It struck me the other day that a) my studio was a mess, and b) I have a reasonable amount of outboard gear which I once thought was excellent and only stopped using because I went down the "everything must be in the computer" route, and was therefore languishing in various unusable locations.

The solution? Some custom studio rack furniture from StudioRacks. I can't recommend this chap highly enough. Very friendly and attentive service, excellent quality results, and the fact that everything is custom made means you can get exactly what you want.

os, Oct 2008

Tags: racks

14th May 2008 - the second 'audit' session for the new album, and time for a few overdubs. One track only needed a little extra guitar (it must've only had, like, 10 guitar parts at that point).

Mike had a new cheapo Chinese ribbon mic he wanted to try out - the T.BONE RM700. It's an odd looking thing - like a big metal lollipop. We stuck it in front of Mike's awesome Rivera amp and cranked it up.

The sound is - interesting. Makes things sound a bit old and knackered. Also it turns out there was a nasty resonant buzz on something - maybe the mic, maybe the cab - but fortunately we recorded a DI signal too. You should still be able to hear some of the buzz on the album, where we felt it was tasteful rather than annoying.

os, June 2008

Tags: mics, amps, Rivera, T.Bone

A new arrival in the Darkroom studio - a rather lovely Prophet '08 by Dave Smith Instruments.

Dave Smith was involved in the creation of such legends of synth history as the Prophet 5 when he was working at Sequential Circuits Inc. He now has his own company and is turning out some very nice new machines.

Expect to hear a lot of this keyboard (as well as my trusty Juno 6) on the new album.

Today's podcast episode is a track consisting entirely of Prophet '08, recorded mainly as an exercise in getting to know the new beast. Enjoy!

os, April 08

Tags: keyboards, prophet

Wednesday 27th Feb: To Croydon, for the Dragon's Ball at the Green Dragon. Darkroom + Andy Booker, or Improvizone with Mike & Os? (Not sure if there's a difference...) Supporting Croydon-based Burning Shedders, The Resonance Association. Thanks Daniel.

We were billed as 'lo-fi dreamy techno' (!) The theory was we'd play drones with percussion... but to me, the venue didn't seem right for that, and it's definitely not what came out. Haven't heard the recording back yet - but towards the end,  I remember picking up on something Os played and thinking "no echo & maximum fuzz". Darkroom go ambient metal?

The fuzzulator helped make this work: www.demeteramps.com/products/accessories/fuz1.html Small but flexible, it handles vintage, gargly non-linear as well as brutal, bright & focussed with compressed lows. Varying the guitar's volume & tone does something useful as well, and given I typically use a volume pedal after the fuzz, there's a whole range of tones to explore even without echo. Somehow last Wednesday I rediscovered this!

Audio & video to follow...

Mike, March 2008

Update: Andy has written about the gig on the Improvizone blog.

Tags: gig, pedals, fuzzulator

I read on a blog the other day about Goldbaby and their unusual range of sample libraries, including an interesting take on the ever popular Roland TR808/909 sample set:

Not another 808 sample! Well actually it isn't... this is 407 samples taken from two 808's recorded into an Ampex 351 1/2" valve 2 track tape machine! That's not all... We also put the 808's through other vintage gear. Plus we recorded the 808's naked into a Metric Halo ULN-2 firewire audio card. Then we chose the best samples. All 24 bit, and all phat analog goodness! If you can't get a hold of a real 808 then this is as close as you can get in samples... Maybe even better than the having the real thing!

Better yet, they've put out a free (as in beer) library of TR606 samples, which I've been having fun with recently. Go get it here.

os, Feb 2008

Tags: sample library, vintage