someone who's doing some things
I haven’t listened to The Modified Toy Orchestra in ages now, so it was great to hear this again. It really is a very well put together album and thoroughly listenable too. Of course it makes me want to listen to older MTO stuff and the ZX Spectrum Orchestra too, which is an amazing album.
I remember seeing Chirp.io back at a Music Tech Fest when it was at Ravensbourne college. It was an interesting idea and I was quite curious about it, but I wasn’t sure how I would use it and how it could be useful. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing of course. Sometimes it takes a while for things to find a place in my world and I like stuff to be actually useful to me.
So when I found that Chirp.io was equity funding on Crowdcube I thought I’d take a look. At the same time they’re expanding chirp into the IoT world with an SDK and Arduino code. It’s getting interesting now. Also, they’ve just announced a Chrome extension, which could be fun.
I wonder where they’ll go next.
Back in the 80’s when robot dancing was a really big thing I thought that they were amazing. Some of their old tracks still are. These were some of them, although my favourite stuff from them was ‘Crisis’ and ‘Summer in the City’.
Molecule Synth from Molecule Synth on Vimeo.
It seems to be a bit of a promo video, but I’ve no idea if anything new is happening with Molecule Synth.
It made a huge impression on me and has influenced my musical choices ever since. I can remember playing it over and over again, both sides of course.
These days, when I find a 7″ copy of it, I feel an overwhelming urge to buy it. So when I found this one in a second hand record store for £1 I did buy it.
I’m sure that eventually I’ll end up with a stack of these. Not that that’s a huge problem of course.
I do like instrumental albums, and I enjoyed listening to this one from Blancmange. Not something they’ve particularly been known for in the past. Having said that, one of my all time favourite pieces from them is an instrumental. ‘Sad day’ is a stunningly beautiful piece in my opinion.
Anyway, this instrumental album is rather lovely in places and I’ve quite enjoyed hearing it. As with many instrumental albums I’ve found it all too easy to get distracted from the actual listening process and so it’ll need further and more diligent listening I feel. However, it’s off to a good start, and it isn’t something that’ll be consigned to dark places of my music collection.
As usual, something pretty interesting from Teenage Engineering in the form of a competition to make a new case for the lovely PO series. They’ve released all the files anyone could possibly need for such a thing. It’ll be interesting to see what people come up with.
I’ve been a big fan of Fennesz for a long time now. Many years in fact, so when he brings out a new album I usually get it. This is a great album. Really enjoyable, although my favourite of all time is Venice, by a very long way indeed.
I am Ashley Elsdon 