Synths

I've been such a lazy blogger. If anyone is reading and interested, apologies, but I'm sure you've had plenty to fill the time with.


Heartbreak on stage at the Bethnal Green Working Men's Club, performing Akin to Dancing

Anyway, I've had synths on my mind lately. Have just been wondering about why it is that the synth seems to create a projection of time, either forwards to The Future, or nostaligia for The Past. Or, and this happens plenty, nostalgically back to a point when the future was full of hope.. retro-futurism? Back to the future? Whatever it gets called. A lot of the stuff which falls into these categories is massively good music, there's no suggestion otherwise, but what is it about the synth which has that particular effect? Is is the music people are inclined to make at the moment which is so forward or backward looking, rather than present in time here? Or maybe it's something inherent in the hardware, the sounds brought out of it are so associated with genres and times they just seen to call them up.

gatto fritto-beachy head by cloudofzeus



The other thing so distincitve about the synth, or some of the music people make with it - the sense of embracing of the future and technology, whether that's a touch dystopian (witness Cerrone's Supernature) or just plain positive (Living on Video, phaps - and that also illustrates the real vintage-futurist bent - hurrah, we're all living on video! how very modern). Italo disco is particularly strong in this last vein, and more relevant to today there are no shortage of producers (Ali Renault, Professor Genius, Subway, Gatto Fritto, Moon Gang, Heartbreak, Casionova etc etc) making music whose draws more or less heavily on synth-laden Italo idealism.


Naum Gabo, Dmitri's Darkness from the incredible The Fright Line release

Studio 54

Well it's actual footage, so why not. Looks like World Unknown, but less smoky.

Walter Gibbons

Walter Gibbons was a DJ/pioneer beatmatcher/etcetc producer legend etc etc. In the 1970s, he kicked it off by producing disco outfit Double Exposure's Ten Percent before going on to work with Loleatta Holloway, Salsoul and West End Records. He produced the above track, 'Moon Maiden' for the Luv You Madly Orchestra, and it's an absolutely incredible oddball disco track, with schizo layered rythmns and bonkers strings..

Strafe 'Set it Off' produced by Walter Gibbons



Strafe's Set It Off from 1984 is another track he's well known for producing.  House techno and electro blend somewhat easily - I'm utterly indifferent to the vocal myself, however i do love the laid-back but insistent drum track.. hypnotic. Anyway because of this one song he's been called a forerunner of Chicago house. Not hard to see why.


WG also produced a lot of Arthur Russel's releases, including one of the best AR tracks of all time, Schoolbell/Treehouse. If the rhythm track on Set it Off is going off, well this is literally some other planet. It starts intricate and switches up a lot but the drums just go off from about 7:00 and keep lopsidedly jogging their way through to the end of the track with a really cool manic energy.