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HEATBEAT, aka Aleksi Eeben, formerly Antti Mikkonen

[WHO?]
Aleksi Eeben, also known as Heatbeat/CNCD, is easily one of the most talented composers who were active on the Amiga .MOD scene. He came to prominence as a Finnish member of Rebels in around 1990, when he was only 13 years old (!). He then formed Carillon, who merged with Cyberiad to form the near-legendary CNCD around 1993. Although Heatbeat soundtracked a number of famous demos such as "Full Moon" by Virtual Dreams/FLT, he had plenty more amazing pieces that were never used in demos. He was renowned for being prolific _and_ highquality (there was a much rumored 6-floppy-disc music-disc featuring his tracks which never got released, doh.) Naturally, Heatbeat was generally at or close to the top of the all the scene-charts throughout his time composing for the Amiga. You should be able to see why when listening to these tracks - his production skills on .MODs were amazingly smooth for the limited medium, he used all-custom samples and effects brilliantly, and his jazzy, unorthodox melodies work perfectly on everything from stranged-out synthpop through chiptunes to weirdass techno, all from someone who was still super-young.

As for what Heatbeat did after he stopped doing .MODs, he changed his real name from Antti Mikkonen (which you'll see on his early tracks) to Aleksi Eeben, and kept a low profile until more recently, when he returned to the tracking scene with his coding/composing work for the Nintendo Gameboy, Commodore Vic20 and Commodore 64. After making free 'tracker' software and then great compositions on that software for each of those formats, he's hooked up with the net.music.label of this site maintainer, Monotonik, and has put out several releases there. We also host complete, recorded-from-the-original-hardware .MP3s of his recent GB/C64/Vic20/non-retro work here on .mod soul brother - you'll find them at the bottom of this page.

[OUR TOP 5 .MODs?]
1. "Dawn Mosaic"
[Classic 1993-ish Heatbeat, this showcases his maddeningly intricate, jazz-influenced licks over super-catch bassline and a divine drum loop. Remember, all the solos sound played, but they will have been entered and phrased note by note into tracker form - wow. Add some superweird chanting loops, some great percussive breaks, and superb-sounding bass, and you have an all-time great at work.]
2 . "Street Jungle"
[Made when Heatbeat was back in Rebels, and one of the first tunes that really made him 'famous' in the .MOD-scene, this used the shakuhachi (?) sample that was super-prevalent at the time, most likely due to Deep Forest, but really cut things up in a different way, with stabbing chords and a busy, complex melody.]
3 . "Intromuz-1.hb"
[One of those tiny chiptunes (15k!) that not only doesn't really sound like a superbeepy chiptrack, but also showcases exquisitely catchy melody, including supercatchy percussion and syncopated lead. Used in about a million crack-intros and demopack menus, naturally, and another example of Heatbeat's versatility.]
4 . "Sainahi Circles"
[This is an extended version of the insanely atonal techno track used in VD/FLT's famous "Full Moon" demo, and it may be a bit of an acquired taste, but if you get it, boy, you _get_ it. There's a superfine break, lots of sample retriggering, the indescribable Heatbeat melody weirdness, and.. life is good.]
5 . "Annika"
[Finishing off with a much more downtempo track, this is a mellow end-part-style track with two different intertwining lead instruments, lots of pitchbend and slide all over them, the same mobile bassline prevalent all the way through Heatbeat's work, and a wonderfully lazy jamming style that demands you lie down and take notice.]

Download our top 5 Heatbeat .MODs here, or the scene.org mirror (580k .ZIP!)


[ALL MODs?]
As well as offering our top 5 picks, we've included another archive with every single Heatbeat .MOD/.XM ever released, for completists and those who want to hear more from the artist in question. Particular favorites of ours from the rest of Heatbeat's output include:

- "Cah-Caqlach" (beautiful guitar then funky hit magic then crazy jazz jam.. wha?)
- "Russian Scup-Herne" (earlier funky jamband birdsong deliciousness.)
- "Matkamies" (more all-time-classic chiptune goodness, yum.)
- "Abidjahn Tata-Le-Na" (insane funky syncopated weirdness.)
- "Nowhere Whenever" (affecting, super-sharp, improvised-sounding strut.)

