Thursday 31 March 2011

Saturday 26 March 2011

Word of the Week #9

Concrete House



My brother Dan, who has his art studio upstairs, is a big fan of concrete. And so it seems is this architect. In the early 70s he saw this derelict concrete factory, and instead of thinking "this would make a cool house" and then going back to his boring office job, he actually made it into his house and office. Pretty damn inspirational!










Friday 25 March 2011

Diagramatic

Check out my friend Sam's new project Diagrams. Follow the link and download the track for free. The drums were recorded here at my studio a few months ago on my Gretsch kit. I really like this song, nice one Sam, can't wait for the album!!!

Thursday 24 March 2011

Monday 21 March 2011

Sail to the Haunted Stars

I was browsing over at La Boca's blog and saw some nice stuff:









Sunday 20 March 2011

Me(tamatic)

There is a new interview with me over on the Metamatic website by Rob Harris where I talk about the studio, working with Foxxy, playing Are Friends Electric on the Polymoog with Gary Numan, and a run down of the synths used on the Interplay album (available from all good record shops from Monday), amongst other things. Thanks Rob!

Rubiks Cube of Sound

I got a new Doepfer module on German ebay (always good for Doepfer stuff). Its a very interesting module, and seems to me to embody the Doepfer sound. It can be used as a 2 second 8 bit sampler, a digital delay (in conjunction with a mixer module) or a wavetable synth. Unfortunately the manual is so badly written and the module is so complicated with its array of function switches, that I haven't been able to get the most out of it yet, but that makes it all the more fascinating I suppose. Its like a Rubiks Cube of sound

Saturday 19 March 2011

Synth Mafia

"Buy our album (which is out on monday) or we will find you"



pic: Karborn

Thursday 17 March 2011

Ulrich's Place

Just saw this over on matrixsynth. One more in the series...

Word of the Week #8

Its Full of Dolls

Here is a short film of my girlfriend's shop and label Dollydare. In 2009 I spent a month helping her decorate this boutique in Spittalfields, and this film is of all her staff being mannequins, dolled up in her clothes, Naz, Ally etc having fun dressing up (this is what they wear anyway!) The video was shot and edited by someone else, but I made it look like it was done on super 8 for fun. The music is from The Long Good Friday

Wednesday 16 March 2011

Foxx the Mole

Theres a great and quirky new interview with John Foxx over on Chain DLK. And heres some more pics of us in the studio taken by Karborn (more here):






Saturday 12 March 2011

Sketches of Synths

I told you about Electric Independence coming down to interview us. Well I recorded the synth demos we did for them through the desk, so there were high quality versions for the programme they were making. I've put them up on my new soundcloud page. The synths demonstrated were a Moog Modular, going through a HH digital delay, a Korg Monopoly and its built in arpeggiator, an ARP 2500, the Roland CR78 [John Foxx's favourite drum machine) through an MXR Flanger/Doubler. Then lastly John Foxx plays the Yamaha CS80

Moog Modular by zackdagoba

Monopoly by zackdagoba

Arp 2500 by zackdagoba

CR78 and MXR flanger by zackdagoba

John Foxx and my Yamaha CS80 by zackdagoba

I've Got One

I've got one, in my house. Its over there. Its mine.

Buchla Mayhem

And I also saw this over on matrixsynth. I would really like £25K to spend over in Berkeley, California

Synth-Babe Mayhem




I saw this remarkable video over on matrixsynth. It pretty much speaks for itself, but half way through watching it I realised that this is Joe McGinty's studio, the guy that I met last year when I bought his Paia modular system. For some reason I never got round to posting much about that experience. Before driving from LA to NY in October I had won an ebay auction for the system pictured below. Its always nerve wracking bidding blind on something like this, not knowing the seller, or being able to check it out in person because it is on another continent. But the communications I had with Joe were reassuring, he is a very cool guy. So I paid him a deposit and told him I was planning a trip to NY and everything fell into place. I was pretty worn out after driving 3000 miles with no breaks, and turned up at his Brooklyn studio (which sadly wasn't full of Synth-Babes at the time) just in time to pick up the Paia and pack it up and get to the airport that last day. But taking it home with me saved the shipping costs, which pretty much paid for my flight. I love it when a plan comes together

Friday 11 March 2011

Metaphysical Graffiti

I was out and about today quite a lot on my unending quest for cheap grip-fill. I have become quite a connoisseur, having consumed over 50 tubes so far this week. Anyway, Hoxton is quite an interesting place for graffiti spotting, with new Banksys cropping up all over the place and the like. I saw this astonishing piece today by an unknown vandal, which has a rather Baconesque quality to it:



Round the corner was this rather less metaphysical effort:

Thursday 10 March 2011

Walkthrough

Heres a quick walkthrough of the new bit of the studio, showing the wood panelling I am working on, now that the soundproofing is done. This is the undercoat, I will put another layer of thinner width strips on top to make it look a bit more random. The music is another sketch I made on the Doepfer modular and Korg pedals, from this post

Tuesday 8 March 2011

Word of the Week #7

Pauls House

Paul sent me some pics of the house he is building in Cornwall. It brings back memories of me three years ago, when I went through exactly the same thing building my house. A mixture of total stress and total satisfaction rolled into one really long drawn out experience! Looking back it was well worth all the madness of overseeing the build and project managing a pretty big team of builders and craftsmen and tradesmen and salesmen... and it makes my efforts at the studio recently seem very small. Which I am very grateful about. But there is something extremely rewarding about creating by your own hand the space where you live or work. Nice mixer by the way





Monday 7 March 2011

Baby Snakes

Wood

This is what I was thinking for the live room walls, made with american walnut planks...
This studio is Gilley's, built in 1978 in Pasadena, Texas, by country producer Bert Frilot. That looks like an MCI console, maybe a 400 series

Sunday 6 March 2011

20K

Saw this over on gearslutz - from a thread on 70s studios

Saturday 5 March 2011

Hoxton Electrovision

I was out and about in Shoreditch today and took a few snaps of the neighbourhood



Pedalgogy

I just got my new pedal board through from italian ebay. It took over a month to arrive, but was worth the wait. They are Korg PME 40X units in a special rack, and I'm going to try and collect them all. Korg introduced them in 1983 and the range of effects available was: overdrive, distortion (check), compressor (check), stereo flanger, distortion/wah, stereo chorus, sub-octave generator (check), phaser, waveshaper, noise gate, analogue delay (check), graphic EQ (check), digital delay and digital chorus (check)

I also got two new Doepfer modules, the vactrol-based Low Pass Gate, and a Quad ADSR, which can also act as four independent LFOs

Thursday 3 March 2011

Break all Hz

Remember my Serge Modular project here and here? Well it seems all that hard work paid off, because here you can see it in a starring role in Ladytron's fantastic new video for their single Ace Of Hz