It's Full of Stars

Today A Butterfly Landed Here

2012-01-30T22:07:00.000Z

Moon Base Beta

2012-01-29T10:58:00.001Z

I just found this great blog by the designer of the recent scifi film Moon. I love this movie, its one of my favourite 'ambient films' [I like putting it on in the background while i'm working]. All the design in this film amazing, especially the moon base where Sam lives. I might use it for inspiration when I build my next house...

Here is a 3d render that Gavin Rothery made, but I took the liberty of adding some music from Space 1999:

Quantum States

2012-01-28T22:37:00.002Z

My MXR Digital Delay hasn't been working lately, so I decided to try and fix it. How did I approach this task? I BANGED it on the right hand side quite hard - and fixed the problem! My friend Spongeboy used to have a theory that banging broken electronic equipment jolted it into a different quantum state, thereby resetting the electrons or something. Its certainly a procedure worth trying out before employing the services of a qualified technician

Word of the Week #29

2012-01-27T11:27:00.000Z

Studio Colours

2012-01-27T00:07:00.001Z

Will from the band I've been recording took some pics of the studio and here are the wonky ones, which I put through the colour machine

Lone Taxidermy

2012-01-23T23:38:00.006Z

The Yamaha CS80 is such a massive synth it takes at least two people to operate it

Started work today on an EP for Natalie. Its good to be back in the studio....

UPDATE below are Natalie's pics

Lathe Cut

2012-01-22T00:14:00.001Z

Me, Phil and Pete (from disco_r.dance records) went down to Curved Mastering in Hackney to cut our new Wrangler seven inch. More to follow soon. Here is the crazy lathe they cut the vinyl on

Un-Presets

2012-01-22T00:01:00.002Z

Today I experimented with the Buchla preset manager. Some of the 200e modules are equipped with recallable functions, which are controlled by the preset manager section of the 225e module. The thing is, not all settings are recallable, only certain things indicated by a blue capped knob. Plus obviously you can't recall cable connections or the parameters of non 200e modules (such as the Eardrill and Verbos ones), but its still quite a useful area of exploration and certainly opens the system up to some otherwise impossible sounds

This patch uses the clock of the pendulum/ratchet module to sequence through the 30 storage locations in the 225e. You can see me plugging the banana cable into the 'advance input' near the beginning. I had previously edited the blue knobs on various modules to alter the VCO and LPG settings and stored them in sequence. I also used the p/r clock to scroll the 291e stage sequencer

Judder

2012-01-15T00:12:00.000Z

I didn't know anything about Frank Judd until today. You can find out too here and here

Practical Electronica: A Trailer from Public Information on Vimeo.

Teenage Buchla

2012-01-10T19:51:00.002Z

Just prior to packing all my stuff up ready for my return to London I wanted to try controlling the Buchla from my new Teenage Engineering OP-1 which I bought off Alessandro the other day. Its a beautiful little workstation, and even though it looks like a toy it most certainly is not. I hooked it up to my laptop with the USB cable, then from the laptop out to the Buchla 225e. I'll post more on the OP-1 I'm sure, but for now heres a very abstract 'proof of concept' video

Bend Your Ear Radio Programme No.3

2012-01-07T20:03:00.000Z

This time on the Bend Your Ear radio show I have decided to play music taken from just one album. Its a beautiful and very obscure Library album made in 1982 by Robin Artus, Paul Kass, George Axon and Harry Forbes on the Canadian imprint Parry Music. You can see the discogs entry here

The album is called 'New Technology Volume Three' and to me is an absolutely perfect encapsulation of early 80s synthesiser-studio music. Hope you enjoy it

The Bend Your Ear Radio Show Programme Three 'New Technology' by Zagoba on Mixcloud

Palm Reader

2012-01-07T18:07:00.000Z

In this post I mention that Big City Music in Burbank are selling one of the original PPG Realizer units. Well over on Matrixsynth there was an update from Wolfgang Palm himself, pointing out that there is a complete history of PPG on his blog HERE

It really is a fascinating read, and shows what can be achieved by one man and his enormous passion for synthesisers

Photos (c)Wolfgang Palm from his blog

Yes Men

2012-01-07T05:19:00.001Z

When we went to Krakow last October me and John Foxx were invited to do a little talk by Resident Advisor in front of an audience. Well today they published a transcript of it here. The text is below as well

Words / Todd L. Burns
Published / Friday, 06 January 2012

John Foxx: Mr. Yes

In conversation with the synth pop pioneer and his current collaborator, Benge.

The final track on John Foxx's 1981 single, Burning Car, was called "Mr. No." And you'd be forgiven for thinking that it was the man's theme song. Whether it be leaving a band at the exact moment they were primed for stardom (Ultravox) in the late '70s, going it alone on legendary synth albums like Metamatic and The Garden or withdrawing from music altogether in the '90s to pursue graphic design, Foxx has been more than willing to play Bartleby time and time again. Turn it around, though, and you have a guy who has had the courage to walk away. A guy who can't help but hate to do the same thing twice. A guy you can also call Mr. Yes.

At this past year's Unsound Festival, we talked to Foxx alongside his current collaborator Benge as part of RA's Live Exchange series. The duo had recently put together an album, Interplay, that formed the basis for our conversation. Typically eloquent, Foxx was so engaging that we decided to edit and condense it for publication. Speaking with RA's Todd L. Burns in front of a crowd, Foxx and Benge touched on their partnership, the creative process and the power of the bass drum.

The new record is a return to synth pop in a way for you. I am wondering why now? Why was this the right time to revisit this space?

John Foxx: It was an accident in many ways. Benge made a record called Twenty Systems, in which a lot of synthesizers sounded like themselves. What I mean by that is that they didn't imitate any other instrument. I think it is a great sickness to try to imitate orchestras or bells or something specific. I think that this is a misuse of the instrument. What Benge was able to do was that he allowed them to make sounds that no other instruments could make, and therefore allow them to sound like themselves. When I heard that album, I wanted to work with him and to make some abstract music with him, but it didn't quite work out.

At what point did you realize it was turning into a more "pop" project?

Benge: Halfway through the first track I think.

John Foxx: Once we had set up something on the Moog, we let it run by itself and produced a rhythmic loop, and we were able to produce a song immediately. You have the melody, you have rhythm and you have harmonic intervals that lend themselves to layering. So I instinctively started started to sing along with the machine, which is a lovely way to work: the machine leads. The machine takes precedence. All you do is listen to what the machine produces. Benge would set up things, and it was delightful to respond to it.

John, were there any lyrical themes that seemed to recur throughout the album?

John Foxx: Yeah, I always seem to write about the basic level; a man, a woman and a city. It's because I am an urban creature most of the time. I think that's increasingly relevant now because I think most people do live in cities and I think it is very interesting what happens in that environment. We alter ourselves constantly to live in it, to survive in it and that process has very poetic levels. I don't want to sound pretentious, but it is very moving the way people accommodate each other and the city that they live in, and try to build this environment together. You almost have to dissolve yourself, re-incorporate yourself with the city in order to make it work on any level. All those tiny interactions and the major draws and minor draws that result from all that. I find it endlessly fascinating. I could sit in a cafe all day and some times I do. It's like being part of a beautiful ocean that is constantly moving. A lot of what I sing about is trying to describe some of that process.