Download Heatbeat's complete .MOD collection here, or the scene.org mirror (197 tunes, 21mb .ZIP!)
[list of included .MODs is here - v1.1 as of 06/03, several non-Heatbeat songs in archive deleted, thanks to Aleksi for checking it out!]

[MISSING .MODs?]
If you have any Heatbeat .MODs that we're currently missing, please contact us. Please note that we've deliberately not included Aleksi's tunes from the Amiga commercial game Elfmania, because they're doubtless still copyrighted - they should be easy to find elsewhere online if you really want, though.

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[BONUS MATERIAL?]
Because we're friends with Aleksi 'Heatbeat' Eeben through releasing some of his new tracks on our net.label, Monotonik, we're also hosting a lot of his more recent material in .MP3 form. This includes tunes composed on the Nintendo Gameboy, Commodore 64, Commodore Vic20, mainly using Aleksi's own 'tracking' software and always recorded direct from the original hardware, and a 'contemporary' section with tracks composed using modern tools+synths.

[BONUS: COMMODORE 64 TRACKS?]
You can download the following Commodore 64 tracks here:

- "75% Sale Rea (Buy More Remix)" (supercatchy .SID bleepiness - 1.7mb .MP3)
- "Free Fall" (pulsing, offbeat catchiness - 3.2mb .MP3)
- "Good Citizen's Tango" (blop bleep, cha cha cha - 3.3mb .MP3)
- "Ground Expansion" (minimal, neat semi-weirdness - 2.9mb .MP3)
- "One-Channel Music" (wow, really all in one channel? impressive - 1.7mb .MP3)
- "Rock N Roll Butterfly" (melancholic, slowed-down grooves - 1.9mb .MP3)
- "Sadness" (android funk up the wazoo - 1.5mb .MP3)
- "The All-Family Stomp" (stomping around with bassdrum writ large - 1.7mb .MP3)
- "The Grand Rules" (epic heavymetal c64 symphony time - 10.7mb .MP3)
- "The Radio Challenge" (v.catchy chiptune-esque groove - 1.7mb .MP3)
- "Water Music" (sedate, almost classical longform piece - 17.0mb .MP3)


[BONUS: NINTENDO GAMEBOY TRACKS?]
You can download the following Nintendo Gameboy tracks here:

- "Alley Cat" (yow, very jazzy scat groove - 2.8mb .MP3)
- "Benny" (zig-a-zag a melody-filled action - 0.8mb .MP3)
- "Briefing Room" (more abstract, mature groove - 1.3mb .MP3)
- "Broad Time" (wonderful bloopy synths rule - 1.0mb .MP3)
- "Carousel" (round and round on the cutetrain we go - 1.5mb .MP3)
- "Cheerful" (really, really, really cheerful - 1.5mb .MP3)
- "Cute" (bizarrely toned, Heatbeat-scaled craziness - 1.9mb .MP3)
- "Ekans Desert" (darker, weirder stuff altogether - 2.5mb .MP3)
- "Electric Shears" (knock three times and enter.. now - 1.9mb .MP3)
- "Farm Frolics" (hideously cute, just hideously cute - 1.9mb .MP3)
- "Fruitless" (very oldskool .MOD-styled w/jammin'-lead - 1.2mb .MP3)
- "Giel Glacial Park" (very intricate, strangely toned.. strangeness - 2.6mb .MP3)
- "Jolly" (we are, indeed, very jolly - 0.7mb .MP3)
- "Lewap Forest" (almost skeletal, actionpacked, unorthodox - 2.6mb .MP3)
- "Lighthearted" (classically jump-up-and-down playpen stuff - 1.9mb .MP3)
- "Oldschool" (reallyreallycool use of sampled drums + fx - 1.8mb .MP3)
- "Options" (more strutting around with the cutesy stomp - 0.8mb .MP3)
- "Plate Panic" (loop after loop of happiness and glee - 1.2mb .MP3)
- "Skyscraper Capers" (almost evil-sounding, then all happy again - 1.6mb .MP3)
- "Soundcheck" (madly spiralling melodies of dooom, I tell you - 1.0mb .MP3)
- "Tinkling" (like it says, a little bit of tinkling goes on - 0.2mb .MP3)
- "Tomorrow" (sounds older, more melodramatic - 2.0mb .MP3)
- "Toms House" (more happy happy joy joy - 2.3mb .MP3)
- "Tropical Island" (bizarrely unorthodox yet again - 1.7mb .MP3)
- "Whack A Cat" (very happy melodies all over the place - 1.1mb .MP3)


