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.   

New album - Klaus Schulze, Shadowlands

The release of a new album by the God of electronic music, Klaus Schulze, is always an event, though it's no longer a certainty that he'll come up with anything novel. Shadowlands isn't a disappointing album, but it clearly treads ground which is pretty familiar to anyone who has heard his output in the last five years. 
Though it has some vocal participation from Lisa Gerrard, Chrysta Bell, Julia Messenger and Thomas Kagermann, who also plays violin and flute, this isn't a vocal album in the way Schulze's collaborations with Lisa Gerrard were. Instead it's heavily reliant on washes of string pads, polyrhythmic percussion and ambient effects. It's pretty similar to everything he's come up with since Contemporary Works.
Nonetheless it bears the marks of genius - and not to denigrate Schulze acolytes like Fanger & Schoenwalder, there's a mountain of inspiration separating their pleasant but imitative output from that of the original master.
The only question is, when there's a 2xCD version with two extra tracks, why anyone would want to buy a single-CD edition of Shadowlands?
Order it from the ever-reliable C&D Services, http://www.cd-services.com/

  

 

     

New gear - FAT Procoder, Kawai R-100, Seiko DS-310

Another equipment splurge has ended up with me buying a FAT Procoder, Kawai R-100 drum machine and Seiko DS-310 digital programmer. I've wanted a hardware vocoder for some time, as I haven't been impressed by software ones. The Procoder is just about the cheapest it's possible to find, and this is reflected in the build quality, which is atrocious. The manual is awful too, so I had a lot of trouble setting it up, not helped by a lack of suitable microphones. However, it works well with line inputs, and I got some great Klaus Schulze-style rhythmic chords out of it.
The Kawai R-100 is a sheer indulgence, a gritty sampled drum machine with some interesting tuning features, but not something I'm likely to use much.

The Seiko DS-310 is something I never thought I'd own - it's the harmonic synthesis programmer add-on for the DS-250 keyboard. To my astonishment it works, and creates some fabulous sounds (but unfortunately lacks a filter envelope function). Bizarrely, though no-one seems to have posted a scan of its manual, I got one on eBay - no instrument for sale, just the manual. What's that all about then...? 

      

New gear - Technics SM-AC30 MIDI PCM Orchestra

Having had one on loan for a few days, I was very pleased to pick up a Technics SM-AC30 cheap from eBay. Basically it's an organ in a briefcase; just add MIDI keyboard/s. I think it was usually used as an accordion expander. Preset rhythms are a bit limited and are of the cha-cha-/rhumba/waltz variety, but there are some excellent PCM accompaniment sounds (particularly the strings) and a very complex chord sequencer. Interestingly, the Disco rhythms have some electro sounds which I don't think were present on the loan unit I had. 
I also picked up a Philip Rees V10 MIDI Thru box and a Doepfer Pocket Dial controller, so I'm now close to finishing off the studio refit.      

Loads of new gear - Roland MC-505, Simmons SDSV, Simmons Portakit, DrumKat DK10

I've been busy rebuilding the studio, and had just about finished when I picked up some new gear which will now have to be integrated into the limited space I have.

The Roland MC-505 was a slightly damaged bargain; it needs one knob replacing. Though I have a Yamaha RM1X and a Quasimidi Rave-o-Lution, the Roland has a lot of real-time controls which make it  useful groovebox.

The Simmons SDSV I got to replace my broken case, and because it has Kenton MIDI fitted. It's great to hear it triggering direct from an Alesis SR-16 MIDI drum machine. 

As a mate for the SDSV, I got a Simmons Portakit, stupidly cheap, and, uncommonly, in working order. It's a fabulous piece of gear, though I'll probably never use it to its full potential. I also have a DrumKat DK10 on the way, so it will be interesting to see if that offers anything over the Roland SPD8. And I got a memory enhancement for the Kawai K5000R, useful since I have several banks of sounds for it on floppies. 

     

New synth - Kawai K5000 and macro editor

I finally cracked and bought a Kawai K5000R, the last classic synth module I wanted. I paid far too much for it, and for the Macro Editor which I got separately. The K5000's additive synthesis sounds appear to be just as powerful and flexible as I thought, though the presets are uninspiring and I'll have to sort through some alternative patches to find the best ones. Interestingly, I was also prompted to power up the Kawai K5R and K3R, an additive synth and a digital waveform subtractive synth, and they both have some interesting sounds, but maybe not enough to justify the rack space they take up.