Andrew Sega - Biography

Biography

Andrew Sega was born on 20 May 1975 in Providence, Rhode Island and lived the majority of his young life in Upstate New York. His interest in music began when he was 7 years old, when he started playing and experimenting with an electronic organ he had in his house. He later started taking lessons with an organist from a Polish church in Rome, New York, where he learned almost exclusively baroque music. Later in high school he learned to play other instruments, including bass clarinet and piano.

Sega's first records were from artists such as Men at Work, Genesis, and Fleetwood Mac. He discovered trackers in his first year of college (1993) from a friend, who showed him Future Crew's Unreal demo. Sega was amazed with how good the music sounded. He eventually discovered FastTracker 1.0, and began writing MOD music for the first time. His first demo group was Psychic Monks. Through the mid 1990s he contributed music to various demo and music groups, and music disks such as Epidemic (1994), featuring other noted tracker musicians like Purple Motion and Skaven.

Sega later helped form the legendary tracking group Five Musicians, which featured other notable figures, such as Jeroen Tel, Basehead and Hunz. He was also a member of German demogroup Legend Design, and iCE. Sega programmed and/or composed music for several demoscene productions, such as the NAID '95 demo Eden and 1996 demo Babylon. His composition, "Ascent of the Cloud Eagle", won the first place at NAID '95.

Later in his career, he gradually left demoscene behind and started making music for video games, beginning with little known titles such as In Pursuit of Greed, Iron Seed and Xixit, then moving on to Origin Systems' Crusader series, where he worked as a software engineer and composer. Sega was a founding member of the video game music production company Straylight Productions, contributing tracks to the first-person shooters Unreal and Unreal Tournament. Later, he joined Digital Anvil (now a part of Microsoft Game Studios), and worked as a programmer and musician on Freelancer. In 2006 he founded Diffusion Games, a gaming company which focuses on exploring emotional and social aspects of interactivity.

In 2001, Sega founded The Alpha Conspiracy, and released two studio albums, Cipher (2001) and Aura (2004), and a split EP with Low Technicians, Forward Rewinding (2002). He also founded Diffusion Records, an independent record label through which he would release his first Alpha Conspiracy album. Gradually, Diffusion Records became a full-featured label, releasing albums by Iris, CTRL, Low Technicians, and Kilowatts and Vanek.

Sega was introduced to Iris in 2001. He started working on several test tracks with Reagan Jones before becoming an official member in 2002.

He is also a live member of industrial hip hop group Stromkern. Currently he is working on a new dark electropop project with Julia Beyer (Chandeen, Technoir).

Sega's influences include Underworld, μ-Ziq, Aphex Twin, Radiohead, Orbital, Fluke, The Prodigy, Hybrid, Mouse on Mars, Depeche Mode, Rush, Genesis, XTC, Public Enemy, Imogen Heap, and The Chemical Brothers, among others.