Thursday 31 January 2013

Moth Month


Go Sefa! Check this out - her new album The Moths Are Real is AOTM! (It was partly recorded at my studio - see this post). Via wireless_ade

Tuesday 29 January 2013

OMG! OMD



Hey guess what we (JF&TM) are going on tour as special guests / support for OMD. Pretty cool! The first gig I ever went to when I was a little boy was Gary Numan at the Hammersmith Odeon in the late 1970s. I think it was the Pleasure Principal tour. But guess who the support act were that night? Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark! So they were actually the first band I ever saw live. OMG

April 2013
28 Margate Winter Gardens
29 Birmingham Symphony Hall
May 2013
1 Nottingham Royal Centre
2 Ipswich Regent Theatre
3 London Roundhouse
5 Bristol Colston Hall
6 Oxford New Theatre
8 Sheffield City Hall
9 Leeds Academy
10 Manchester Academy
12 Glasgow Royal Concert Hall
13 Gateshead Sage
14 Liverpool Empire

Good Morning Namm!


I got a pass for NAMM via Tara and Analog Suicide. NAMM is the National Association of Music Merchants annual fair. Its basically a giant music store the size of a small city. Here are some pics Maf took:


Do you remember that awesome sofa I posted about before?

And here is something that caught my eye:

There were some very cool synth products being announced at this years show; The Korg mini-cheap-and-plastiky-but-authentic-sounding MS20. The Moog small-but-perfectly-formed-and-really-rather-awesome-sounding Slim Fatty. But most amazing perhaps of the whole show was the Buchla electric-music-box-remake-that-nobody-thought-would-ever-happen-but-it-has Music Easel. There were two demo versions on the Buchla booth, and one of them was working pretty much as it should. I had a good long go on it, and it sounded really amazing, as you would expect from an all-analog remake of the 1973 classic synth

It was really amazing wandering round the show and seeing some of my heroes from the synth world - all of them still making products. I had a long chat with Tom Oberheim, who told me he is remaking his mini-sequencer but with memory storage for use with his SEM reissue modules. I saw Dave Smith (Sequential Circuits / co-inventor of MIDI), Michelle Moog, Don Buchla and lots of other legendary geeks. The Moog Foundation booth is right next to the Lowrey Organ booth - so they get a constant 1970s soundtrack, which I thought was quite awesome:



Thanks so much Tara and Maf for getting me in, and hi Stephi too

Tuesday 22 January 2013

Sunday 20 January 2013

Word of the Week #44


Evolving


Paul has been busy over on the expanding records Facebook page uploading artwork and info about some of the earlier expanding releases. I particularly like this CD art from 1999 - Volume 'Evolver':

Saturday 19 January 2013

Wilder Mann


Our good friend Teho Teardo has a beautiful new album out on his own Specula label. More info here and check out the hairy video:

Thursday 17 January 2013

Wednesday 16 January 2013

Sparks


Here is a video made by the excellent Quietus folk. Its a discussion about identity, fear of future, mechanical takeover and apocalyptic ends from electronical sparks. Its nice to see the studio shot with a good camera

John Foxx & Friends Discuss Identity Amidst The Machines from theQuietus on Vimeo.

Tuesday 15 January 2013

Cabs




Right, the wooden cabinet arrived and I put the buchla 200e modules safely in it so no more cardboard boxes / fire hazards which is good especially here. So I made a patch with the 100 series modules (including the 190 spring reverb, for which I have been awaiting the spring tanks) going through the delay. I worked out how to use it as a stereo unit - like all good Buchla-format modules theres a lot of features but no instructions! The patch uses an LFO to bend the delay time around - woozy!



Longer / hi-res audio version here:

Silver Lake Style


I've been exploring a bit this week and one thing I found was the house that one of my favourite architects ever in the whole world built for himself. Richard Neutra. Its in Silver Lake and you can go and wander about inside, like he probably used to do. What is so amazing about this place is the way he fitted such a spacious feeling house on such a small plot, which is surrounded by other houses and streets. The plot is only something like 70 x 60 feet, but it has so much privacy and light and amazing views. Here are some snaps I took:

Moon-Tan Nocturnal


Phil, thanks mate this is awesome - now I can do techno properly..



And just to be clear, here is a transcript of what this guy actually says:

“The idea is to get the vibe going. Then you maintain the vibe with a trance inducing bass and the right lights. We’re primal, heading for cosmic, and just when you think we’re in galactic ecstasy, we go acid. It’s hardcore nutronic mutilation. Now we get serious. See, we’re going on a psychotically calibrated and electronically executed, digitally compressed, pus-excreting journey to sonic grooviness! The world is coming to an end, but we don’t care, because we’re moon-tan nocturnal, vinyl consuming animals drifting easy through friendly space. An analog trance, nothing can doom this groove; we’re controlling the vibe, manipulating the madness, sucking in the energy and we’ve cosmic nerving endings, telling us how to move, what to do, where to go and then we know, that it’s time to let go!”

Monday 7 January 2013

Sexy Roadships


I couldn't resist posting this pic - its a visual new years present to me from danconone. Thanks Dan!

Saturday 5 January 2013

Boxing Day


Look what I just did! I made a cabinet for the Buchla 200 modules I'm keeping from an old Fedex box. This is a crazy FX unit, I hope it doesn't catch on fire. Its great! The box will be replaced soon with a proper cabinet

Wednesday 2 January 2013

Tuesday 1 January 2013

Exploring




Here are a few patches on the Buchla 100. They are mostly based on the semi-random patch from the original user manual which involves using the random voltage source to control the sequencer speed and also the touch plates to add some expression. How important the 191 sharp cutoff filter is in the system 100 sound! You can hear it most prominently in example 5. I am using a combination of several early digital reverb units (Yamaha Rev7, ART DR1, MXR DR01) blended together