V.A. Syn­thi­sis Sonoris I

Syn­thi­sis Sonoris is burst­ing out as a com­pan­ion to the sev­enth in­stall­ment in our I.T.A.T.I.O.M. se­ries deal­ing with In­ven­tors Talk­ing About Their In­stru­ments Or Mod­ules. Gath­er­ing com­posers play­ing syn­the­siz­ers de­signed by the leg­endary EMS which changed the face of Elec­tronic music back in the 70s… Myth­i­cal and typ­i­cally as­so­ci­ated with the British avant-​garde high­lights in the 70s from the BBC Ra­dio­phonic Work­shop/White Noise/Delia Der­byshire to Pink Floyd, Hawk­wind, Roxy Music/Brian Eno… But also to Eu­ro­pean com­posers like Pierre Henry, Bernard Parmegiani, Hel­don, Tan­ger­ine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Kraftwerk, André Stordeur… In a few years the VCS3 + Syn­thi AKS made their marks within the ex­per­i­men­tal, elec­troa­coustic groups all over the place and the Syn­thi proved to be one of the best re­source for any live, easy to carry and so im­me­di­ate. Leg­endary, un­par­al­leled in sound, it gives a feel­ing of being alive and un­tamed. Try­ing it causes se­vere ad­dic­tion !!!

In order to make your lis­ten­ing eas­ier to di­gest I have cho­sen to di­vide « Syn­thi­sis Sonoris » into 3 ses­sions.
Here’s the first one:

01. Philippe Petit – A Call (11:19)

A jour­nal­ist for var­i­ous mag­a­zines and radio DJ since 1983, as well as a mu­si­cal ac­tivist, I have cel­e­brated 35+ years of shar­ing/trans­mit­ting my mu­si­cal pas­sions.
Since the early 2000s I have been in­tro­duced as a « mu­si­cal travel agent » and been per­form­ing the world, play­ing fes­ti­vals all over Eu­rope, Rus­sia, Poland, Canada, USA, Mex­ico, Aus­tralia & Asia…
Feel­ing lucky to re­lease on sev­eral in­ter­na­tional la­bels such as Aagoo, Opa-​Loka, South­ern UK, Mono­type, Al­re­alon Musique, Beta Lac­tam Ring, Sub Rosa, Home­Nor­mal, Im­por­tant, Hel­loSquare, Pub­lic Eye­sore, Utech, Staub­gold, etc…
For­tu­nate enough to work with what peo­ple call a dream-​team of col­lab­o­ra­tors: Lydia Lunch, Mur­cof, The Eu­ro­pean Con­tem­po­rary Or­ches­tra (E.C.O.), Mark Cun­ning­ham (MARS), Cindytalk, Iancu Du­mitrescu’s Hy­pe­r­ion En­sem­ble, Stephen O’Mal­ley, Faust, Eu­gene Robin­son (Oxbow), Ed­ward Ka-​Spel (Leg­endary Pink Dots), Simon Fisher Turner, Scott Mc­Cloud (Girls Against Boys), Cosey Fanni Tutti (Throb­bing Gris­tle), Foe­tus, Gra­ham Lewis (Wire), Barry Adam­son, Andy Di­a­gram, Scan­ner, Ma­chine­fab­riek, Mira Calix, Kam­mer­flim­mer Kollek­tief, Justin K. Broad­rick, James John­ston (Gal­lon Drunk/Bad Seeds/Faust), ASVA, Jar­boe, Jad Fair, Mar­tin Dupont and many more…

I wanted to start our col­lec­tion with this piece be­cause when I de­cided to pay hom­mage to EMS I put out a call to my ac­quain­tances play­ing those won­der­ful syn­the­siz­ers they had in­vented. An ap­peal to their cre­ativ­ity so that fi­nally our ef­forts are gath­ered and show that no in­stru­ment was, and will be ca­pa­ble of as much grace in ex­per­i­men­ta­tion.
Be­sides, as much as I may love syn­thetic music, I – some­times – need mine to in­cor­po­rate some « con­crete el­e­ments », some acoustics and thus chose to marry the Syn­thi A with my piano sound­board while pro­cess­ing my voice call­ing out…
In par­al­lel I also had in mind, liv­ing in Mar­seille, down South, that some­times by the sea I can hear a call com­ing from down under… Are those sirens or those voices in my head…?

http://www.philippepetit.info

02. Lawrence Casser­ley – Trans­for­ma­tions I (12:07)
Tape made in Royal Col­lege of Music Elec­tronic Music Stu­dio, 1970.

A com­poser, con­duc­tor and per­former, to real time electro-​acoustic music ; Lawrence Casser­ley was also pro­fes­sor of electro-​acoustic music at the Royal Col­lege of Music in Lon­don.