I've read you talking about the importance of acoustic space in your work. I was wondering how that came to play in this album if at all.

John Foxx: We weren't so concerned with it because I think everything is artificial in some way.

Benge: One of the rules is that we didn't use any plug-ins. Everything had to be a real effects unit. But we did try and keep the production side of it quite raw. We kind of felt like it was a very important part of the overall tone of the record. I am quite proud of the rough edges.

John Foxx: Imperfections were part of the philosophy because I hate perfected music. I detest anything that is overworked. When you see a painting that is perfected and finished, and there are no marks of a brush on it, I always find it very oppressive to see. It is painful, it is never a pleasure. If you see a Degas for instance, you see the gestures and the movements that are being left and it is another dimension but it is very important to the picture I think.

I was in art school before I started and saw friends of mine just destroying themselves because they wanted to reach some kind of perfection so I was determined not to do that. Some people want everything to be perfect, they want their clothes to be perfect, their mind to be perfect, their hair to be perfect, and they are perfecting themselves out of their relationships. I don't want to. I have been there, and I'm not going back. So it is important to me to be imperfect, and it is a skill. I reached imperfection quite naturally. [laughs] If I reach perfection accidentally, I will consider suicide.

Benge, how long did the recording process take?

Benge: It was over a year altogether, not every day but it was quite a lengthy process, because neither of us had any material that we had brought along, we kind of developed the whole thing together as we went along.

Have you found yourself inspired in your own solo work?

Benge: John got me into this idea of not working to so much of a fixed sequencer timeline. The work I'm doing recently on my own is completely free flowing from that.

You smile as he says that, John.

John Foxx: Well, it's just because electronic music is locked into sequences and people feel they have to lock things into that sequence. But if you sometimes disobey that rule, you get something quite fluid and interesting and you can interact in a different way. It is great to get something mechanical or something stripped—a framework. And to make organic movements inside that is essentially what we did. You can do fantastic things as long as the engineering can support it.

What are some of the things that you listened to when recording?

Benge: Arthur Russell, who was working in New York in the early '80s. He was someone that was making disco, but then putting this crazy kind of cello on top. It was almost like he went down some cul-de-sac and went somewhere that was forgotten about basically.

John Foxx: I always felt that with every artist, you can hear a song or a recording they made that leads you to think they could have gone a different direction, so I am fascinated by those moments. Particularly with Kraftwerk when they put out this song called "Neon Lights." It seemed to indicate they were taking a path of almost like a modern Frank Sinatra. It was a ballad form, and it was really emotive. It seemed like a development was about to take place, and then it didn't. I think Kraftwerk exhausted their particular stream along the way. And I do not mean that in any unpleasant way. I think they're geniuses, and their music is fantastic. People do run out of ideas, though. And that one seems to be a wasted opportunity. You can see that in the work of painters or filmmakers as well. It's these moments I try to identify in anyone's work and my own to see where I might have gone if I was being intelligent or receptive enough.

That begs the question, looking back on your own career...

John Foxx: Oh, every moment. When I used to work with a string guitar I could have made just ambient music and explored that in 1977, or I could have been a pop musician pure and simply. We all have those moments where we wake up at 5 AM and think, "Oh, if only I had married Marianna!" Music is very much like that. You make choices all along, and the trajectory we have is sometimes determined by finances, accidents or chance meetings. That is what makes it so interesting.

You mentioned Kraftwerk exhausted their stream. Do you feel like you have exhausted your stream, and do you worry about that?

John Foxx: No, because I think if I do, then that's it. I will do something else. I don't mind exhausting it. I tend to love limitations, because you can't do anything without choosing limitations to work inside of. The worst thing is when you have too many choices. You can also inhibit your work by making your limitations so strict that you resolve the space between the limitations, and that is a danger as well. You need some limitations that can accept some alteration.

Benge: Part of the reason you can be creative is you collaborate so well, because it does keep you going. The thing with Kraftwerk is that they haven't collaborated as well. It's just those four people, and I think collaboration keeps it fresh.

John Foxx: I think that is very true. I am a social being, I like to work with other people, and you find that when you bring two elements together you get a third mind. Two people together means you get this third mind which is really strange and interesting, because it doesn't belong to a single person. It is a result of a collaboration.

At this point, the discussion was opened up to questions from the audience. One audience member asked about some of the drum machines used on the album.

Benge: In fact, there are really only two machines that John really uses and we still have them in the studio. They have such a specific sound to them, especially people like us that are really geeky about those things, you can't really recreate in any other way so we are very particular about getting that exactly right.

John Foxx: The two things I have to say is that Benge plays wonderful drums and synth kits over top the drum machines as well, so there are two layers of drums. But drum machines… I don't want to bore you to death, but I think drum machines are wonderful because they can play things that drums can't play. They can play faster or slower or in time, and effect them very quickly. You can respond to a drum machine almost as quickly as you can with the drum that is played by a human being. What the bass drum does is it reproduces the human heartbeat. And we learn this from the womb. We synchronize our heartbeat with our mother in the womb. When she is excited, we get excited too, the heartbeat rises and falls and ours as well.

So it is a very basic human function that we synchronize our heartbeats with what is happening around us and other people's heartbeats oddly enough. So when you get into the situation where there is this big heartbeat in a dance environment, we all synchronize with that beat as though it is our mother. That is why we love big soundsystems that have this big bass, because we are back in the womb and synchronizing with our mother, and if you accelerate that gently then you accelerate your own heartbeat. Essentially, any kind of dance event is a womb situation.

Words / Todd L. Burns
Published / Friday, 06 January 2012

Word of the Week #28

2012-01-06T17:26:00.000Z

Its Real

2012-01-06T00:35:00.000Z

The first time I met Stephi from Big City Music in LA she told me that she knew the whereabouts of one of synthesiser-folk-lore's greatest legends, the iconic PPG Realizer. I had first read of this mythical instrument in a book called Keyfax 2, which when I was growing up into a serious synth-nerd became my bible. Since then I have heard speak of this behemoth of digital synthesis, that perhaps only one or two ever existed, and how it can model any synthesiser ever made using a unique and groundbreaking sound engine. Of course I didn't believe Stephi and her tales of obscure german monster-machines, what would be next - that she had a giant Buchla 100 in her loft? A Synthi 100 in her garage? Well it turns out it was true - Sorry to have doubted you Stephi!!!!

LINK TO B.C.M. PAGE

Skywing

2012-01-04T16:36:00.000Z

I saw this strange thing in the sky this morning. I think it's called a cloud. The scary thing is if the sun had been up the cloud could have gone in front of it causing a huge shadow over the land. Luckily that didn't happen

Run Yon

2012-01-03T20:40:00.001Z

I discovered a beautiful place just round the corner where I can take my morning jog: Runyon Canyon Park. Here are some overly-processed pics:

Drum Bloop

2012-01-03T07:09:00.001Z

Testing the Buchla drum presets. You can find them on page 247 of the user manual...

