Bend Your Ear Radio Programme No.3

This time on the Bend Your Ear radio show I have decided to play music taken from just one album. Its a beautiful and very obscure Library album made in 1982 by Robin Artus, Paul Kass, George Axon and Harry Forbes on the Canadian imprint Parry Music. You can see the discogs entry here

The album is called 'New Technology Volume Three' and to me is an absolutely perfect encapsulation of early 80s synthesiser-studio music. Hope you enjoy it

The Bend Your Ear Radio Show Programme Three 'New Technology' by Zagoba on Mixcloud

Palm Reader

In this post I mention that Big City Music in Burbank are selling one of the original PPG Realizer units. Well over on Matrixsynth there was an update from Wolfgang Palm himself, pointing out that there is a complete history of PPG on his blog HERE

It really is a fascinating read, and shows what can be achieved by one man and his enormous passion for synthesisers

Photos (c)Wolfgang Palm from his blog

Yes Men

When we went to Krakow last October me and John Foxx were invited to do a little talk by Resident Advisor in front of an audience. Well today they published a transcript of it here. The text is below as well

Word of the Week #28

Its Real

The first time I met Stephi from Big City Music in LA she told me that she knew the whereabouts of one of synthesiser-folk-lore's greatest legends, the iconic PPG Realizer. I had first read of this mythical instrument in a book called Keyfax 2, which when I was growing up into a serious synth-nerd became my bible. Since then I have heard speak of this behemoth of digital synthesis, that perhaps only one or two ever existed, and how it can model any synthesiser ever made using a unique and groundbreaking sound engine. Of course I didn't believe Stephi and her tales of obscure german monster-machines, what would be next - that she had a giant Buchla 100 in her loft? A Synthi 100 in her garage? Well it turns out it was true - Sorry to have doubted you Stephi!!!!

LINK TO B.C.M. PAGE

Skywing

I saw this strange thing in the sky this morning. I think it's called a cloud. The scary thing is if the sun had been up the cloud could have gone in front of it causing a huge shadow over the land. Luckily that didn't happen

Run Yon

I discovered a beautiful place just round the corner where I can take my morning jog: Runyon Canyon Park. Here are some overly-processed pics:

Drum Bloop

Testing the Buchla drum presets. You can find them on page 247 of the user manual...

Nike Missiles

I love Mulholland Drive. Its my favourite road. Today I noticed on google earth that it doesn't actually end where it seems to end when you drive down it, it turns into a small dirt track and carries on winding through the hills above LA and Santa Monica. It eventually connects up with Malibu. So I drove down the crazy dirt track and discovered a secret decommissioned cold war nuclear army base called the LA96C Nike Missile Site. You can wander around and take in the beautiful views, and wonder at the idea of huge radars and computers monitoring the skies in the early 1960s