore, after the duo produced an album of pitch-shifted dance music for a school project.

History

Nilsen and Søderholm stated on Nilsen's now-defunct website that they had produced (at least) four albums by 2003: Energized, Summer Edition, L'hiver and Sensaciòn (no release dates are given for these albums on the website, but 2003 is the earliest archive of their existence) - only Sensaciòn can still be heard online in its entirety. The dating of these releases means that they would be the first known recordings within the nightcore genre, and responsible for spawning the nightcore subculture after songs from the albums found their way onto the internet. Caliente was also released in 2003, and is also available online[2]. Several Facebook posts from the duo offer conflicting information on the release date of Energized, with one comment from 2016 saying the album was from 2002[3], and another from 2019 saying it was from 2001[4] A biography written by Nilsen and Søderholm reveals that Energized, their first album, was created with the Dance eJay 3 software for a school music project.[5]. Dance eJay 3 was developed for Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT[6]. Microsoft discontinued mainstream support for both Windows NT and Windows 98 in June of 2002[7][8], which supports claims that Energized was produced prior to 2003.

A Nest HQ article from 2014 corroborates Energized was released in 2002, and featured 13 tracks.[9]

"Very little was known about Nightcore at the time the Youtube scene started, and to this day they’re still one of the most elusive acts to have a major following. The nightcore scene wouldn’t have existed if it weren’t for a few uploaders who were dedicated to finding and sharing tracks off the duo’s CDs — only two of which are available to hear in full. The rest are hiding somewhere in Norway."

The duo have been contacted via their Facebook page regarding potentially rereleasing the lost albums, but they are yet to respond.

Existing tracks identified as Nightcore

Due to the nature of nightcore music, it is entirely possible for multiple edits of the same sample song to surface over time, originating from different nightcore artists at different points in time. Because of this, searching for purported lost Nightcore tracks is difficult, as there is always the possibility of any given song originating from a source other than Nightcore. The only ways in which a song can be positively determined to be a Nightcore track is if a) the track is dated prior to 2008 (when the nightcore practice first began to spread), or b) the track is explicitly presented as a Nightcore track. Searching for Nightcore music online is also made much harder due to the duo sharing a name with the musical subculture.

In the aforementioned Nest HQ article, YouTube channel Maikel6311 is credited to have been among the first to archive music from the duo online.

"When I started in 2008, my goal was to put all the original Nightcore songs (around 30-ish songs) on Youtube for everyone to see [...] At that time, there were no other real examples of big Nightcore channels. Around 2009, when I ran out of original Nightcore songs, I saw this ‘new’ Nightcore song. After figuring out where that song came from, I found out about Nightcore being ‘sped up’ and ‘pitched up’. I came to the realization that Nightcore songs could be made by everyone, using reasonably simple audio software."

A playlist is linked in the article, which appears to consist of songs by the duo uploaded to YouTube around 2011. The playlist is fortunately still up. Only three of the 36 songs in the playlist - Don't Let Me Down, Walk Alone, and All I Want for Christmas - have not been matched to an album, meaning they may come from a lost album. The background image used in Forever is the cover of Summer Edition, and Fallin' makes obvious use of the L'hiver cover, which may hint that these songs appear on those respective albums. However, both songs are already known to appear on Sensaciòn. It is possible there may have been overlapping tracks used on different albums.

Energized was uploaded to YouTube in January 2013 by 10RexTheWolf01, but it has since been taken down[10].

Videos

EmbedVideo is missing a required parameter.

References