Rats

This sort of thing really does happen. Thanks for the warning JG

Synth Mule

Thanks to James for alerting me to this sketch..

Music School

This is how we did it back in the day...

Ear Blood

Plaid Shirt

Heres an update to this post, in which I tried to become John Carpenter / Alan Howarth for the day again. It got reposted by those nice people at synthtopia, which is always cool. And it's nice too to get peoples comments - here are my favourite two:

Prog Volume

Phil came round the other day and noticed the 'Prog Volume' knob on the Prophet T8 polysynth. Heres what happens when you turn it up to max:

Tarkus Very Much

Via Matrixsynth

Old Frontiers

There is an excellent programme on BBC iplayer all about synths in film music. It really is a good programme - covering everything from Forbidden Planet to Pi, with some great studio footage from the likes of Walter Carlos, Moroder and Vangelis. And the best thing is its presented by Brian Butterfield!

Beach Bum

A picture of me lounging on the beach in Crete...

Sniffing

Google Fail

Check this screen shot out - I just tried to load a new google search and this came up:

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!”

Synth & Western

Wayne's World

This perfectly sums up my feeling about the spectacularly bad Olympic closing event (thanks Paul!) From the Daily Mash

WAYNE Hayes, a middle-aged sales executive from Carlisle, has expressed regrets about the Olympics closing ceremony beamed directly from his brain. Hayes, who organisers deemed to be the most typical man in Britain, curated the ceremony via special electrodes attached to his head which fed details of everything he likes into a giant computer. This information was then transmitted into the Olympic Park in the form of incredibly lifelike holograms. Hayes said: “I thought that everyone loves a bit of Annie Lennox and Oasis to get themselves in the party mood but judging by the four hundred thousand death threats on my Twitter feed this morning, apparently not. All I wanted was to recreate the brilliant spectacle of an early 1990s Brit Awards show and I tried to do that by free associating acts with the first words that came into my head, hence Fatboy Slim/octopus, and Annie Lennox/Viking boat.” Many of the performances last night were clipped versions of well known songs, mainly because Hayes could not remember all of the words, and the only modern acts were the ones he last heard blasting out of his daughter’s bedroom. Hayes’ wife has asked him to explain why he is so obsessed with Jessie J, a constant feature of the concert who remained in the corner of the viewers’ screen like somebody signing the program for the deaf had decided to abandon waving their hands about and start shouting along instead. Other baffling performances included Kaiser Chiefs singing The Who, because Hayes remembered liking the group but couldn’t remember how any of their songs went, and a recreation of an Only Fools & Horse scene because he had their DVD on in the background at the time. Hayes said: “This is just what music concerts look like in my mind, although admittedly the last one I actually went to was Travis at the Birmingham NEC in 1999. Oh, why didn’t I have Travis on instead of the Spice Girls? That’s a shame.”

Future Retro

Heres another take on The Maths. Someone thought our music needed more Sax and Bongo

Dusty

I think I'm going to need one of these after the builders leave....
(thanks Fabio!)

Craig is a Liar

I know everyone says Craigslist is full of scams, but sometimes I like to check out what amazing bargains he's got going just for fun. Today you can buy all the lovely things pictured below for about 1/10th their normal value! So I decided to contact all the sellers and guess what? They all live on Shetland [the UK's most remote Island]!

Universal Binary

Via xkcd

Start Me Off

Warp Speed Nine

Sent my way by Paul - forget the Aeron, this would make the perfect chair for studio one....