Thursday 31 May 2012

The Condition of Muzak



Have a listen to Tench's latest T:COM which is an exemplary piece of contemporary post-modernist auratory design. Its hosted by the marvellous GaiaLive


LINK TO THE MUSIC HERE

PLAYLIST:

spoken word, unknownfrom film, 'in the shadow of the moon'
insects, swod, sekunden
questionable things, julien neto, le fumeur de ciel
goodbye dragon inn, arbol + fibla, live in seville
york city three - thendof rmx, the declining winter, moteer remixes
ballerina, biosphere, man with a movie camera
M1, black dog, music for real airports
to denmark, johan sderqvist, In a better world (soundtrack)
interlock, frank bretschneider + taylor dupree, balance
02, four colour, letter of sounds
silencing cities, colour cassette, small town smoker
Wume, maps and diagrams, trotoga
watashi no nemi tabi, moskitoo, drape
kunderas dream, marsden jules, nostalgia
i saw countless galaxies, terry artovsky, first time in space
IBM 1403 printer, jhann jhannsson, IBM 1401 a user's manual

Monday 28 May 2012

Photographic Pictures by Sefa


Heres a couple of pix Sefa took in Madrid:

Photographic Pictures


After the show we got taken to an awesome after party discotheque by the show's promoter David, who looked after us all so well while we were in Madrid. I had such a great night!!! You can just make out David, Sefa and Malins dancing about like crazed teenagers, and so was I which is why the video is so rubbish See the comms and check this video out:

Maths In Madrid


Speaking of gigs, we've just got back from having a great time in Madrid. Heres us doing Evergreen. Video via somavillas

Magnetic East


Remember when I mixed the Magnetic North album? Well it was really good to finally get a copy of the CD! I picked it up when I went to see them play an amazing concert at Wiltons Music Hall in east London last week. Heres a vid I took from the back of the balcony

Wednesday 23 May 2012

Monday 21 May 2012

Striped Light


Obelisk


Check out this unofficial video for Gazelle Twin's song Obelisk. Its based on the utterly beguiling 1973 film "Holy Mountain" by Alejandro Jodorowsky

Flat Battery



My entire studio stopped working temporarily this week. At the heart of the studio is my digital console (Mackie DXB) which routes all the audio signals to and from the computer and the patch bays and then to all the equipment. And at the heart of the console is a tiny little battery and it transpires that this battery had gone flat and therefore my studio stopped working! Because of one tiny battery!

Anyway, thanks to a call out from a Mackie tech everything is back to normal. So I had a nice evening with Phil and Pete just listening to music all night. I had forgotten how good it is listening to OTHER peoples music

Sunday 20 May 2012

More Evidence


I don't know who put this compilation of clips together, but it works for me...

Mountain Boat


When I was last in LA I spent a lot of time driving round the hills looking at houses. One time I discovered these amazing wonked-out house pods up in Hollywood and fell in love with them. They were designed in the late 50s by Harry Gesner. Theres one for sale at the moment, $600K


UPDATE
Check out this video that I just found over on a great blog called JUST OFF MULLHOLLAND:

Word of the Week #36


Friday 18 May 2012

Play System


Jarvis brought along a synth with him. Its a Yamaha Playsystem. You can load songs into it with a crazy magnetic-music-sheet-thing...

Space Ship


Here is Jarvis Cocker at the Big Moog, making spaceship sounds
1st pic by me, 2nd pic by Sefa

Lunar Track



Here is the result of our collaboration with The Soft Moon.... Evidence

Thursday 17 May 2012

Tuesday 15 May 2012

Bend Your Ear Radio Programme No.4




Here is programme four in my occasional radio show. This time its all about the music of John Carpenter and Alan Howarth, who I have been listening to quite a lot recently. I have chosen various tracks from his early film music, from the period 1976 to 1982. Here is the track list:
01 intro (BYE ident)
02 number 5 (the fog)
03 the windows (assault on precinct 13)
04 police state (escape from NY)
05 escape (the fog)
06 chariots of pumpkins (halloween 3)
07 back to the pod (escape from NY)
08 opening (the fog)
09 orientation (escape from NY)
10 over the wall (escape from NY)
11 the president is gone (escape from NY)
12 the rock (halloween 3)
13 outro (BYE ident)
Hope you like it!

Stringy


I finally found a Yamaha SS30 string machine on ebay (for a very reasonable price) and went to pick it up from Maidstone in Kent. Hello Niall! I love this machine, and agree with Peter Forrest, it is up there with the best string machines ever made

Futuristic and Universal


Look at these pictures Foxxy sent me of the amazing Atomium in Belgium. Imagine trying to get this past your local town planning department. Designed in the late 50s by Les Architects Polak, I think its beautiful. So we are going to name a track after it

New Wrangler


Had day wrangling some ideas for new stuff with Mal last week...

Saturday 5 May 2012

Benge Album - Harmuna


Ive just put up another new album for download. You can find it here
Harmuna is a companion piece to my previous album Abstraxa. Again it is entirely created on the Buchla modular synthesiser, please see the release notes which are at the link above

Lazer Eyes


Here is a video of me on the big Moog. I have spent a few days this week being John Carpenter and Alan Howarth, which is a lot of fun. This tune is made on the Moog 3C, Yamaha CS80, Linn LM1, the main sequence is Arp Odyssey. In the clip I am adding a white noise part with the Moog filters and Moog 12 Stage Phaser. Everything is locked to a central clock

Graphics In Motion


I like this video, its by MK

Word of the Week #35


Friday 4 May 2012

Filters Can Be Oscillators


What I love about the Buchla system is that on this machine the normal rules of synthesis are meant to be broken. Here is a patch which uses the 291e triple band pass filter as the only sound source. This module is primarily three individual filters / VCAs but it also has a built in 8 step sequencer and the ability to morph between different filter settings. Also if you feed back the resonant filter output into itself you can create three audio-range VCOs and that is what I am doing here

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Changelings


A remixed video for the remix of Gazelle Twin's 'Changelings' by John Foxx and the Maths. Film by Gazelle Twin. From the album, The Entire City Remixed (Anti-Ghost Moon Ray Records, 4 June, 2012) Buy: agmr.greedbag.com/buy/the-entire-city-remixed-0/

Big In Japan


I know that universities often have amazing vintage modular synthesisers hidden away in cloakrooms and cupboards behind piles of broken overhead projectors and blackboards. But check out the big stuff belonging to the Department of Musicology at Tokyo University of the Arts. They have a spectacular array of systems to choose from - a Moog IIIP, three Buchla 100 cabinets, six Roland 100Ms, a Roland System 700, an ARP 2500 plus two wings and a lot more

This is the how to book time in the studio:

"Recording studio, in the case of qualifying competitions and the big audition, and then early to reserve your space, please check it very crowded. One-time use as a general rule is 1 hour. That the same person many times to book a short period of time can not be. In addition, when you cancel without permission, you may want to refuse the recording of the family for a while that person belongs"

Is it run by Yoda?

Anyway, here is a video of an open day they had in 2008, and below that a recent clip of the studio itself being played live as one big modular mega-system. Nice work KX! Via Matrixsynth