It was natural for me to establish my own production setup after leaving DéFilm. Initially backed by Medley Records my new studio was given a good start, despite the heavy new investments in large mixing desk, 24-track recorder and outboards.

So “Ranum Studio” opened it’s doors on December 1, 1986 in Gammel Kongevej 47B, 3rd floor, Copenhagen. This venue already held “Hookfarm Studio” – an established studio in traditional recording circles. And “Bløndal Studio”, an electronic studio run by musician and composer Hjortur Bløndal, which I had already used for many DeFilm recordings and other projects. Furthermore the building housed several record labels and other music-related companies.

In the new premises the rumour spread about my synthesizer facilities interfaced with traditional recording gear, and many artists came by to get assistance with this.

Also the setup was a perfect match for the dawning remix-scene. This was further enhanced by my acquisition of one of the first harddisk-recorders on the market. It was a german PPG HDU unit with 185 MB (!) of storage – enough for 6 minutes of stereo recording. Being ahead of it’s time this machine was never really fully developed before the PPG company went bankrupt, but nevertheless it ended up on a lot of remixes. Of the many remixes I made in this period (quite a few of them with Kenneth Baker) the most prominent were Gladys Knight and the Pips (Love on next to nothing), Sanne Salomonsen, Lars HUG (Kysser himlen farvel), Kasper Winding, Dr.Baker (Turn up the music), Alberte Winding (Det kan ikke vare længe), Back to Back (Som de andre gør), Nikolai Steen (Lever økonomisk), Time Gallery, Glashus, Kirsten Siggaard, Søs Fenger/Lars Muhl (Du siger dit hjerte er hårdt som sten), Beatbox m.fl.

During several years with Scatterbrain, DeFilm and heavy production and studio musician work I had gotten a lot of media coverage and reviews. Luckily most of it was positive. And being at the forefront of new sounds and music technology brought me some unique and amusing jobs with composing for TV. The first job with composition for TV was commissioned by Joachim Jerrik of national broadcaster DR (Danmarks Radio) who needed the title music and various stingers for a new series on computers and software called “Hårdt & Blødt” (“Soft & Hard”…).

The next step forward was a collaboration with Hans Otto Bisgaard, who was about to produce a series of mainstream music- and talkshows. Poul Bruun suggested to Hans Otto that I should do the signature music for the shows named “Under Uret” (“Below the Watch”…). They were slated to be broadcast on Saturday night in prime time on the only Danish national TV channel in those days – DR (Danmarks Radio). That ensured a massive audience by Danish standards. I composed a quite unique piece featuring a lot of samples and sound effects. The unusual sound of the music prompted Hans Otto Bisgaard to do a small feature on the production of the music. So a large TV-team turned up in the 24m2 studio to watch me explain, and demo how I had done it. Most of the crew and equipment actually had to stand in the hallway outside of the studio with barely enough space left for the cameraman and interviewer. The feature was broadcast in the programme and made me almost a household name for a while thereafter.

Sitting with lurking sideburns in the interimistic setup shortly after moving in on Gl. Kongevej 47B, 3.sal., before the arrival of the Otari MTR-90 Mk.2 taperecorder and the Amek Angela mixer.

The Commodore-64 runs a DX7-editor, some patch librarians, the session notes and occasional sound generation. In front is the Atari 1040ST running Steinberg Pro-24. Back wall is the Roland 100M modular and the Akai S-900 and Prophet-2002 rack sampler units plus misc. FX units. Keyboard is the Roland MKB-100, and the mixer is a 16-channel Roland stage mixer.