Northcore

CARL-JOAKIM GIBBONS was born in Denmark on 22 December 1974. He moved with his family to Melbourne in 1983, and was interested in electronic music from an early age. He started writing in 1991 with a Roland D-10 and IBM XT, and dabbled in many areas, before settling temporarily in ambient electronics. His influences at the time (in 1993 and 1994) were artists like Tetsu Inoue and The Orb, and the many artists on Fax Records. Producing under the name Nonspace, he received considerable airplay on PBS and attracted the attention of the then brand-new label Seraphic. Carl went as far as producing an album master with Seraphic, before their tight budget and then-limited release scope forced them to debut with the less risky launch of Voiteck’s Round Square album, followed by News from the Sun by Steve Law and Biff by Halo Produkshuns. With Seraphic’s assistance, Carl organized several gigs at Global Warming (Little Reata), where he experimented with blends of ambient sounds and chunky beats. The response was phenomenally positive, and Carl was inspired to create a new artist project name, Nordcore, under which he still works today (with slightly different spelling). Nord/Northcore has performed to tremendous success at Escape (x2), Global Warming (x2), XSIVE, BassStation, and Kinetic Dreams.

Carl’s taste in music is wide and eclectic. He has a B.Sc. and Grad.Dip in Psychology, and during his studies of linguistics, acoustics, and psychoacoustics, he developed a very high level of understanding of the human brain’s perception of sound, which has further broadened his writing scope. He listens to natural sounds in a musical way, and visualizes musical sounds in terms of their harmonics and phase. He is a gifted, creative academic, and his speculations on music are always well informed and measured.

His extra-musical activities include a full-time psychological career with Deakin University, and a lot of computer stuff, including 3D graphics, publishing, and design.

To avoid confusion with an eponymous German record label, Carl last year changed the spelling of his moniker to Northcore. Nord/Northcore tracks have appeared on several respected Melbourne compilations, including Zeitgeist 2 (if?), Melbourne Medium Rare (MDS), Primitive Dawn (Green Ant), and the international compilation Didjeridu Planet 2, where Carl collaborated with anthropologist and brilliant didj player Guan Lim to produce a uniquely Australian combination of hard-core didj and trance elements. He has also produced four album-length promotional CDs of his own material, all of which have received generous airplay on RRR, PBS, KissFM, JoyFM and StreetFM.

During his 3-year contract with ProDJ, Carl released Clearlight under the artist name Little Loki, and did Little Loki mixes of B-Boys to the Dancefloor by Thunderchild, and Pink Bomb by Pink Bomb. Clearlight received frequent airplay on JJJ, RRR, PBS, HitzFM, KixFM, JoyFM, and KissFM. Carl’s last track with ProDJ, Missed Out, features Elan’s Melinda Richards on vocals.

Carl has been focussing his Northcore energies on the arrangement of regular live gigs, which his previously busy academic schedule did not allow. His most recent gig was at BassStation, where he worked the crowd to massive peaks. New tracks from his latest CD Dream Century proved to be great new crowd favourites.