Propellerhead

To further celebrate our tenth anniversary, we now proudly present a monstrous edition of the SpyCam - the Propellerhead 10 year anniversary SpyCam! To make it more digestable, it's been split into several parts, the first one being...

Propellerhead office tour

The participants in the conference (along with the winners in the anniversary contest) was taken for a guided bus on their way to the office.

In Sweden, all the cool guys sit at the back of the bus. Americans clearly do it the other way around. Here's Hucky, Kevin and Adam of M-Audio USA with Digidesigns Christopher Bock.

Photo by Peff

Finally there! Johan (in a baby blue shirt) makes sure everyone gets off the bus alright.

Photo by Peff

The Propellerheadquarters! Our office is of course situated on the top two floors of the far part of the building (yes, we have big doors in the roof where we can hoist antennas to catch the lightning during thunderstorms, thus injecting our developer super-brains with more energy).

Photo by Peff

Everyone gathered in the kitchen, Ernst said hello and welcome and we all had coffee and cinnamon buns. After that, people could walk around and meet the propellerheads and check out the office.

Lunkan may not seem very interested in what's going on around him, but a lot of people seemed very much interested in what he might be doing. To no avail, I might add - Lunkan assured us you'd have to be pretty skilled to figure out what he was up to from just looking at the code.

Photo by Robin Sarac

Did I say everyone was having coffee? Well, not James Bernard, he had soup. Don't ask.

Here's Daisuke "Dice" Naito; one of the winners in the anniversary contest, proudly displaying the contents of the gift bag he's been given as part of the contest prize (the other part being the trip to Sweden).

Though this is probably a rude gesture in some countries, in Sweden it just means "check it out, I'm trying to look like I've got muscles".

Photo by Peff

And this tattoo means "Property of Propellerhead Software" in Cantonese.

Photo by Peff

Cosmos studios

Propellerheadquarters or not, there's only so much to see in an office and it was soon time to leave for the Cosmos studios, just south of the city center. Here, the participants were asked to divide into teams, which were then given 90 minutes to create 90 seconds of music in different genres. The "No music - no food" rule seemed to give everyone the proper motivation.

Johan (left) relaxes in the luxurious main room of Cosmos studios. At the back are some of the rooms where the various teams resided, all with funny names like the Dub Chamber, Pop R Us and House of House.

Photo by Peff

Festung Funk, where the music making was led by propellerhead Ludde Carlsson.

Photo by Peff

Hip Hop Alley resided in a downstairs room. Propellerhead product specialist and homeboy extraordinaire James Bernard (far right) leads his team.

Photo by Peff

Metal Morgue participants Jocke Berg of Clawfinger and Ola makes the international sign for "just two notes in this song, guys". Austrian distributor Andras Stiegler looks somewhat unimpressed.

Photo by Peff

Kristoffer looks very concentrated while at the helm of his movie score team in Movie Mansion.

Photo by Peff

Once the teams had finished, they were given a demo of the new Reason Drum Kits ReFill by Eric Gadd, Swedish platinum-selling recording artist who is already using the ReFill for his upcoming album.

Photo by Peff

Due to a SpyCam malfunction, no photos were taken at the dinner that followed the Cosmos session. There's a photo or two of it in the travel log of anniversary winner Robin Saracs travel log for those of you who want to see what it looked like.

The ReJoice! party

Saturday night was the peak of the 10th anniversary celebration; the ReJoice! party. The night started off by distributors, Propellerheads and a few select friends having dinner at the venue of the party; Öst100.

Very fashionable place down by the water that makes good use of the Propellerhead red color.

And to further add some Propellerhead flavor to the décor, animations were played, both on the digital backdrop...

And on the beer pumps. Very nice to have something to look at while waiting for your drink.

Patrik had rented a plethora of retro arcade games to everyone's delight. Here's Pelle, engrossed in Defender.

The nice staff made sure everybody had drinks.

And as darkness descended, we had a very nice meal.

Photo by Peff

After dinner, all the other guests started filling up the place and mr Bruce Leenus took his place behind the decks.

Soon, it was time for Pelle, Ernst and Marcus to thank everyone for coming and for supporting Propellerhead Software during the first ten years.

Photo by Peff

And once Marcus was done giving one of our SpyCam photographers the evil eye, it was time to introduce the first artist of the evening:

Photo by Hami

Gaffaman!

Photo by Peff

Now, this is one heck of a cool looking artist - we could probably have made an entire SpyCam just out of all the great shots that were taken during his gig. No, this one isn't blurry - it's art, it's supposed to be like that!

Ask Tage, he took it.

On to the next performing act; Midnight Monkeys. Full-tilt guitar mania backed by Reason and fuelled and fronted by none other than Stefan - a SpyCam veteran and honorary Propellerhead.

Photo by Peff

The audience looks a bit scared as Stefan jumps down off the stage and brings the show to them.

Photo by Peff

The last act on stage was Sergej Auto, who won a lot of new fans with his great music and cool video backdrops. Extra fashion points for concealing his laptop in an oxblood colored leather briefcase - very stylish!

Photo by Peff

And then the party continued throughout the night. Pelle is looking rather happy and content.

Michael "Hucky" Huckler and Ernst pose for the SpyCam.

Propellerhead veteran developer and office trickster Dan.

No SpyCam would be complete without a shot of Micke.

More developers! Mattias, Peter and Erik seem to be drinking coffee?

Mr Kanji Murai of MI7 Japan (left) looks happy to get a break from getting the Japanese Propellerhead website running.

Franck Blaczyk of M-Audio and Thomas Wendt.

Peff and friends; Fabian, Tomas Merkle and Paul (aka JackPlug).

Daggan, who helped organize the entire event, and Andreas, who makes all the Propellerhead logos and a lot of the graphics for our software.

Martin Herbst and Toni Kindler look happy. Pelle looks... well, like Pelle.

Would you buy used software from these guys? Peff hangs out with Johan and James (who's making his hardest face).