Hi there – my name is Eirik. I am SkyMarshall Arts. Just me.

I was born and raised in the south-eastern part of Norway, where I still reside to this day. I currently live on a slightly remote rural island with my wife and daughter and two killer machine cats. I work as a domestic and commercial journeyman electrician and have been for the last 20 years. I also have education as a telecommunications engineer.

And when I have some free time, your boy slides into a comfertable gaming chair and boot up all the things – and produce digital music that hopefully takes you back in time for a bit. And so I will for years to come.

SkyMarshall Arts has always been a one man show. There seem to be a belief we are many, but nope, we are one. Just with a supporting cast. Real friends and internet friends and hired help has contributed to many songs over the years and will continue to do so in the future.

But SkyMarshall Arts – is one lone warrior – and that is me.

It all started with the Commodore Amiga. In the late ’80s, my dad brought home a brand-new Amiga 500. No internal storage, just half a megabyte of RAM — but he also handed me a black garbage bag filled with pirated floppy disks. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.

Buried among those disks were copies of OctaMED and ProTracker. That was my first real introduction to music production. I never finished much back then, but growing up surrounded by demo scene culture and tracker masterpieces left a permanent mark on me.

By the mid-’90s, a friend introduced me to FastTracker. Got immediate Amiga flashbacks. I took it home and obsessed over it — studying other people’s songs, experimenting, and slowly learning how everything worked. By 1998, I had made my first track that felt worthy to share.

From there, things escalated. The productions became more ambitious, the sound more polished, and the audience gradually grew. I had some surprisingly early local success with a Norwegian comedy album in the early 2000s, but I’d say Forever Gamer in 2007 was my first real hit.

Yes, and no, but mostly yes. I publish my own music and make it at home – so I guess we can call that a studio. I stay far far away from anything resembling professional. DYI is what we do and like best. Not that anybody wants to sign me and my extremely niche music anyway.

But to be fair – after slumming it in shitty apartments with lackluster setups for a decade, I finally got to build my own dream studio when we bought a house. A large part of the downstairs floor was comandeered for the purpose after much deliberations with the wife – and after a lot of renovation and draining the accounts  – the perfect mancave with everything an old boomer gamer musician needs was born.

And in addition to a beefy computer for the music – we’ve got desk space for years, arcade machines, dedicated movie room with the huge tv and surround, all the consoles known to man, an Amiga 1200 setup, and Windows XP computer setup for the retro games – and a physical games collection so large it’s almost embarrassing. I love it. Fucking epic.

My hardware setup is pretty basic, but I have what I need.

• Studio Monitors: KRK ROKIT RP5 G5
• Subwoofer: KRK S8.4 Active Subwoofer
• Audio Interface: Steinberg UR242
• Midi Keyboard: Novation LaunchKey Mini
• Microphone: Audio-Technica AT2035

Simple answer is I have never had much interest in hardware, nor did I have much money to blow on it either in my formative years. So I made do with what I had and have leaned heavily into hardware emulation and virtual studio technology for almost my entire career. I started out using sample based trackers, so I kinda got used to that. Why get a big heavy synth that takes up a lot of space, when you have software that emulates perfectly? So I have done almost everything digitally forever.

That said, I do want a synth one day. One of the great ones. Like a NordLead 2 or a Roland JP-8080. Would be awesome to have in the studio as a “conversation piece”. We’ll see what Santa brings one day.

Yes, you better believe I was a filthy high seas software pirate for the better part of two decades. Just like you. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

But, I am proud to say I have changed my ways. I now actually own everything I use to produce music. Jumping on good deals and only getting what I absolutely need has been so rewarding. Turns out when you pay for something, you actually want value from it. So you learn every detail about the thing and become a better producer as a result.

These are some of my favorites that I use in some capacity on absolutely every track. I have a bunch more on regular rotation, but I make an effort to list those on the individual songs if you want to know what was used on a specific track. If you want more info, just ask me.

• FLStudio Producer Edition
• Xfer Serum 2
• Reveal Sound Spire
• Synapse Audio Dune 3
• Arturia Pigments 7
• Korg Collection 6

The name SkyMarshall Arts actually has a story. A dumb story, but a story you – as the sweaty gamer you are – can relate to.

SkyMarshall was my gamertag back in the day. The handle I used on local LAN’s, on Battle.net in Warcraft III and Starcraft, in IRC rooms, on MSN and on forums. That was my cringe nick, and I loved it.

I got it from Starship Troopers actually. A movie I loved to death. Still do in fact. In it, the head of the United Citizen Federation is called a Sky Marshal. Ofcourse I spelled it incorrectly, and never corrected it.

So came the time where I had to release a song we made for World of Warcraft in 2005, and I kinda suspected it would be picked up by fan-sites and such – so I wanted a new serious artist name. I called myself Dj Dark at that time, which is a weird thing to name yourself when you haven’t DJ’d since a dance in middle school. So a change was needed.

I thought combining SkyMarshall with martial arts was clever at the time, so that is what I did. Spelled wrong in every way possible.

You may or may not have noticed that I reference Dj Dark several places on this website, and are lumped in with that name on several online tracker databases and such – so might as well explain why.

Dj Dark is what I called myself from around 1996 to 2005. Every song on Tracker in Training, and every song up until 2005 on The Nintendo Generation was made under the handle Dj Dark. A very original name.

There is absolutely no fun story about that name. All my buddies who were equally into music had DJ in front of their names. Dj Liquid, Dj Terlezzi, Dj Raven, Dj Iziz, Dj Pete, Dj Reptile and so forth. I was Dj Dark.

And together we were UDJSC – United DJ’s of Sande City. Hooooboy.

Anyway, that is why my old music is listed that way over at for instance The Mod Archive or on Excotica. I have however edited and updated every single tracker module I ever made on Tracker in Training, so it is correct and understandable when you download it from this site.

All my music and albums have been a mess for years when it comes to release dates and which songs belong on which albums. To make matters even more confusing, there are two or three album titles floating around on old MP3 releases that never actually got a release.

You see, I’ve always released my music for free. I’ve never charged anyone a single cent. Back then, I simply uploaded MP3s online and let people share them if they wanted to. I never intended to release proper albums. Streaming services weren’t really a thing until around 2008, and even then I didn’t jump on board until several years later.

Eventually, I made albums for streaming. Then I ran into a whole new set of problems: copyright. It turns out Disney sends rather unfriendly letters when you release a remix like Jack Sparrow without asking for permission first. Who knew right? So I got that sorted, but many songs could not be released – resulting in the albums again getting chopped up and missing tracks. Hell even I get confused sometimes.

And that is where this website comes in handy. Everything is on here.
Concider what you find here canon forever. I’ll do better going forward.