Nike Missiles

2012-01-03T04:38:00.001Z

I love Mulholland Drive. Its my favourite road. Today I noticed on google earth that it doesn't actually end where it seems to end when you drive down it, it turns into a small dirt track and carries on winding through the hills above LA and Santa Monica. It eventually connects up with Malibu. So I drove down the crazy dirt track and discovered a secret decommissioned cold war nuclear army base called the LA96C Nike Missile Site. You can wander around and take in the beautiful views, and wonder at the idea of huge radars and computers monitoring the skies in the early 1960s

Carl Palmer & Moog?

2011-12-30T10:23:00.001Z

Someone over on Matrixsynth thinks perhaps Carl Palmer used some of the Moog drum modules featured in this post post on the Brain Salad Surgery album / tour, which is a very interesting development:

"via Suit & Tie Guy: "I believe this is one of the four machines built for the famous 1969 'Jazz In The Garden at MOMA' concert. after the show it was repackaged and sold to Eric Siday.

"it's possible and likely that these modules were also built for Carl Palmer's drum rig for the Brain Salad Surgery album. based on the panel controls it would seem reasonable to assume this. it would be great if someone close to Carl would find out if this is the case."

"Additional note via Suit & Tie Guy: "By 'these modules' I meant 'they pulled the films out and made a few for Carl as well' as opposed to the idea that Carl owned these pieces, which he did not."

"Update: turns out Carl Palmer's drum rig was not Moog but custom built. If anyone has more info on it, feel free to comment or shoot me an email via the email icon on the bottom right. According to this post he did have a MOOG 1130 Drum Controller, but no sign of it in the following video:

Carl Palmer Showing Off His Drums-10-21-73-Aquarius"

Creeky

2011-12-30T05:35:00.002Z

Today I went on a trip to Malibu Creek with Richard, Amanda and Malena. I discovered some more things I like about LA

Hello Alessandro

2011-12-30T05:09:00.000Z

Had a lovely time meeting you, it was a very inspiring day!

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-25T21:11:00.002Z

This year I decided to escape the cold wetness of London and spend Christmas in LA. Here's the view from my new portable studio:

The Moog Drum Machine!

2011-12-25T20:03:00.000Z

Having said in this post that I didn't think Moog ever made a drum machine, I can happily announce that I was wrong. According to an anonymous reader Moog did make a one-off drum machine for composer Eric Siday, and what a beauty it is! It's currently housed at the intriguing Museum of Music in Paris, which has a website here. I managed to eventually find some pictures of the drum machine there, even though its all in french

The following is from Oliver Grall's web page on this subject:

"In 1970 Bob Moog built for Eric Siday an electronic drum synthesizer with the following modules:
- 701Drum Synthesizer
- 702 Percussion Synthesizer
- 903 Noise
- 912 Enveloppe Follower
- Programmer
- Wheels encoder
- Keyboard controller

The 701 and 702 modules are prototypes never and went in production.
It seems that there are some missing modules from the original configuration.
This unique system is owned now by the " Museum of music"
located in Paris France.

About Eric Siday
Eric siday was born in the suburb of London in 1905.
When he was 14 he received the Prosper Sainton scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music, London.
His first steady bread was playing for the "local cinema" silent movies.
He was composer and arranger and realized musics for commercials and jingles for radios ( ABC / CBS / Pepsi cola / American express )
In 1947 he composed a violin concerto in the "Bop" Jazz idiom.
He created his own recording studio (surely one of the first home studio).
In the middle 50's, he was aware of electronic music - John Cage (the prepared piano) and the French Music Concrete .
He was the fisrt to apply electronics sounds in commercials .
He used : Ondes Martenot / Ondioline / Violon amplified / Céleste / Moog Modular
and this unique Moog Percussion synthesizer.
He was the second customer of Bob Moog and bring a great support to the Moog company."

(B&W pictures: moog archives / synth fool)

Synth Portrait

2011-12-22T10:33:00.002Z

Naive Home

2011-12-22T00:06:00.000Z

Moog Drum Machine

2011-12-20T22:08:00.000Z

As far as I know Moog have never made a drum machine. Imagine how cool a huge early 70s Moog drum machine would be - with big knobs, wooden sides and a massive analog sound! So I decided to construct my own Moog drum machine today, using the modular

The 960 sequencer is sending triggers to the trigger gate module. Row A of the trigger gate is making the bass drum, which is 2 VCOs going into the Cynthia low pass gate with some pitch modulation. Row B makes the snare drum, 3 oscillators and some noise, going into the Moog 905 reverb, 904 filter, using the 911 envelope (and the MXR Flanger/Doubler). The high hat is noise / envelope triggered from the main clock, but going into the SSL VC Delay module

Stand

2011-12-19T23:28:00.000Z

I got a new keyboard stand today, from these people: http://www.jaspers-alu.de/

Pretty cool!

Word of the Week #27

2011-12-15T23:04:00.000Z

Moog Studios Calendar

2011-12-14T13:19:00.000Z

Brian Kehew sent me a link to the super new Moog Foundation "Moog Pioneers in the Studio" 2012 calendar. Its got really nice pictures of 12 original Moog Modular users, below are some examples (OK, so the last one isn't really featured in the calendar - ITS ME!, but I can dream...)

Shaping Up

2011-12-13T10:36:00.002Z

Good review of our latest album The Shape Of Things here

http://www.brutalresonance.com/

REVIEW:

The Shape of Things (2011)
John Foxx and the Maths
Metamatic Records
Synthpop, Minimal

Star Rating: 9/10

"I had been wondering if they could pull it off again, could they top an album like 'Interplay' which was released earlier this year; I am pleased to report that with the exception of one remix, John Foxx and the Maths have made a record which is not the immediate sugar rush the debut was but rather the slow burning heat one finds in dark chocolate laced with habanero peppers. 'The Shape of Things' was hinted at by the band as being rougher around the edges and more experimental in nature... this was an understatement to put it mildly. After nearly a month spent with this work it continues to auger into my skull and shows no sign of stopping, despite the difficulty of obtaining it I don't foresee anyone else pulling off what has been composed by Benge and John ever. Go ahead, call it retro, make snide asides about the vintage of gear they work with... I dare any of you EBM crybabies to top it. Oh, that's right, you have your facebook to worry about... don't let me keep you from your 13 fans.

Autumn leaves falling and a cold cold wind blowing, rain rising in the East... a man's thoughts turn to where he's been, he reflects on those he's known and what has been lost to the ravages of time. This is a maddeningly addictive voyage of crushingly authored introspective electronic precision. The packaging is beautiful to behold, with some gorgeously rendered collages enticing us into the darkly shining music which snaps and sparkles alternately while the words of a man who's seen it all come at us mercilessly. His is a voice of calm serenity but my god, listen to what he's got to say. Really. Listen. There was a clip up on youtube which served as a tease for this new album entitled "Talk" and it may be one of the songs you'll be drinking in when they come to fit you for that strait jacket. Unhinged is one word for it, unsound would be another, I choose to use the term pure menace. It's what you'd expect to encounter in an upscale apartment lost in the miasma of a bustling city while the owner of it smokes leisurely cigarettes after they've dismembered their latest victim.

