At the de Havilland Museum with Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown

Good day out at the de Havilland Aircraft Museum in London Colney on Saturday; unveiling of the new Navy exhibition by Captain Eric 'Winkle' Brown, veteran combat and test pilot, credited with the first landing of a twin-engined aircraft and a jet aircraft on a carrier. The Museum is worth a visit - if you can find it - and the Captain (now 95!) was on good form. Bought a signed poster by top aviation painter Philip West, so that will go on the wall for my birthday on the 28th...

RIP Felix Dennis, Francis Matthews, and Bunny Yeager

RIP Felix Dennis, possibly the last of the great self-made publishers: 




 







RIP Francis Matthews, the voice of Captain Scarlet and a true gentlemen who I was once honoured to interview; 

and RIP Bunny Yeager, model, beauty queen, arguably the inventor of pinup photography, and the discoverer of Bettie Page.

RIP Nash the Slash and HR Giger

Very sad to hear of the deaths of two of my heroes, Nash the Slash and HR Giger. Nash the Slash (the on-stage persona of Jeff Plewman) created gothic electronic soundscapes with a combination of acoustic, electric and electronic instruments which no-one else has quite matched. 'In a Glass Eye' was probably my favourite. I saw him live in Oxford in 1979, and again in London a few years ago. I'm glad I caught him before his disenchantment with the music business prompted his retirement in 2012. 

HR Giger, best-known for his designs for Alien, ploughed a similarly gothic furrow, and books of his work are I think essential artefacts for any lover of the macabre and imaginative.

He's been endlessly imitated, but again, never matched. I recently saw the documentary about Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune, which features Giger speaking about some of his most significant work.

RIP both.

CD - Je Communique by Sandrine Collard

I must recommend this album, which I stumbled across while looking for work by Dan Lacksman, who produced this and is of course best known for his work with Telex (I also discovered his rather bland solo album Electric Dreams, which seems to have been released in 2013 with no publicity whatsoever). Sandrine Collard seems to have had a couple of solo hits in Belgium, and worked with a band called Ideal Husbands, before disappearing from the music scene. I believe she's now back in a band called Dallas, though I haven't found their releases yet.
Je Communique is a tasty slice of Belgo-pop from 2002 with typically quirky Lacksman bleeps and bloops, and Sandrine's gamine voice suits the production perfectly. Pity she didn't do more in this style, but you can find her videos on YouTube.
   

NEW STUFF! Jen Synthetone SX-1000, Roland Pro-E Arranger, Edirol PC-500 MIDI controller

After months of working on the studio setup, I'm almost at the stage of beginning work on my next album, but having sworn not to buy any more equipment, I've been distracted by a few purchases.
The GEM S3 Turbo keyboard has been retired as it has some faulty keys, so to replace its polyphonic aftertouch function (which I need for the S2R module) I've bought an Edirol PC-500 keyboard.

I wasn't aware of it before I started researching keyboards with polyphonic aftertouch, and it is one of the few modern, affordable controllers with that function, as well as having loads of controller sliders and buttons. Just £70, and it came in a thumping great flightcase.


The Jen Synthetone SX-1000 was a great pickup for £25 'spares or repair' - seems to be nothing wrong with it except one snapped knob and a couple of missing coloured knob inserts. It's a nice basic Italian single-oscillator monosynth with stable tuning and a reasonably good filter, but it lacks connectivity and it's unfeasibly expensive to have it MIDIfied.

But it's a nice toy, as is the Roland Pro-E, a MIDI accompaniment keyboard based on the D110 with some funky controller features. A good buy at £40 which I spoiled by paying £45 for seven extra style cards, and how useful they are remains to be seen.

Right, now I really must get on with some recording.