Out Of The Box

I love it when something just works, right OOTB. For example, I just bought this Kenton CV to MIDI converter. I took it out of the box, plugged CV and Gate cables from a Roland SH101 into it, then plugged a MIDI cable from it to my Akai S612, set up a sequence on the 101 and BINGO it played the Akai perfectly! Clever box!!

Panic Stations

Here are some pictures from our series of Cotton Panic! performances with Jane Horrocks at the Manchester Internation Festival last week. It was great fun and really hard work and this week we are all feeling very Wrangled-out! These pics were taken by Chris Turner

Zombified

At last the album I made with Tara Busch / I Speak Machine is coming out, on Lex Records. WOOOO! Here is a promo track called Shame:

Sea And Stars

Blackmange

A big black dog with Neil Arthur in my kitchen plus mixing the new Blancmange album downstairs - what do you get? Black Mange

A Robot

Tourists

Speaking of Natalie. She appeared in the film adaptation we just performed of THE TOURIST at the BFI London (and previously Home/Manchester and Prince of Wales cinema/Brighton). Wrangler composed and performed the music live on stage while the film, by Tash Tung and Dan Conway, played on the big screen. WHAT FUN!! The run is now over, but we are hoping to do more soon...

TRAILER: The Tourist as imagined by Wrangler / Tash Tung / Dan Conway from Tash Tung on Vimeo.

Mating Ritual

Here is Natalie's awesome new video, album coming soon yes!

I Dream Of Apples

As you might know I am a big fan of Morton Subtonick, and his pioneering recordings of the 1960s and 70s. I've posted on him before and his connection with Don Buchla and the development of the first modular synthesisers. I met him in Poland when I did a talk with Foxxy and we appeared on the same bill. He's such a great man, and he played one of the best gigs I've ever seen that weekend too. Well now those nice people behind the I Dream Of Wires documentary are crowdfunding a new biopic of Morton, which if it is as thorough as their previous work should be very worthwhile getting behind. Go here for the details

Squares

I finally got the Buchla 144 clones built (thanks Mike & Ross). It was quite a journey from getting the boards made, getting the panel designed (including finding the right font) and manufactured / screen printed, to populating the panel and wiring everything up. Times three. And they look and sound superb. I will do a comparison with my original 144 at some point on the scope. So here is my first patch, layering up all six VCOs and sequencing them and putting them through the incredible 191 filter in bandpass mode. It sounds a bit like a gong! Later that night there was a major thunderstorm, brought about by the enormous power of the Buchla