It was a splendid rush I felt when I opened up the box and saw a parcel from merry old England contained within, there aren't any regrets whatsoever but for you who don't know what's going on here permit me to break it down for you: skeletal concepts of songs given life through the medium of an arsenal of technology I would maim to bear witness to. 'Interplay' was merely a warm up for what you are going to hear if and when it graces your ears. The trainspotters amongst us will no doubt recognize the song "September Town" as the bonus track from the "Destination" single but what they won't recognize is how seamlessly it fits in with these new tracks. The synchronized abandon of modern urban living, this pair have created the ultimate soundtrack for an alienated, insular existence... to be all alone in a crowd.

How far this collaboration continues is anyone's guess, but it can't end like this. It just can't. Foxx has also been busy on the ambient side, also, everyone. He's just put out an album entitled 'Nighthawks' with Ruben Garcia and the legendary Harold Budd and before that 'Torn Sunset' with a fellow named Theo Travis which is an excursion into heavily reverberated pianos and beautifully drawn out atmospheric work. It has been a busy busy 2011 for Foxx and my apologies for the recent lapse, readers of Brutal Resonance, but I wanted to give this album and pair of artists the
time their work demanded to be fully comprehended and understood. In the midst of all the threadlike melodies and within the very molecules of synthesis there is a soul which screams to get out, to reveal the shape of things. Where you end and I begin, pure sex, the luscious contentment found in the pleasures of willing skin and beguiling eyes; come closer, look down in your shame, I'll never send you away..."

Peter Marks
01 Dec 2011
http://www.brutalresonance.com/

Proto-Moogs 2

2011-12-12T22:45:00.000Z

I just saw this over on Matrixsynth. It's from an ebay auction for a Moog Memorymoog (WANT!) but what is interesting about this auction is that the seller is throwing in a photo that he took in the Moog factory in the mid 1970s, heres what he says:

"I worked for Gibson Guitars in the 1970’s and our plant manager knew the Moog plant manager thus while on vacation I received the gold plated guided tour when the Memory Moog was in development, and Mini Moogs/PolyMoogs were on the assembly line. I have included a picture of some concept drawings of the Memory Moog"

I have posted about these prototype drawings before here

New Mirror

2011-12-12T22:14:00.001Z

Our Artrocker award found it's way to the studio wall today. It looks quite at home there I think...

Vintage Emu

2011-12-11T15:01:00.003Z

Pyjama Jam

2011-12-06T01:01:00.001Z

I was experimenting with the Buchla and the iPad today, setting up a TouchOSC patch to control various parameters (see screenshot). Its really easy to set things up which was pleasantly surprising. The Buchla midi decoder is great because you can feed it a single midi cable and it spews out a ton of midi messages on banana cables that you can send anywhere. Also having the 254v voltage processor is useful for combining the Buchla control voltages with midi controller messages, in other words without it you couldn't send an LFO somewhere and control the amount via midi. It really opens the system up, I just wish the iPad was three times as wide

Keeping Busy

2011-12-05T16:28:00.001Z

Steve sent me this snippet from some old interviews with members of Numan's band. This was how they used to do it in 1979. Actually its how we still do it in The Maths!

Quote from Russell Bell [Numan's Guitarist, although you wouldn't think so by the gear he used...]

"On that first tour, I had two Minimoogs, a Polymoog, a set of Moog Taurus bass pedals, four Synare syndrums, a guitar and of course a tambourine for Cars. I liked to be kept busy! We liked to use a lot of effects on our instruments as well. For instance, the starting noise of Cars was produced with an MXR Phaser pedal, a small orange box with the modulation turned up to full. We also liked to run the Minimoogs through harmonisers like the Eventide. In total we had twenty three keyboards on-stage at any one time, (with plenty of backups on the trucks in case they were needed)."

For Praying To The Aliens on Sat Night Live: (see video below. BTW, this TV program was seen by 40 million people at the time)

"The set up we used on that show wasn’t quite the same as our live shows. For one thing, Gary was standing behind a bunch of keyboards. In-fact, we had synths everywhere! Gary, Chris and I all had Minimoogs and Gary had a Roland SH-2000 for that low frequency oscillator stuff on Praying to the Aliens. Gary was playing all these extra whooo noises, I was playing the standard tune and I think Chris was doing the same. On Cars, I played the bottom D on the Polymoog. Amazingly, I think I can still play it..."

Outdoor Mainframes

2011-12-04T23:39:00.000Z

Saw these amazing pictures over on colorcubic.com. They are from a brochure for the EAI 640 Mainframe

Falling Lego

2011-12-04T23:26:00.000Z

Sent to me by Paul. See here for more on this house

Link

Strange Videos

2011-12-04T23:08:00.002Z

Art Rockers

2011-12-04T17:19:00.002Z

I'm pleased to announce that we won best electronic act of 2011 at the first Artrocker annual awards ceremony. Its so good to get something back for all our hard work. I love it when a plan comes together!

We were presented with the award by Gary Numan! What a mad day we had! Hannah and Sefa came along to the XOYO too and stood on stage while John said a few words. I did't say anything on the night but I'll say something now: thanks to Sefa and Hannah and Jeanga for being part of the live band, and thanks to Steve for all your hard work behind the scenes you are amazing. And thanks to John for giving me the opportunity to work with one of my musical heroes, its been an amazing 2 years!

UPDATE: Heres a pic taken as we walked off stage!

Dewanatron

2011-12-04T11:32:00.000Z

Whilst in LA Tara introduced me to her friend Stephi, who works at Big City Music, one of the many cool synth shops in that city - check out their blog here. Stephi is a major synth geek. Here she is demonstrating the very strange and beguiling Dewanatron

JF&TM @ XOYO

2011-12-01T07:38:00.015Z

The photo below is by Richard Price, it's our favourite pic of us all in action:

Analog Sofa

2011-11-30T20:25:00.001Z

Do you remember when I was looking for a sofa? If only I had seen these!!!!
(via matrix synth; get one here)

Room With A Bu (chla)

2011-11-30T20:03:00.002Z

Another reason I was in California was to pick up some more Buchla modules (227e quad mixer, 225e midi decoder / preset manager, 258v analog dual oscillator clone and 254v quad voltage processor). I got them from a film music producer. He used to own the ARP 2500 that was featured in Close Encounters. DAMN! (See this post on matrixsynth for more about this)

So I got the modules from the very nice Bryan and he also lent me a boat so I could mess with them at my hotel. The hotel was up in the hills and had an amazing view. I made the tune in the video below using the Buchla and a Roland MC500 which I bought on ebay while I was there

Recording The .....

