Artifact Shore

I just found this cool blog today, The Halls of Valhalla.  The author designed the reverb algorithms for a cool plug-in called Eos by Audio Damage along with a new plug-in called the Valhalla Freq Echo.

The site ‘primarily’ deals with reverb, with all sorts of cool dissections on reverb hardware/software, how Eno/Lanois used verb to produce that shimmer sound and general musical fun.  Anyway, the site is a great read… I highly recommend it.

So here is some u2 shimmer!

I just spent quite a bit of time reading over this blog, Buchla Tech.   A site geared towards the classic Buchla synth.  It is loaded with interesting stuff, mainly of the diy techy sort.  A very worth while visit for any synth fan, specifically any Buchla synth fan.

If you don’t know anything about Buchla you should.  Buchla made some sweet, highly sought after modular synths – namely the 200 series.  They have been  used by all sorts of people, most famously by Morton Subotnick.  They are not as well known as Moog, nor as straight forward, they are quite cool and just as old!  Much like Neve in the pro audio world, current modular makers are doing their best to remake, or restyle, Buchla 200 series panels.

In 2004, Don Buchla came out with an updated version of the classic, the 200e .  This is probably the greatest modular synth one could buy.  Famously used by Alessandro Cortini, of NIN.  Check out his -large- Buchla setup,

Anyway, if I could afford one …. well I can’t so. Enjoy!

Just stumbled upon a couple random synth sites with some fairly out of left field stuff, mainly diy-ish.  First off the Tetrazzi Organus.  I’m really not even sure what it is or how it works.  Cool though.  This along with a couple other odd ball creations are made in Baltimore Check them out!

2nd: Carrion Sound which seems to be mainly just cool DIY stuff.  Plenty of tubes, synths and interesting noise machines.  Check out the different pages on the site, plenty of random stuff. I personally liked this video,

Here is a excerpt from a documentary about the makers, Dewanatron, of that sweet little synth highlighted in the How To Destroy Angels video.

They are clearly making some of the coolest looking, sweet sounding and most interesting synths & sound modules around.  I can’t even imagine the amount of time it takes to build some of these machines.    This page has more info on them and where to buy some of their creations.

Here is a cool little video showing off Throbbing Gristle’s legendary effects unit, The Gristleizer.  Smashing guitars sells new pedal versions, eurorack for modular synths and diy kits.  The added CV controls really adds some good functionality to these cool units. Find out more regarding the kits here. Pretty cool all and all.  I want one.

This little contraption is quite cool and the live possibilities with it could be great.   The device in the video is from  Randall Jones’s thesis project, which you can read about here.  I recommend reading about it if you like the video.  He has some good comparison to similar products… Haken continum … and how and why this product could be different.  Overall, he leaves you with enough information to build one fairly cheap, but I would prefer to buy the finished product.

So, hopefully, his new company, madronalabs, will come out with an updated version of the  product.  I also hope that it will have CV control for modular synths added into the final version!

Sly Stone’s recording console preamplifiers are being reproduced!  Daniel Flicking made some great consoles in the late 60’s and early 70’s, truly funky and original.  In addition to Sly, Flickinger made consoles for Johnny Cash, Parliament & Muscle Shoal.   Most of his creations were custom in some form or another, and based on the cliental he was building for they were top notch boards.

Per Steve Albini, “I will go to my deathbed claiming Flickinger consoles are the best sounding mixing desks ever made. Period.
I have worked on several, and in good repair, they have the best bass and the best high-end of any desk of their era. They crap all over anything built since.”

Skibbe electronics, owner of Keyclub recording, and the Sly Stone board (top picture), have recreated the preamps (2nd photo) and are now releasing them in the 500 format.   Should be super cool.

Also of note, Skibbe’s announcement for the release of the Flickinger A58 equalizer.  With Electrodyne reproductions out now, Quad Eight available in a couple different formats and Purple Audio’s version of the Auditronics/Sphere eq, nearly all of the great American 70’s consoles makers have reproduction gear available again today.