Lagoona was a dance and techno

Techno

Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...

 band, consisting of the two music producers Andreas Viklund (1980- ) and Björn Karlsson (1976- ). The band was based in a small town called Porjus

Porjus

Porjus is a locality situated in Jokkmokk Municipality, Norrbotten County, Sweden with 317 inhabitants in 2005. Geographically it is situated by the shores of Lule River at 499 meter height....

 in northern Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

. Lagoona was one of the first groups to call themselves "online artists" (October 1996) and they released their first free MP3

MP3

MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 single on the Internet in October 1997, long before the format became widely popular.

The early years

Lagoona first started making music in the tracker scene under the name TSEC (The Solid Energy Crew), and the band released its first two tracker songs in October 1996. Their first releases got very popular on the internet, and being one of few artists to release legal MP3 songs in 1997 created a lot of attention for the band. In early 1998, their first album was released. It was named "Dreams" after their first online hit from 1996, and it was completely home-brew and released by the bands own label. The money from the album sales helped the band build a real studio, and in October 1998 when the band started using hardware synthesizers and MIDI equipment instead of tracker software, the band changed its name from TSEC to Lagoona.

Since then, Lagoona have peaked most major MP3 music charts on the net at some point. The band got two songs at the #1 spot of the MP3.com Music chart, "The journey" in August 2000 and "Emotions in trance" a couple of months later the same year. The band also had several other songs in high positions on the MP3.com Music chart, including "The promised land" at #2. In the MP3.com genre charts, all songs Lagoona released (over 40 tracks in total) reached a top-20 place at some point. Lagoona got more than 2.4 million song plays from MP3.com, and in total more than 8 million recorded downloads as of 2007 - a number which only a few bands in Sweden could match at the time. Lagoona also released their music on other sites, like Beatmaka.com, Weedshare.com and Javamusic.com, where they also reached the #1 spots, and they were ranked in the mp3charts.com "Global Top 100" for more than two years in a row.

The later years

In 2001, Lagoona started working with vocals. The band recorded two songs with Dutch female singer Lizanne Hennessey ("Always in my heart" and "Be my friend"), and in 2003 the band co-operated with Swedish singer Åsa Holmberg who recorded one of Lagoonas most well-known songs, "Into my dream". Åsa also performed live with the band on stage during 2003 and 2004. Lagoona did over 30 live performances all over northern Sweden, playing as opening acts for Swedish artists like Markoolio

Markoolio

Marko Kristian "Markoolio" Lehtosalo is a Swedish-Finnish multi-platinum selling recording artist, singer, musician, songwriter, actor, and comedian...

 and Da Buzz

Da Buzz

Da Buzz is a Swedish eurodance/pop music group. Members of the group are writers/producers Per Lidén and Pier Schmid and lead-singer Annika Thörnquist.All three are from Karlstad....

. They were assisted on stage by DJ Magho (2000–2002) and DJ Isecore (2002–2004). The band have also had a number of record contracts, but never released any commercial album or single of their own. Their first commercial release was a remix on the Eskimo single "Dreaming of me" (In.Disc/NorskeGram). Lagoona has also produced music for British/Australian popstar Gina G

Gina G

-Albums:*1997 Fresh! — #12 UK #40 Norway.*1998 Gina G Remix Album *2005 Get Up & Dance -Singles:...

 and released single tracks on several international compilation albums, with the last major release being "Cream of the clubs 2004" (ZYX/DanceStreet) and "A trip in Trance 3" (Blue Dot). In 2006, two years after the band was put to rest, British label RFU Recordingz released a vinyl single with a Happy Hardcore

Happy hardcore

Happy hardcore, also known as happycore, is a genre of music typified by a very fast tempo , often coupled with solo vocals and sentimental lyrics. Its characteristically 4/4 beat "happy" sound distinguishes it from most other forms of hardcore techno, which tend to be "darker". It is typically in...

 remix of "Into my dream".

Among their merits in the later years, their "Final destination" became the most downloaded song of 2003 at Beatmaka.com after staying several months on top of the charts. "Final destination" is also the only Lagoona song where both members are singing the vocals. At the same ranking for year 2004, Lagoona had three songs on the top-20 ("Into my dream" being the highest at #12). Lagoona also got #1 at the Weedshare top chart with "Into my dream".

Today

Lagoona broke up in 2004, and neither of the two members are currently active artists. The official website of Lagoona used to be found at lagoonamusic.com, but the site was closed a couple of years ago. Today, most songs can be found on various file-sharing networks and on sites like YouTube

YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 and Last.fm

Last.fm

Last.fm is a music website, founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. It has claimed 30 million active users in March 2009. On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for UK£140m ....

. Nearly all the songs can also be downloaded for free (under a Creative Commons Attribution license) from Andreas Viklund's artist page on soundcloud.com, and streamed on Grooveshark.com.

Lagoona albums

• Dreams (1998, using the artist name "The Solid Energy Crew")
• Magic Melodies (2000)
• The Journey (2000)
• Generations (2002)

A fifth album called "Seventh heaven" was reportedly recorded in 2003-2004 with vocalist Åsa Holmberg, but it was never released.

Compilation and remix features

(this list is not complete, please help by adding releases you know of!)

• Tekno Magazine CD (1997, featuring a number of .XM modules by TSEC)
• Eskimo - Dreaming of me (1999, CD single featuring a Lagoona remix))
• Beatmaka Club Attack 2 (2001, featuring "Show me")
• Electronic Underground - best of MP3.com (2001)
• IncrediTrance #1 (2002, featuring "Hot for you")
• A Trip in Trance 2 (2002, featuring the TBO&Vega remix of "Show me")
• A Trip in Trance 3 (2003, featuring Kaveh Azizi's remix of "Into my dream")
• Cream of the Clubs 2004 (2004, featuring "The promised land")
• Into my dream (Frisky & Hujib remix) (2006, vinyl single released by RFU Recordingz)

Beside these releases, the two members have also made releases under their own name during the time of Lagoona. Andreas was a member of the Kosmic Free Music Foundation

Kosmic Free Music Foundation

The Kosmic Free Music Foundation was a worldwide group of computer musicians, artists, and coders focused on the PC demoscene. Most members were from the United States, Canada, and Australia. They created music - mostly techno, trance, and ambient - on trackers. They also created some artwork...

(KFMF), and has been featured on the Kosmic Archives album series and on the classic musicdisk "Return to stage 9". Both members have also released single songs on compilations for various labels under own artist names.

External links

• Andreas Viklund @ soundcloud.com (Nearly all Lagoona and Andreas Viklund songs, available as free MP3 downloads)
• Lagoona @ PureVolume.com (14 of the most popular Lagoona songs, available as free MP3 downloads)
• Andreas Viklund's website
• DJ Isecore's website
• TbO&Vega's website