2011-11-30T16:06:00.002Z

So I just got back from my couple of weeks in LA, what a great time I had! I love that place more each time I go there. My main objective was to record vocals for a new top secret album project (more on that later) so I hooked up with the inimitable Brian Kehew and borrowed his studio. He is the co-author of the book Recording The Beatles which I have posted about before on this blog and is a total authority on all things vintage and lovely and wonky. He is also the archivist at the Bob Moog Foundation, and owner of a brand new super cool vintage studio in beautiful downtown Burbank, in fact we were his fist clients. Below are some pics I took. We had a great recording path, through some Altec compressors and EMI preamps, as used by Abbey Road in the 60s on practically everything. There were also some Helios channel strips from the actual console that came from The Who's studio in the early 70s, which sounded amazing. His desk is a stunning Quad Eight Pacifica. He also had some very interesting keyboards which I will mention in another post

word of the Week #26

2011-11-30T13:41:00.000Z

Window Seat

2011-11-23T05:01:00.003Z

I've gone to LA. I jumped on a plane and headed over to sunny (rainy) California for a couple of weeks, to finish recording an album I started ages ago. More on that later, but the next few posts will be coming from a lovely seventies studio the other side of the pond

I love sitting by the window on the plane and seeing the world from space. I always see things that intrigue me, because things look so different form above. Here are some snaps I took over Canada and the western coast of America. Look at the bottom photos of the set. What are those weird grids? they are covering a massive area. I checked the location on the live flight map, then when I could I looked on google maps and found the area. Put 'Kearl Lake Canada' into google maps and look at the satellite view. Then pan down and right a bit, you will see the same thing I saw from the plane. What is it? I like things like that

UPDATE

heres some shots of LA on the way home:

Are You Filming?

2011-11-20T05:17:00.001Z

Heres a little studio footage of Great Guns, featuring Jeanga on Korg Monopoly, and thats George and a very shy Riz there too from our meetup last week

On The Telly

2011-11-19T21:12:00.001Z

OK so its not really the telly, its the internet, but here I am being interviewed by sonic state, explaining our Maths live rig: (sorry bout the ads)

And here I am with Tara Busch and John Foxx doing more talking about techie stuff:

Prize Winning Photo

2011-11-09T22:21:00.000Z

I won a prize! Its for a photo I took of my modular synths. These people are making a documentary film about modular synthesisers, which is a really good subject I think. So to help raise awareness they teamed up with the Matrixsynth synth blog and opened a photo competition. I won this weeks best picture award! I get some free stuff and also got to chat to Solvent via email. I love his music! Heres the pic:

Heres the trailer, enjoy:

Moogle

2011-11-08T00:41:00.000Z

Heres a patch me and Big Al made, it's a random voltage source going into a S&H then into a quantizer so the notes are decided by God / The Supreme Random Being

Fire Works

2011-11-06T23:00:00.003Z

Bill Ding

2011-11-06T22:49:00.000Z

I was wandering around Shoreditch sunday market today, which I had totally forgotten existed even though I used to come to it every week when I was a student, and I saw this mad black building. Its quite mysterious, maybe its even a house. I like!

EMS Buchla

2011-11-06T22:25:00.000Z

Heres a video of the beautiful vintage Buchla 200 system that featured in this post and this post

Ebay of the Day

2011-11-06T22:21:00.000Z

This one is just plain weird. £166 - 10 bids!

"You are bidding on an incredibly limited edition remix of John Foxx's "A Falling Star" , remixed by Gazelle Twin
There were only 75 of these pressed and ONLY available to VIP ticket holders at John Foxx's current UK tour.
Moreover this has been SIGNED by JOHN FOXX at the Bristol gig Meet & Greet for VIP Platinum ticket holders.Anyone who has looked at John's website will see that there were only 75 of these remix CD singles pressed.For added proof as to the provenance of this item , i've also uploaded a photo of me with the great man from last week's Bristol thekla gig. Good Luck"

Verb

2011-11-04T22:33:00.003Z

I have a lot of reverb units - I love them! They fascinate me because they take your sound and they put it into a 3D space, and they all do it in their own unique way. They have evolved so much over the years, starting off with analog springs and metal plates, through early and very clever digital algorithmic processors and onwards through the growing bit depths. My favourites are the EMT 140 stereo plate, the Lexicon 224, Yamaha Rev1 and the Telefunken Echomixer mono spring thing. I bought a Roland R880 years ago really cheap which was their attempt (in 1988) at a supa-mega-reverb and it is an extremely underrated unit actually. So I took it home so I could experiment putting a Buchla through it. I had a hunch that they would sound good together! I spent a few hours re-aquainting myself with its shocking operating system (which was like that scene in Contact where they build the spaceship based on blueprints deciphered from an alien language downloaded from outer space)

Anyway - here is a live tweak of the Buchla and R880 together

Buchy 880 mix by zackdagoba

Bengela

2011-11-04T21:30:00.001Z

I decided I needed an adaptor panel for the Buchla because its nice to be able to convert between all the different types of audio connector that I seem to suddenly need (banana, minijack , phono, 1/4 inch jack), and between mono and stereo jacks. Also I'm using a spring reverb and other FX units in patches and it's cool to have those connections on a panel in the system too. So I used one of the Buchla blank panels as a basis for some handiwork, with connector parts and a Pillar Drill from Maplin. Heres a pictorial record of what I did

Tango And Synths

2011-11-04T21:06:00.000Z

I was watching this film last night called Tango and Cash. It is a really bad film and god knows why I didn't turn over channels but actually I was glad I didn't because there is an amazing scene where Tango's sister starts playing Simmons drums - EXACTLY LIKE I DO IN THE MATHS!

Theres also a scene where Cash goes to a crazy music studio to get some MacGuffin (on cassette), and theres a VCS3 right there on the sideboard! Just like in my studio!

Word of the Week #25

2011-11-04T20:44:00.000Z

Get well soon!

2011-11-01T21:34:00.000Z

This is a "GET WELL SOON" to John Foxx from the Maths!
XXX

Maths Tour Snaps 2011

2011-10-30T14:07:00.001Z

What better way to banish the post-tour blues than to go through all the photos I took... Happy days indeed!

Theres No One Driving

2011-10-30T12:49:00.002Z

We were lucky enough to have Gazelle Twin supporting us at the first XOYO gig last week, and Elizabeth also did a beautiful remix for us which is on the new Maths album The Shape of Things. A very rubbish video I took is below

She has just done a really cool thing over on The Quietus, its a fascinating insight into her inspirations check it out here. One thing I liked was this rather spooky robot-bus, which actually exists. Its typical isn't it? You wait years for something to happen then two come along at once. I put a new soundtrack on it (from a cool 1980s library album called New Technology V3) which I just downloaded from Dusty Shelf

Some Buchla Percussions

2011-10-30T00:54:00.001+01:00

Krell Cover Version

2011-10-29T11:44:00.002+01:00

I saw this over on synthtopia, its Ben Burt (who did the Star Wars sound design) demonstrating how Louis and Bebe Barron made the music for Forbidden Planet, the first ever completely electronic film soundtrack in 1956, long before synthesisers were born

X&O @ XOYO

2011-10-29T00:07:00.000+01:00

Our 2nd night at XOYO had the truly fantastic Xeno & Oaklander as support. They showed up with all their lovely gear in suitcases and set it up in front of everyone which was fascinating to watch then launched straight into their amazing set which is pretty impressive considering they use no backing tracks its all triggered analog sequences and drum machines and arpeggiators. After the set it all got piled in the dressing room in an equally ad hoc manner and it is this irreverence that infuses their music and its very refreshing to behold

DJ Phil

2011-10-28T23:46:00.000+01:00

Phil (of Wrangler) was the DJ at the XOYO gigs. Cheers mate! You rule! Here's a little clip I took of him in action. That's our Wrangler 7 he's playing...