[BONUS: COMMODORE VIC20 TRACKS?]
You can download the following Commodore VIC20 tracks here:

- "Arbeit" (wow, very dark, distorted strangeness - 1.1mb .MP3)
- "Dragonwing" (arpegiating, distinctively VIC20-ish - 1.7mb .MP3)
- "Eternal Joy" (odd, straightahead grooves in yr face - 0.9mb .MP3)
- "Firefly" (almost random sounding hardass bleep techno - 1.2mb .MP3)
- "Frozen Time" (bring on the VIC20 sub-bass, maaaan - 1.6mb .MP3)
- "Jackpot" (yikes, more serious techno laydown - 0.8mb .MP3)
- "March And Fall" (odd, semi-repetitive, strange-noised - 1.3mb .MP3)
- "Space Cadets" (getting the oddest jungle sounds from the oldest computers - 0.8mb .MP3)
- "Toy Talk" (semi-literate, semi-crazy beep tunage - 0.9mb .MP3)


[BONUS: CONTEMPORARY TRACKS USING COMMODORE VIC20 SOUNDS?]
You can download the following tracks using Commodore VIC20 samples, but made on modern equipment, here:

- "3583 Bytes Free" (wow, full-on Vic20 amen jungle in yr face - 5.1mb .MP3)
- "The Four Voices" (a little more of that crazed junglistic Vic20 action - 6.4mb .MP3)


[BONUS: CONTEMPORARY TRACKS?]
You can download the following tracks made with contemporary samplers and sequencers here:

- "Aamu Uni" (barely-there ambient haze - 0.6mb .MP3)
- "Avaruuslaulu" (the strangest, almost monastic, overlapping, yummy ambience - 4.0mb .MP3)
- "Berlin" (too short, wonderful, chilled-out slide - 1.3mb .MP3)
- "Coolmint" (darn funky techno for scene competition-entry, superb groove - 3.6mb .MP3)
- "Copybook" (very very crazed phasing in and out techweirdness - 1.5mb .MP3)
- "Lissabon" (sparse, lush ambience of the best kind - 2.9mb .MP3)
- "Maan Aamu" (understated drift through long-forgotten corridors - 2.7mb .MP3)
- "Rebuilt" (mature, odd, almost post-modern grooves - 3.0mb .MP3)
- "Summertime" (absolutely insane screeching methods - 1.2mb .MP3)
- "Tridiganda" (odd improvised, percussive noises - 3.6mb .MP3)
- "Wintertime" (listening to an orchestra underwater - 1.4mb .MP3)
- "First Electric Eel" [as Eric Static] (a beautiful end, classically looped in amber - 0.9mb .MP3)


[NOTE: If you want to get all of these bonus tracks at once, not just grab a few to check out, you could always anonymous ftp to Aleksi's root directory on our site and then grab everything - clever, huh?]

These works are licensed under a Creative Commons License with the full permission of Aleksi 'Heatbeat' Eeben, aka Antti Mikkonnen.