When
Star Control 2 was being developed, a contest was posted to the
Usenet group
comp.sys.audio.amiga. It requested submissions for a game, but the name of the game was not mentioned.
Riku Nuottajarvi and
Dan Nicholson won, and are among the principle composers of the game soundtrack. They formed the
8-bit Collective, and the
tracking group
KLF in 1991. KLF's aim was to provide
free music, which was an obvious homage in name and spirit to
The KLF. Their home
BBS was even named
Trancentral ][. KLF members went by handles, Riku as
IQ, and Dan as
Maelcum.
Their music was initially released in Amiga 4-channel MOD format. They started with a small group of members, but the roster expanded quickly over a short amount of time. As technology improved, KLF followed, from MultiTracker, through [ft2 vs it|the holy war of FastTracker 2 v. ScreamTracker 3, to Impulse Tracker. The files were spread far and wide through BBS nets (Fidonet and TABnet, if I remember correctly).
With the rise of the web and the steady increase in bandwidth, KLF renamed itself to Kosmic/Kosmic Free Music Foundation and began distribution in mp3 format. Trancentral went the way of most BBS's and KFMF's new homebase is now a website (www.kosmic.org).
On a personal note, shortly after KLF was started, I got into the BBS scene and as luck would have it, Trancentral was a local call to me. I was a juarez puppy and this damn BBS had nothing but MOD files and tracking software. Well, eventually, I gave it a try and I was hooked. I even submitted a song and got rejected (it was my second MOD ever and it was indeed horrible). Dan Nicholson was pretty nice about it, knowing I had a fragile 13 year old ego.
Fortunately my graphical skill was better than my musical skill, and I became a member for a short while (1994ish, member 9) doing some RIPScript promos. Other priorities came and I dropped out, but I kept in touch with the community for the next few years, on the web and on IRC. Funnily enough, Dan Nicholson and I live in the same town, but we never met face-to-face.
Over a decade later, it's nice to see KFMF still around and still pumping out the music.