The Trip Is Over

2011-10-28T23:18:00.001+01:00

We all returned home today after our little tour, slightly earlier than anticipated. John managed to trip over a small table in the pitch dark and smashed his forehead! So our XOYO gig turned into our farewell as far as this tour is concerned. Luckily John is OK but he'll have an impressive scar to show for all his efforts this month. In fact we have all put a lot of work in but I have loved every second of it - up until this morning waiting for John to come back from the hospital! So thanks to John and the team (Sefa, Hannah, Baz, Chris, Chris and Steve) I've had an amazing time. I will put up some pictures in a new post soon

Spheres

2011-10-28T21:03:00.000+01:00

The Vemia/Sphere auction is on again, with the usual selection of interesting vintage synths and electronic gear. For example this thing, called a Farfisa Polychrome (no I hadn't heard of it either)

Growing Pains

2011-10-27T12:34:00.001+01:00

I drove over to west London last night to pick up a new (old) case for the Buchla from Rash, as well as a 291e triple morphing filter. And he lent me his 259e to try out too. Yum!

UPDATE: here's a drone patch I just made using the new modules:

Krakow Time

2011-10-26T18:50:00.000+01:00

Heres a little gallery of pics from our trip to Krakow, for the Unsound festival...

Bend Your Ear Radio Programme No.2

2011-10-20T00:39:00.000+01:00

I've just realised this isn't a monthly radio show. Its bi-monthly. Hope you like this selection of music, found on a laptop left on a metro train in 1989, near the museum of arts and crafts in Paris. I managed to track down every song on the playlist!

Bend your ear episode two by Zagoba on Mixcloud

TRACKS:
01] Brian Bennett - Darkside [1977]
02] Steve Gray - Pendulum 3 [1978]
03] Francis Monkman - At The Pool [1980]
04] John Carpenter - Starker and Marge [1982]
05] John Foxx - Glimmer [1980]
06] Brian Eno - Prophecy Theme [1984]
07] Steve Gray - Standing Idle [1975]
08] Barry DeVorzon - Cylo Lab [1986]
09] John Saunders - Mystery Cycle [1979]
10] Harold Budd - Dark Eyed Sister [1984]
11] Benge - Belbo's Theme [2011]

C&C Live

2011-10-17T20:07:00.000+01:00

Chris and Cosey played before us at the Unsound festival on saturday. I managed to get this clip of them before I went backstage and got nervous. C&C are really nice. They were in Throbbing Gristle in the 1970s and Chris played the electronics, and made some of the very first synth-pop which you must check out if you don't know it already. Start off with 20 Jazz Funk Greats. In the pic they are on the left

The venue was a tram shed. The trams had been rolled out, and a MASSIVE sound system rolled in, and the C&C set got louder and louder with each track. Not sure how loud we were!

Word of the Week #24

2011-10-17T19:31:00.000+01:00

Delayed

2011-10-17T19:19:00.000+01:00

Here is a realtime video of a self playing patch on the buchla. I'm using the EHX 2880 looper as a simple delay unit. Click through to the youtube page if you want to watch it in hi-res

Kracker

2011-10-16T19:23:00.001+01:00

I / we (The Maths) have just got back from our trip to Krakow where we played at the Unsound festival. It was great! Its a beautiful inspiring city, and a really good festival, although as usual on short and busy trips we didn't get to see very much

One thing we did see was Morton Subotnick's astonishing performance in a huge cinema, with an additional multichannel mega-sound-system. It really was a stunning performance, actually based around Silver Apples of the Moon, one of my all time favourite albums. HE HELPED INVENT THE VOLTAGE CONTROLLED SYNTHESISER by commissioning Don Buchla to make his very first modular system. I GOT TO MEET HIM AFTER THE SHOW. He was outside talking to his visual artist colleague who made the beautiful visuals. THEN I BUMPED INTO HIM AGAIN the next day, because he was giving a talk in the art gallery right after me and John gave our talk! (Sadly we couldn't see it because we had to go and soundcheck)

Anyway, here are some iPhone clips of his performance, they really don't do it much justice, but you get the idea. Below the vids is a picture of his Buchla system (low-fi - sorry!), a 12 panel 200e with millions of wires and connections and everything he needed to make his incredible music

Cabin Fever

2011-10-09T23:23:00.000+01:00

Here are a few videos I took in the studio this week:

1-practicing Interplay
2-me recording the sequenced part for A New Kind Of Man - note: most of the backing tracks for the live set are taken from the original 8 track masters that John has kept all these years, but I have to remake a few bits here and there...
3-sequencing the bass line on No One Driving
4-John, Hannah and the Digitech Vocalist II

Touch £2.99

2011-10-01T22:18:00.001+01:00

I discovered something really good today. Theres an app called touchOSC which is designed to let you build midi controllers for the iPad. The iPad sits between your computer and the midi device, using the computer to build the controller which it connects to with wifi, and it needs bit of hardware to connect to the midi device. I chose a Line6 midiMobilizer because it was only £30. It goes in the usb slot on the iPad and has midi in and out cables. I wanted to recreate a Buchla touch plate scenario, and kind of got about half way there. What I really need is the Buchla 225e midi decoder / preset manager because then I could send out a lot more control data to the modules. I had to make do with just note on / off / pitch and one other CC parameter. Actually the touchOSC software / hardware setup is really easy and intuitive, and I'm going to be doing a lot more work on setting things up, but here is my basic £2.99 version of the Buchla 114 Touch Controlled Voltage Source . (BTW, if there seems to be latency between the iPad and the Buchla, theres not - its youtube's fault)

Rehearsals Begin

2011-09-30T22:01:00.000+01:00

Useful Triggers

2011-09-27T22:41:00.001+01:00

Heres another Buchla sketch. I'm getting to know this machine a bit more, and it really is quite astonishing. For example this patch has two VCOs and two short sequences interacting together, cross-modulating each other. The timing is coming from the Pendulum/Ratchet module, which loves throwing out complex and very useful triggers

Layer Cake

2011-09-26T23:31:00.000+01:00

Heres some Buchla passes, layered up x 3, with a bit of Ace Tone spring:

Studio Fellows

2011-09-24T23:24:00.002+01:00

Neil Fellowes came down to the studio the day before I went away and took some shots. I had seen some of his work on flickr of an abandoned car graveyard and really liked the effect he gets. He thought it would be interesting to apply it to my studio - its like it had been sealed up for 100 years then he discovered it and took his camera along for the reopening. Im going to put them on my website when I get it ready, in highres - these blog versions are limited to around 500k each. All pictures (c)2011 by Neil Fellowes

Maths Talk

2011-09-24T22:07:00.000+01:00

Did I mention I've had a busy couple of weeks? If not its because Ive been too busy. Anyway, the week before I went to California me and Foxxy put the finishing touches on our new Maths album The Shape Of Things. So this is our second album this year - and whats more its a double album - with disc two being various remixes by other artists. It was a pretty hectic mixing job, but I really enjoyed it because it was done completely analogly (new word?). Also I hauled in tons of old analog and digital outboard

Heres a track from it called Talk, which uses the extremely funky Electro Harmonix DRM16 drum machine, and the Moog and Paia modular synths

Word of the Week #23

2011-09-24T21:47:00.000+01:00

Magnetism

2011-09-24T21:31:00.000+01:00

I have had a really busy week in the studio mixing a new band featuring Hannah Peel, Earland Cooper and Simon Tong, called Magnetic North. Its a very good album. We were averaging 4 tracks a day, phew!

