Tuesday 30 November 2010

Coast to Coast

Last month me and my friend Hugo went on a road trip from LA to NY, where he lives, in his new [old] 1987 Porsche 911 Carrera, which he just bought. We drove all the way in one go, only stopping to sleep, and eat at drive-ins. Super-size us!

The music here is made on a 1975 Paia Modular system that I managed to buy on the last day I was in America. I will tell you about that later, in the mean time you can see a very condensed version of our trip, which is a bit low-res due to trying to stuff 2 hours of video into 5 mins by using Quicktime






UPDATE: While I was away Joe and co kept a track of our route and marked it on the map. That looks a very long way!

Monday 29 November 2010

Math-o-matic

Here are some pictures Joe took of me and John mixing the last few bits of the album. As you can see, we used 3 generations of mixing console on the record; an MCI 416 from the early 70s, a Studer 900 from the early 80s and a DXB from the mid 00s




Tuesday 23 November 2010

Beautiful Retreat







Ike Yard

I was searching through some other peoples blogs and realised that I am not the only person heavily into synths and obscure 80s bands. There are more out there! For example, ether^ra, where I discovered a totally new [to me] obscure 80s band called Ike Yard. Theres a great interview with one of them over on bleep. Anyway, I find their music really inspiring, blending experimental electronics, cool vocals and top notch early 80s studio production (think: Hannett) into a very unique sound. Theres a reissue of some early stuff, find out more here

Synths used: Korg (MS-20, MS-50, SQ-10, VC-10), Roland (TR-909, TR-606, TR 808, TB-303, MC-202, CSQ-600), Arp (Solus, Axxe), the EMS Synthi-AKS, and the Buchla Modular 112 keyboard controller


Listen to 'Dancing and Slaving':



Monday 22 November 2010

Fifty Five

So the amazing Moog system 55 which I mentioned in this post eventually sold on ebay. What was interesting was the question of it's provenance, i.e. whether it had been previously owned by synth-god Kieth Emerson. As it turned out, there was a mix up / exaggeration by the seller which resulted in an excellent round of publicity for the item for sale. Read below for the full story from the seller. BTW, it got £15000, less than I expected for such a system

Sunday 21 November 2010

Sunday 14 November 2010

Mixing With The Stars

This week me and John Foxx have started to mix The Maths album, and it will continue through next week too. So its very hectic down here at the moment, either mixing or fixing things [like noisy mixer channels, with the help of Big Al]. Up till now we have had provisional mixes which were done on the DXB digital console, as it has instant recall, but now the proper mixes are being done on either the 1973 MCI 416 or the 1980 Studer 902, depending on what suits the song. And they sound a ton better. Go over to my other blog to find out more about analog mixers if you have nothing better to do



Wednesday 10 November 2010

Tuesday 9 November 2010

Cunning Stunts

Geoff from Static Caravan just sent me some new releases from his lovely label, mainly because I either mixed or mastered them [more on those later], but he also put in the parcel an original copy of Stuntman by Edgar Froese. It's a wonderful slice of 70s synth bonkersness and has a great cover and also one of those inner sleeves that has a jumble of random pics. If you look for it you can get it from someone else's blog I'm sure...




Sunday 7 November 2010

Ebay Modular Roundup

UPDATE: see the comments for a message from Kieth Emmerson's office!

Looking through my saved ebay items list it occurred to me how many really nice modular systems have been knocking about recently



Moog Modular System 55 belonging to Keith Emmerson (or not!), currently £10,000, 8 days left




Roland System 100M, BIN £5,300




Aries System 300, sold for £4,600




EML Electrocomp 101, sold for £1,800




Roland System 700, sold for £5,500




RSF Modular 11, unsold at £3,800




Serge Modular panels, 6 separate auctions - total value £10,800




Paia 4700 X 2, sold for £1,000




EMS VCS3 belonging to Tristram Carey, sold for £6,250

Wonk

Friday 5 November 2010

Future Music Feature

There's a feature on us (John Foxx & The Maths) in this months FM magazine. It was done during our concert at the Roundhouse last June. There's a great spread in the mag and as usual John Foxx talks about everything in a really interesting way. He's good at that. And on the DVD is the following video, filmed by those lovely FM people, which features Foxxy, Steve D'Agostino and yours truly talking about vintage synths



Big Dog

So I got back from the states and my new dog, Biba, had grown about 3 times bigger! I took her down into the studio for the first time and she seemed pretty happy there. She sat around while I pumped out super low frequencies and then fell asleep. Its actually better than up in the real world tonight because it's fireworks night and they do freak her out a bit

Back to Work

Hey Ho! Sorry for the huge delay in posting, I'll tell you about my American road trip later, but to summarize it involved 80s supercars and synths. Which is why this post over on matrixsynth caught my eye