FSB

Behind the music of Tegma are Omar Chelly and Jason Orfanidis, both born and raised in the Swedish town of Malmoe. So what is the story of this successful trance project? Omar and Jason have been friends since childhood; their fathers were also friends, making it seem natural that sooner or later they would begin creating something like music together. The story began in 1996 when Omar returned to Malmoe after spending a few years abroad and a little time in Gothenburg. When Omar returned, he learned that Jason had discovered something called Psychedelic Trance. Jason, being of Greek descent, spent every summer in Greece, and it was there that he encountered trance music. A close friend and relative, Alexis, introduced him to this new genre of electronic music; Psychedelic Trance. This was in 1994, and Jason immediately became fascinated, starting to collect vinyl and playing as a DJ at small parties, as well as assisting his cousin with a radio show called Danceswitch that aired on the radio waves in Athens. However, this was for fun, and Jason did not think he would ever pursue DJing or writing music seriously. For Omar, this music was not so interesting; he was more into hip-hop and world music. He also listened to a bit of electronic music like Jean Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk, and Vangelis, which felt a bit unbelievable. Later, at the end of 1997, Jason left some records at Omar's home, and he took them just to try them out because Jason insisted that this was the kind of music to listen to at parties. Gradually, Omar became less indifferent to the psychedelic rhythms. A year later, at the end of 1998, Omar installed Reason and began experimenting with it. This later resulted in their first joint project named Epsilon, which Omar and Jason described as 'garbage, horrible, melodic psytrance.' Fortunately, none of Epsilon's tracks managed to be heard by a large audience. After a year of messing around with Reason and learning the basics, they both decided they wanted to take music recording more seriously and that it was time to buy hardware to expand their setup. First, they purchased a Yamaha Rm1x and later a Novation Nova; with these two, along with a simple computer running Cubase, they continued to write under the name Epsilon for a few more months. In early 2000, they instantly fell in love with the new wave of progressive and minimalist psytrance and realized this was what they had been looking for. This marked the death of Epsilon and the birth of Tegma. In June 2000, Omar and Jason recorded their first 3-track demo and sent it to several labels, receiving positive feedback, and one of the tracks was noted, which was good for Tegma and encouraged them to work harder. Since then, things have been going quite well; the project has been released on more than 20 compilations across various labels worldwide, as well as several 12-inch records and an album. This includes the fact that they have performed live in different parts of the world, even in faraway places like Japan, Brazil, and Mexico. The guys from Tegma also tried to create other projects; under the name Homer N Lazon, they released several tracks in the United Kingdom. Omar also created his solo project O'Chelly, which had several releases on CD compilations. Jason again began DJing and played a few times alongside Tegma's live performances and at several events.