By early 1970 the stu­dio had ac­quired some in­ter­est­ing new equip­ment, some spe­cially built voltage-​controlled os­cil­la­tors (based on Robert Moog’s pub­lished de­signs), and an­other EMS prod­uct, the Dy­namic Fil­ter. This was a very flex­i­ble voltage-​controlled fil­ter, con­sist­ing, in fact, of two fil­ters that could be linked ei­ther in se­ries or par­al­lel as well as being used in high pass or low pass mode. This en­abled both band pass and band re­ject fil­ters to be cre­ated, with sep­a­rate voltage-​control of band­width and band cen­tre fre­quency. I was soon ex­per­i­ment­ing with net­works of os­cil­la­tors and fil­ter to cre­ate a va­ri­ety of sounds. I was par­tic­u­larly in­ter­ested in the roughly voice-​like sounds that could be pro­duced, and one of these ex­per­i­men­tal patches pro­duced the source ma­te­r­ial for “Trans­for­ma­tions I”. The link­ing no­tion be­hind all of the Trans­for­ma­tions se­ries was that they present a source sound in di­rect jux­ta­po­si­tion with trans­for­ma­tions of it­self. In other pieces the source sound is the live in­stru­ment (piano or flute); here it is a con­tin­u­ous take from one of my os­cil­la­tor/fil­ter net­works.
I de­vised a struc­ture which al­ter­nates sec­tions of the orig­i­nal sound with sec­tions of trans­for­ma­tion; in each case I used the re­moved sec­tion as ma­te­r­ial for the trans­for­ma­tions, al­though in some later sec­tions I also used pre­vi­ous trans­for­ma­tion sec­tions as ma­te­r­ial. Each trans­for­ma­tion sec­tion oc­cu­pies the same amount of time as the re­moved sec­tion of orig­i­nal sound. It is as though the source sound is trav­el­ling be­hind a win­dow with al­ter­nat­ing panes of clear glass and dis­tort­ing glass. The main com­po­nent of trans­for­ma­tion is a se­quence of pro­gres­sive ring mod­u­la­tion, which is a de­vel­op­ment of the tech­nique I used in The Final Des­o­la­tion of Soli­tude (my first elec­tronic tape piece). The trans­for­ma­tions in­crease in in­ten­sity and com­plex­ity up to the cli­mac­tic sev­enth, be­fore sink­ing to a quiet con­clu­sion, al­though once again the ap­par­ent in­no­cence of the open­ing sounds is not achiev­able; an­other jour­ney of trans­for­ma­tion. As so often in my pieces, this struc­ture, taken on its own, sounds very rigid and lim­it­ing, but ac­tu­ally it pro­vides a frame­work within which I could set my imag­i­na­tion free. This piece has hu­mour and drama that dance around each other in an un­pre­dictable way; it al­lowed me to im­pro­vise with the ma­te­r­ial.
Two things were cru­cial to my ex­pe­ri­ence at this time, and both of them can be traced back to Stock­hausen’s “Kon­takte” (which I had heard in Chicago in 1963 – a cru­cial epiphany). One is the sense of work­ing di­rectly with sounds as phys­i­cal ob­jects which can be ma­nip­u­lated, which I have com­pared with mould­ing clay (and Stock­hausen’s re­al­i­sa­tion score for “Kon­takte” was an in­spi­ra­tion here); the sec­ond is that this ap­proach was free­ing me from the pitch-​based think­ing of the music I had been com­pos­ing be­fore this. In the next two pieces in the ‘Trans­for­ma­tions’ se­ries pitch-​based com­po­si­tion is cer­tainly im­por­tant, but it is pri­mar­ily a means of achiev­ing sound ma­nip­u­la­tion ends. The re­la­tion­ship be­tween the sound of the ‘source’ and its trans­for­ma­tion was be­com­ing the cru­cial issue.
So what do I mean by “Trans­for­ma­tion”? Each of these pieces has a very dif­fer­ent sound world, but each is a stage on one jour­ney. This is a jour­ney to ex­plore how sounds can be trans­formed, how jour­neys that start from one place can ar­rive at some very dif­fer­ent and often sur­pris­ing place. A piano gen­er­ates a se­ries of new elec­tronic sound worlds (“Trans­for­ma­tions II”); a flute pro­duces pitches that are oth­er­wise im­pos­si­ble (“Trans­for­ma­tions III”); elec­tronic sounds mu­tate into new forms; and it is the way these changes hap­pen that is the real music. Whether I am trans­form­ing lead into gold, or pump­kins into car­riages (or in­deed car­riages into lead, or gold into pump­kins) is less im­por­tant; it is the way in which those trans­for­ma­tions occur, the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the orig­i­nal and the trans­for­ma­tion; that is what this music is all about.

www.lcasser­ley.co.uk

03. Benge : Study For 3 Syn­thi (08:02)

Ben Ed­wards is a com­poser, pro­ducer and col­lab­o­ra­tor, writ­ing, record­ing, mix­ing and cre­ated his own stu­dio: Meme­tune. I started work­ing with him when he was doing Ten­nis (a duo with Dou­glas Ben­ford from Sprawl Im­print) and re­leased 2 al­bums on BiP_HOp. Later on I had plea­sure fol­low­ing/sup­port­ing his Ex­pand­ing label and his play­ing more and more beau­ti­ful Vin­tage synths…