Ghost Synth

2011-09-24T21:13:00.000+01:00

I went down to Cafe Oto the other day to see Peder performing an amazing live set as half of Roll The Dice. I love this band, they are one of the few making interesting synth music using modulars live. In this case it happened to be a medium sized Buchla 200e, and when I arrived it was hidden underneath a white sheet, waiting to be unveiled. Check out their 2nd album, which has just come out on Leaf

Pattern One

2011-09-20T02:16:00.000+01:00

Finally I had some time with the Buchla today, so I started experimenting with sequencing patterns. It likes doing these

Shattered

2011-09-19T20:27:00.000+01:00

Check out my video for the Wrangler remix of Shatterproof (featuring Mal from Cabaret Voltaire, see here too). Kind of low-fi I know, but what did you expect?

Spasiba Moscow

2011-09-19T18:18:00.000+01:00

Ive just got back from more travels (it's been a busy week!), having done a synth presentation for my friends Vlad and Boris and the nice people of Moscow. What a big city! And one day is certainly not long enough to capture it, but I did try and here are some Holgas

Trunk Lines

2011-09-19T17:51:00.000+01:00

It was delightful to invite Johnny Trunk into the studio last week for a brief tour, and also to show him the EMS VCS3 which he is doing something special with. His friend Marek (on the left) came down later too to examine the little synthi in more detail. More on this story later!

Johnny very generously bought me a vast selection of his CDs which was nice

Short Mathmix Vid

2011-09-16T01:04:00.001+01:00

Hi Rez Boat

2011-09-14T01:25:00.000+01:00

Piano Music Centre

2011-09-14T01:16:00.000+01:00

Also Chris invited me out on the friday night which was really nice of him (and his wife Jane). First we had some great hotdogs, then headed over to the amazing brutalist University of California Berkeley Art Museum to see one of my musical heroes Terry Riley playing his piano music. Below are some iphone pics and a very short video clip, but you get the idea. I happened to take this book with me about the San Francisco Tape Music Centre, and it was really cool heading off to see Terry Riley, and Ramon Sender (who Chris pointed out to me), and I'd been round at Don Buchla's house earlier that day too - these are virtually all the people at the centre of the SFTMC story! Damn I love stuff like that

Salamanders

2011-09-14T00:50:00.001+01:00

I mentioned that I visited Chris Muir in Alameda to check out the Pendulum / Ratchet module. Well while I was there in his workshop / studio I noticed a huge and wonderful looking modular synth standing in the corner. As it turns out Chris worked on the design and manufacture of the SMS synths back in the day, and this was his personal system. Nowadays it gets a little bit neglected in favour of the Buchla, but it sure looked pretty. SMS's most successful product was the Voice 400, pictured at the bottom. Synth-tastic

Buchla Boats

2011-09-12T23:56:00.000+01:00

So here's a first patch on the 200e, and a shot of it in the hotel I was staying at. This is the 4 birth boat that Don lent me

Buchla test1 by zackdagoba

New Video

2011-09-12T23:40:00.000+01:00

Look! Jonathan Barnbrook has made an official video for our song Interplay

Trippy

2011-09-12T23:23:00.003+01:00

I just got back from my trip to San Francisco / Oakland / Berkeley where I was on a specifically Buchla mission. I got to meet Don himself at the very leafy HQ. He is a very courteous and quiet man, and I really enjoyed talking to him about some of the minutiae of his current 200e system, and he lent me a boat and power supply so I could do some experiments at my hotel

I also met up with Chris Muir who makes the Eardrill modules at his lovely house in Alameda, near Oakland. We chatted for four hours about synths! It was great! I'll post more about that later, but for now here are some holiday snaps I took

Toy Shopping

2011-09-09T16:56:00.000+01:00

Theres a new interview with JF here, below is the text. And here are our new promopix

The word ‘iconic’ is brandished a bit too readily these days, but here we go: John Foxx truly is an iconic figure in the world of electronic and synth music. Perhaps ‘definitive’ may be even more appropriate, in that Foxx in many ways defines the history of UK electronica.

Over a career spanning almost 40 years, he was there for the initial, Numan-led assault of the electronic sound on the UK mainstream as a founding member of Ultravox, through the introspective Eno-ambience years, the melodrama and conceptualism of prog, and even the tentative first steps of UK techno and house. He continues to be a much-revered figure for anyone and everyone struck down with synth-love, particularly his groundbreaking 1980 record Metamatic and its accompanying single, the brilliant Underpass. His current project John Foxx and the Maths sees him team up with fellow synth figurehead Benge to produce Interplay, a timeless and upbeat selection of electro-pop. In anticipation of a UK tour which takes in a show at Thekla, we caught up with John to try to get to the bottom of how one of electro’s great pioneers continues to stay hungry for synth-nourishment, his mid-80s crisis of faith and his parting of ways from Ultravox.

With such a rich and long history in music, it’s hard to know where to start with you. This current project you’re working on as John Foxx and the Maths - what are the origins of that, and how is it going?

That all started up because I heard a record called Twenty Systems by a guy called Benge, which I really enjoyed because it was just synthesizers raw, just sounding like themselves. It turned out he had a studio not far from my old studio in Shoreditch so I went down there and he’s got pretty well every synthesizer ever made, so it was like kids in a toy shop. We started work straight away, and that became the album.

So it’s you two and who else who fall under the banner ‘The Maths’?

There’s Mira Arayo from Ladytron who did some vocals for us, and there’s a loose crew of people around the studio: I met Serafina Steer and Hanna Peel, who are musicians in their own right, because they were recording at the same studio. There’s quite a scene around that studio, a lot of interesting people have kind of gravitated to it from around that East London area.

And they’ll be coming out on tour with you?

Serafina and Hannah will be coming with Benge and myself, yes.

Benge is something of a cult figure isn’t he? Is he someone you’ve wanted to work with for a while?

Yes, well I’ve really liked his approach since I first heard his work. He’s truly unique.

Interplay is an impressively hooky, pop-tinged album. Is this pop sensibility always something that’s been close to your heart?

That was actually an accident, because in an odd way we set out to make an abstract sort of record, something a bit stranger sounding. The thing is though, he has this old Moog system from the 60s, a really big synthesizer system, and when you really let it rip it makes really interesting melodic, very rhythmic sounds. So these naturally turned into songs without us meaning to. It was the easiest path to take I suppose, so we took it.

How have you managed to stay hungry and creative for such a long time?

I’m glad you think I have (laughs). It’s just being enthusiastic about it, isn’t it. If you love something and it still fires you up ... every time I heard a synth or a drum machine, I still get excited, and I think if you keep that kind of naive excitement it’s easy. It’s just the same as when you see certain films or certain paintings, you just go ‘wow, that is really new and interesting’, and you want to get involved with it, you want to be there and work with the people who make those things. A lot of people tend to lose that and forget about it, and I don’t know why but I haven’t. I’m very pleased about that.

