The Kosmic Free Music Foundation was a worldwide group of computer musicians, artists, and coders focused on the PCdemoscene. Most members were from the United States, Canada, and Australia. They created music - mostly techno, trance, and ambient - with tracker software. They also created some artwork and demos. All their productions were freely available to download from BBSes and the internet. In the 1990s, they were known for having many of the tracking scene's top musicians as members. Their early presence on the Internet made them one of the first netlabels. The leader of Kosmic was Dan Nicholson, who went by the alias Maelcum.
Group history
The group was founded in 1991, under the name Kosmic Loader Foundation. The original purpose of the group was to create BBS intros and ANSI art. In 1992, Maelcum began releasing MOD music files under the group's name, and soon KLF became music oriented. Inspekdah Deck ran a BBS at his home in New Jersey called Trancentral II which became the homebase for the group to communicate and release their music. In 1994, the group quickly embraced the Internet, and created an FTP site and web site. Having only a few active members, they quickly grew by recruiting new members through the IRC channel#trax. By this time, many musicians in KLF started using Renaissance's MultiTracker program to create MTM files instead of MODs, thus allowing the use of 32 simultaneous instruments rather than 4. . In 1995, the group changed their name to Kosmic Free Music Foundation, to emphasize their focus on music rather than demos or intros. However, after recruiting a coder named GooRoo, they presented their first full-length demo, "", at the NAID party in Quebec, and ranked third place in competition. Kosmic members Maelcum & IQ placed second in the music competition with "Hitchhiking Reticulan". It was later released on the FTZ CD "Nothing Is True", produced by Maelcum on his own label, Area 51 Records. More demos and musicdisks followed, although single music releases were still the mainstay. In 1997, Kosmic released their first archive CD-ROM for sale, containing all their music releases through 1996 plus a few new audio tracks. Some members started releasing their music in the new MP3 format instead of tracker formats. Most members from the original #trax rush had since retired or left for independent projects. The group continued and released two more archive CD sets, but by early 2000 had faded into inactivity. During its active years KFMF was one of the largest music groups, if not the largest, in the tracker/demoscene community.
