Sunday 28 July 2013

Follin and Chips


Check out the amazing music of Tim Follin. He composed the soundtracks to lots of computer games, back in the days when computers had very limited sound chips or in some cases no sound chips - so he programmed code that would make the speakers vibrate directly. Crazy! The music itself is really beautiful and extremely complex, like prog rock made by robots. In this very good interview he describes how he would program the music in code without hearing it - i.e. by entering numbers for the pitch and duration of the notes. He also tells us his influences - such as early Genesis and YES, and you can really hear it in the music

Tuesday 23 July 2013

All Packed


...and ready to go to Cornwall!

Fast Computer




I have just discovered an amazing album by Larry Fast / Synergy called Computer Experiments Volume One. There never was a Volume Two which is too bad because this is one of the best examples of computer / synth music from that era, an album highly rigorous in concept and execution. Read the album notes in the second picture above. Its a really beautiful album, and explores an area that I am very interested in myself - which is why it was such a pleasure to discover this gem. He used a computer program to create the music called "Pink Tunes" which is awesome. You can still buy this record in CD form I think. Do a Google

Heres the first track, and a bit of video I stole off the tubes and messed with in AE, and below that is a picture of Larry's set-up for this recording. You can see the Paia controller keyboard below the Prophet 5



Sunday 21 July 2013

Saturday 20 July 2013

Walks


Its so good in the forest in the mornings, with the headphones on, listening to the the previous day's mixes

Monday 15 July 2013

Ice Moon


Here are some pictures I took in Iceland. I made them into Moon photos! And at the bottom is a page from the book I am reading at the moment called The Outward Urge by John Wyndham

Sunday 14 July 2013

172 Delays



Here's a patch on the Roland 100m. I wanted to explore the 172 modular FX module a bit and see if I could push it a bit deeper than its normal duties as a kind of simple doubler effect. The module itself has two functions because the top half is a really nice phaser, the middle is the analog delay and the bottom has an LFO. The analog delay has no feedback and its got a very short delay time (too short for distinct repeats to be created) so I used some other 100m modules to enhance it. First I set up a sequence using two VCOs and the ring modulator, an envelope and a VCA. Then I sent the output to a multiple so I could send it to both the output mixer and the input to the analog delay. Then I fed back the delayed output to a second mixer to produce repeated delays. To overcome the limited delay time I sent the CV input to the delay a racking great voltage and managed to produce the following results. Note that when the delay time is increased the clock driving the delay circuit becomes audible as a high pitched whine so I sent the output of the delayed signal to a LPF to filter it out. This was then mixed with the dry signal, and voila:

Me and Serge


Do you know about Electronic Sound Magazine all about electronic music? Its really good, and probably how all mags will be one day. Anyway, theres a review of Twenty Systems in the current issue. Heres a pic they took of me and Serge when they visited the studio last month:

Remixing From A Hilltop


Do you remember when we (Wrangler) were sectioned? Well here is the finished remix on Walter's fine Klang Galerie label in Vienna

Artrock TV


Heres a couple of interviews conducted by ArtRocker Magazine

Saturday 13 July 2013

Friday 12 July 2013

Arp Drumz

Had Stephan in yesterday working on a new Natural Habitats track. We set up the ARP2500 and made some drum sounds. It really is an amazing instrument the 2500. Here is a live tweak I did a bit later messing with a snare drum type sound. There is absolutely no reverb added to this, it is all done with the envelope generator and various filters and white noise. The rest of the loop is done with cross-mod vcos and the sequencers. Listen on headphones

Sunday 7 July 2013

Twenty Systems Again




My 2008 album Twenty Systems has been reissued at last! So if you have been looking for it out there in the shops or online since it sold out a few years ago - well you can get it here (if you are in USA you can pre-order it here). The release is exactly the same as the original with the exception of a few minor tweaks that niggled me about the original (but the content and audio are identical). Thanks to Steve Malins, Darren at Cargo, and Paul Agar for helping to make it happen this time round!

Saturday 6 July 2013

Friday 5 July 2013

Hip Hope


I spent NY in Palm Springs earlier this year, and I can confirm that it is a pretty bonkers place. For example, look at this amazing / ridiculous house that was built by John Lautner in the 1970s for Bob Hope, which is for sale at $50 million (here is a brochure)



I think Lautner might be my favourite house-architect:

Thursday 4 July 2013

Steers



I spent the day with Serafina working on a short film soundtrack for her brother Sam. Its a sci-fi animation so it had to have an all-electronic score, including the SFX / sound design. We had to make some breathing sounds, the sound of waves on a beach and some bubbling lava so I did it on the Moog Modular

Wednesday 3 July 2013

Icelandic White Noise


I went to Iceland last week on holiday. More to come on this, but for now heres a video of a big waterfall

Back From Kent's


Mono, Poly

Back To The Past


I saw this car years ago up the road from here and yesterday I was glad to see its still going strong. Mike took this pic last night in Hoxton Sq

Monday 1 July 2013

BYE Radio Show No.7



Heres a new mix - some of my favourite machine music from my favourite era:

01 BYE Ident - Intro
02 Crash Course In Science - Near Marineland (1981)
03 Ike Yard - Dancing And Slaving (1980)
04 Stephen Mallinder - 1-37 (1983)
05 Kraftwerk - Metal on Metal (1976)
06 Human League - Disco Disaster (edit) (1977)
07 Gary Numan - Asylum (1979)
08 Cabaret Voltaire - The Quarry (1981)
09 Paul McCartney - Check My Machine (Edit) (1979)
10 The Future - Year of the Jetpacks (1977)
11 Teachers PET - Heavy Petting (1979)
12 BYE Ident - Outro