JOEL ERIKSSON aka JOL

Joel Eriksson is an accomplished music producer from Sweden. He has gained recognition as a composer of game, film and pop music. Born in the late 1970s, he began to make music at a young age and also developed a love of computer games.

Joel Eriksson began to work on music for games early in his career. In 2000, he made the music for the acclaimed EA game, Battlefield 1942. This innovative WWII themed multiplayer game gained cult and commercial success, spawning a much loved series. The theme song is an iconic piece of music. It has been covered by orchestras and fans all over the world and appears in the sequels of the game franchise. Away from games, Eriksson has made music for films and TV. In 2006, he scored the music for the Finnish-Swedish feature film, 7 miljonärer.

In parallel, inspired by a love of Funk and groovy sounds, Joel Eriksson helped to start the Gonkyburg movement with Quant. He began to release records as Jol, with singles for the innovative Swedish Dot label in 2000. The Moody Aow album followed for the Danish April Records imprint in 2003 and The Life in the sun Ep for DNM in 2006. Joel met Erik Niklasson from Plej and they began to create songs as Yuki-Jobo.

One of the songs, Supernova Sky, featured acclaimed Swedish-Japanese singer Yukimi Nagano (later of Little Dragon fame). Soon after, Joel and Erik set their sights on pop stardom as The Similou. In 2004, the duo had a pop hit in the shape of All This Love, which was released on Sony in the UK, and climbed the charts in the UK, Australia and in Sweden. The Similou toured extensively in Sweden and were the support act for the Backstreet Boys in Stockholm at Globen. Away from The Similou, Eriksson co-wrote hit songs for Japanese boy band Arashi.

Eriksson has continued to compose and produce music to this day. By his own admissions, he has now grown up and in 2018 built his own studio. In 2021, he decided to celebrate twenty years since the original Battlefield 1942 theme, by recording a new version. He is currently working on JOL tracks, video creation and game projects and wishes to create more songs and soundtracks in the future.

If you want to know more about Gonkyburg please head to Jon Freers in depth article “The Gonkyburg Story”.

Written by Jon Freer