someone who's doing some things
Music is a huge part of my life so it’s almost certain that this category will have a lot of stuff in it.
In some ways I just can’t believe that The The have been around for 40 years. It’s strange, it’s bizarre, but it’s true.
Their music has been an important part of my life for a long time. Perhaps not 40 years, but probably for most of that. The most important album from my perspective being ‘Soul Mining’. I still listen to parts of that quite regularly.
I’m looking forward to new stuff from The The and hopefully some re-releases as well.
Having mentioned the Mute Synth 4.0 I thought I should maybe post a couple of pictures of Mute Synth 1.
I got this at the Mute festival at the Roundhouse some 8 or 9 years ago. It was a good event and the mute synth workshop was free.
I’ve been a fan of the Mute Synth from Dirty Electronics since the very first one. I’ve got 3 now, Mute Synth 1, Mute Synth 2.0, and now the 4.0. It’s certainly the most complex of the Mute range, and, after a very brief play I think it has some very interesting possibilities.
I’m also interested to see how it can work with Mute Synth 2.0. Hopefully I’ll get to experiment with that in the not too distant future.
I backed this device on Kickstarter a long time ago, I mean a really long time ago. It was really late, and, to be honest, I’d wondered if it would ever arrive, but it did, and here it is.
But it’s here, and it works. It is actually better sounding than I expected it be. The keys are actually velocity sensitive and the touch screen is huge. I’m still getting to grips with it, and I think that’ll probably take me some time.
In some ways it reminds me of an updated Yamaha QY type device, which is, in my opinion quite a good thing. The other really interesting thing about the KDJ-One is that it has a whole bunch of apps that go with it. There’s a macOS app, an iOS app, and an Android app too. So far I haven’t found a way to get everything working together, but that’s on my personal roadmap.
It’s a great shame that Allihoopa has now gone dark. It was a great service. I made some good use of it, but not as much as I would’ve liked. I guess that’s a bit of a reminder for me. That is just the way it goes of course.
So I thought I’d grab all of my content from the site before it went down. I rendered all of my tracks to video, and then I added them to a 1 second video mash up. So here’s one minute and 20 seconds of tracks I uploaded to Allihoopa.
I thought I’d post a little more about the set up for the gig I played at Cafe Oto earlier in the week. I thought it might be useful or interesting to see the devices I used.
Originally, when Robyn asked me to do this, I thought I would use these plus an Olegtron 4060 (MK I). In the end the Olegtron was too complex and difficult to change patches with any speed.
So ended up with the 2 Kastle synths, a 1.0 and a 1.5. Actually the mix of the two is really good and works very well. Patching across the two devices makes for some very interesting possibilities.
What I’ve realised is that I really need a simpler way to load patches. Not physically of course, but a way to record patches. I thought that taking pictures would help, and it did, but it wasn’t the easiest way to recreate a patch. My next thoughts were to write down the patched information. That was my solution for the Cafe Oto gig, and it worked ok. But only ok.
So now I think I’m going to have to create my own patch sheets for the Kastle 1.0/1.5, and, when I do, I will post some templates here.
On Wednesday I had the rare privilege of playing live at Cafe Oto with the amazingly talented Robyn. She is a gifted trumpet player and had a whole night of acts at Cafe Oto. I’ve been there many times and seen some amazing artists, so to play there myself was incredible.
It was a really great night too. Robyn was, of course, amazing. My small part was to bring some improvised electronics in the form of a couple of Bastl Instruments Kastle synths. To be precise a 1.0 and a new 1.5 Kastle. These little synths are amazing and incredibly versatile. There’s so much you can do with them.
Hopefully I’ll be able to get some of the footage and sound from the gig. When I do, I’ll be sharing that.
I thought I’d share this too, just a quick picture of my current modular array. More on this as it evolves.
This is something that I’ve been putting off for a long time now. Mainly as just about everyone I’ve spoken to about modular synths just tells me it sucks every last penny from you and you’re never really finished in any meaningful way. Which is a shame. So you can understand why I might decide not to go down this route. However, after a series of events and triggers I have finally given in with what can only be called a modest initial set up, and one that is in keeping with my largely mobile aspirations.
The set up is inside a lunchbox. So it’s pretty small, and almost all of the modules are from Music Thing Modular, so it is a fairly esoteric modular set up.
I hope to have some kind of output to show for it in the not too distant future, but for now I thought I’d at least post some pictures.
Last year I skipped record store day as I’d been queuing at Sister Ray Records in Soho for about 3 hours and at the end of the process I’d got 1 7″. That was all. I wasn’t terribly happy about that at all, as you can imagine. So I said to myself that I wouldn’t do it any more. I’d give it up. And I did, I didn’t go in 2017. Then I saw the list for this year, and on it was a David Sylvian album that I really wanted to get, and that I knew I would be really annoyed not to own.
So I decided to do it again. However, as I was going to be out late in London the night before I thought that the most civilised way to accomplish the task was to get a hotel room nearby and stay in town. So I did. I stayed at a very nice hotel on Brick Lane which was very reasonably priced too. It meant I could get up really early and walk down to Rough Trade East before 6am.
And my forward thinking paid off. I was probably around the 100 mark in the queue and got inside at about 8:30am. Not bad. I also got everything that I wanted too.
The most important of course being “Dead Bees on a cake” by Sylvian.
So maybe I will go again next year, at least I’ll give it a chance anyway.
I am Ashley Elsdon 