Having been a figure of influence in a movement which moves so quickly for such a long time, how do you find these constant shifts and developments in the scene?

I like it, because it keeps things fresh and new, and it’s been the basis of most music – that electronic approach – since the late 70s now, and it’s interesting because every set of people remakes it and it becomes completely different in different people’s hands. I mean, Lady Gaga sounds very different to Gary Numan, who in turn is very different to Kraftwerk. There’s a massive variety in music there, and it even reaches into places that aren’t really obvious, like heavy metal music, where the producers have taken techniques from electronic music. At the moment you’ve got a crossover with reggae music in dubstep, which is essentially synthesized reggae.

And of course technological advantages play a huge role within your area, how do you find they influence what you do?

Every time a big shift in technology comes along it totally changes things, you know, what allowed Frank Sinatra to sing quietly in from of an orchestra was technology – even something like the microphone completely changed popular music at that point. It continues to do that, there will be artists who pick up on a slight technological change and make something new out of it.

But when you make music you still use mainly analogue synths, right? You don’t use computer-generated sounds with midi-synths or anything like that?

That’s just because I love the sound of synthesizers. I don’t think they’ve explored it enough, there’s a long way to go before they can achieve what you can with a real synthesizer. That’s not nostalgia, it’s just that there’s a lot of ground to cover that hasn’t been covered yet.

There’s a real resurgence in the synth sound at the moment, particularly in America, from the likes of Com Truise. Is that something you’re aware of? Much of it seems to be imbued with a sense of nostalgia - do you think these guys are doing anything new, or just rehashing old ideas?

That is the danger point, and I’ve always said that I’m not nostalgic about things and don’t want to be. I just think, that’s finished, on with the next. There are people who are taking it to new areas, like Xeno and Oaklander for instance, who we’ve been doing some work with in New York, and they’re very interesting because they’ve got a very stripped-down approach. They use all analogue synths, but they use them in a very modern way. They’ve thrown away all the junk and the songwriting fluff and got right down to it and made something very basic and interesting. There’s another band called The Soft Moon who use guitars and synths together in a really interesting way. There’s a whole movement around New York that is sort of stripped down, electronic, distorted music that I find really exciting, and it’s all happening right now. And what’s nice is, those guys know my music. When we were in touch with them they immediately cited Metamatic, so we started working together understanding what each other were doing.

In the time you’ve been affiliated with the electronic scene, what are the most exciting things you’ve seen? Have there been things that have come up from time to time which have really blown you away?

Well yes, Gary Numan was one of them. When he came along in ’79 he was the first one to get into the charts, which were very important then, and that was the first electronic music to get mainstream attention. That was great because it opened the door for everyone else. He was a real surprise, but he’s a real original and has continued to be original since then, which I think is wonderful. I think the band that really kicked me off was the German band Neu! in 1973.

And I also heard that you found a lot of inspiration in the London house and acid scene?

Well, I just happened to be in someone’s house in Vauxhall, a guy called James Pinker who was playing this music and I just thought it was really exciting. It was all synthesizer music, but a new form of it that I’d never heard before, and it was early Detroit acid techno. That was in about 1987. I think for the first time since punk or psychedelia there was the beginnings of an underground scene again. I tend to think things die off when there’s no underground, there’s nothing interesting happening, but when an underground scene does develop, it tends to mean there’s going to be an explosion of a certain kind of music. And you just had to hear that music to know that it was going to explode into everybody’s consciousness very quickly.

So presumably that was the point where you started finding an interest in music again? Because in 1985 you quit music altogether and sold your studio. Did you really think that was it for you and music?

I really did. I was so bored with what was happening, I just hated it. It was all dull, imitation soul music, very weak and overproduced. I think there were only one or two people keeping the torch burning, The Cure and maybe Depeche Mode at some points, and there was really nothing there of interest to me so I just though that’s it, I’ll leave it alone now. There were plenty of things I wanted to get on with anyway, so I just saw it as a chance to do that.

And you moved on to prove that you could be successful in other fields too: graphic design, photography, academia. What role do these things play in your life?

I still give lectures. It’s mainly because people I was at art school with in the 60s and 70s have gone out into other art schools around England, and they ask me to come in and talk occasionally about what I do and present some ideas about media, technology, art and so on. It’s good fun, you get to meet a new generation of art students, and that’s where I came from, and it’s where all English music came from since the 60s really.

Would you say that all these thing have been informed, to some extent, by music, or vice versa?

They all work together, but I think a lot of it springs from things I learnt at art school back in the early 60s. A lot of thinking that got done then allows you to understand things that go on around you, in terms of style, technology, movements – that culture, if you like. You were given a solid grounding in that kind of environment early on. And it wasn’t highly theoretical, it was very practical, you had to get involved and alter things, so there were people like the Situationists that fascinated me, and you could apply those modes of thought to music, like Malcolm McClaren did with the Pistols. That was a Situationist exercise in effect.

Is there one moment in your career, musical or otherwise, which you look back on with real pride? Or are you someone who always looks at the next project as the most important?

I do tend to look forward rather than backwards, but I guess I really like a thing I did called Cathedral Oceans, a lot of images and music and it’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was a child, and I’ve managed to finish it and make it complete, so I’m really proud of that, personally. It’s a very obscure piece of music and imagery, but it’s something that I loved.

And finally, I’m sure you’re sick to death of talking about it, but how do you look back at your days in Ultravox? Does it stand out as a happy time for you?

Oh yeah, I think we all learnt an awful lot very quickly. We did about 5 years of touring all around the world, and the experiences you get from that are tremendous. I mean, it takes you the rest of your life to really understand what happened.

How do you feel about the direction they took after you left? Obviously the sound changed a lot.

Essentially it was great because we all set out to have an adventure together, as you do when you’re young, and we had to part ways, but we all got what we wanted out of it at the end. I ended up being able to do my own electronic music and it gave me the platform to do that, and it gave them the platform to make hit records. Everyone involved got what they wanted out of it.

John Foxx and the Maths play Thekla on October 20th

Words: Geraint Davies

Hackney Planning Failure

2011-09-06T01:54:00.000+01:00

I saw this on the way in today. I am usually really up for modern houses, but there is something just weird about this planning scheme

Big Serge, Small Buchla

2011-09-04T16:51:00.001+01:00

Here is a video of a self playing patch made on my beloved Serge along with the smallest Buchla system in the whole world. I played with the dimmer switches

First Steps

2011-09-04T16:24:00.002+01:00

Ok, so this is why my blog has gone all Buchla of late: I have bought my first Buchla module and I am planning to get a few more. I am starting off small with just 5 modules, and I might even go out to Berkley next week to pick them up from Don! I spoke to him a few times during the week and have done the deal, and he's holding them for me. I'm also getting a Buchla-format Pendulum / Ratchet made by Chris Muir from Eardrill. So below are my first experiments with the 261e Complex Waveform Generator

The first one is me tweaking the controls on the 261e, while the Moog system is doing everything else. It was weird putting the Buchla osc through the Moog 904A. The second patch is similar, and looking at it on the scope you can see the wonderful percussive envelopes being created by the Cynthia Quad Low-Pass Gate (Moog-format). The third is a night view