I bought my VCS3 and DK1 way back in 1990, it was one of the first synths I ever bought, and the first ‘mod­u­lar’ sys­tem that I got. It was very cheap back then, be­fore they be­came col­lec­table, and it is a very beau­ti­ful Mk1 model. I bought it di­rectly from Robin Wood and made the long drive down to Corn­wall from Lon­don and back to pick it up.
There is some­thing very warm and fuzzy about the Mk1 units, quite a dif­fer­ent sound to later ones, I think due to the am­pli­fier com­po­nents. Every­thing seems to meld to­gether in a very or­ganic way.
I re­cently ac­quired a set of EMS units as a gift (I res­cued them from being chucked out ac­tu­ally) in­clud­ing a TKS se­quencer, 8-​Octave Fil­ter Bank, Pitch to Volt­age Con­verter and Ran­dom Sig­nal Gen­er­a­tor, so I have a nice suite of EMS gear.
Even more re­cently I have on loan from a friend a dou­ble Syn­thi, which I also used on this record­ing. The unit is the in­fa­mous ‘Crys­tal Ma­chine’ owned orig­i­nally by Tim Blake. This ma­chine has a Mk1 and Mk2 Syn­thi in a cus­tom case with a KS se­quencer and all the most com­mon mod­i­fi­ca­tions that are done to Syn­this, such as os­cil­la­tor sync, wave­form mod­u­la­tion, buffered ma­trix, and in­verter pins
All to­gether they make up a very pow­er­ful sys­tem

04. Ste­lios Gi­an­noulakis (Schema Mu­si­calis) – Syn­thi 100 Grain­scape (13:34)
Using record­ing equip­ment and the mod­ern elec­tronic music stu­dio Ste­lios Gi­an­noulakis in­te­grates many dif­fer­ent types of sound ma­te­r­ial into works ar­tic­u­lat­ing a per­sonal mu­si­cal lan­guage. Em­ploy­ing live per­for­mance and sound syn­the­sis tech­niques, sonic trans­for­ma­tions and elab­o­rate edit­ing he ex­per­i­ments with con­cepts, de­grees of con­trol, styl­is­tic, aes­thetic and com­po­si­tional ap­proaches, as well as with the ideas of ten­sion, ma­nip­u­la­tion and res­o­nance.
His elec­troa­coustic works are being per­formed at in­ter­na­tional fes­ti­vals and con­fer­ences ; he is teach­ing and writ­ing about music and tech­nol­ogy in Athens + a found­ing mem­ber of HELMCA (Greek Union of Com­posers of Elec­troa­coustic Music).

I have been play­ing a VCS3 dur­ing my stud­ies at the uni­ver­sity of Ban­gor (Wales, UK) be­tween 2000 and 2004. That VCS3 (The Put­ney) was ac­tu­ally found for­got­ten in stor­age, no­body knew how to make sound with it at the time. I did some minor re­pairs, gave it new life, and put it cen­tral place in the elec­troa­coustic stu­dio. No won­der, I fell in love with the EMS synth vibe and work­flow, the sound and huge range of the os­cil­la­tors, the fil­ter, the en­ve­lope shaper, and every­thing else. Using the joy­stick I could trans­form be­tween very dif­fer­ent sounds in a sin­gle ges­ture, so I would reg­u­larly use it to fa­cil­i­tate tran­si­tions be­tween sound ob­jects with to­tally dif­fer­ent sonic as well as sym­bolic char­ac­ter­is­tics, within elec­troa­coustic music pieces and im­pro­vi­sa­tion ses­sions.
I knew there was a Syn­thi100 in Athens, at the Con­tem­po­rary Music Re­search Cen­ter, but for var­i­ous rea­sons I never got around play­ing with it. Fi­nally, just be­fore the lock­down, I had the op­por­tu­nity to work with it for a cou­ple of weeks. I set up the synth for live drone-​glitch-noise im­pro­vi­sa­tion, and recorded many hours of ma­te­r­ial. Syn­thi100_Grain­scape was made from these record­ings

05. James Gard­ner : au-​delà de deux rivières (05:36)
James Gard­ner is an Eng­lish born New Zealand mu­si­cian and com­poser who spent much of the 1980s in Lon­don play­ing and pro­gram­ming key­boards and syn­the­siz­ers for a va­ri­ety of artists. He moved to New Zealand in 1994. In 1996, he set up the con­tem­po­rary en­sem­ble 175 East, which he di­rected until 2010 and his com­po­si­tions have been played and broad­cast through­out the world.
For some years he has been re­search­ing the his­tory of the syn­the­siser com­pany EMS with a view to pub­lish­ing an au­thor­i­ta­tive book on the sub­ject.
Gard­ner is also a broad­caster on music on the New Zealand radio sta­tion Radio New Zealand Con­cert. He teaches music at the Uni­ver­sity of Can­ter­bury in Christchurch, Unitec and the Uni­ver­sity of Auck­land, and writes and presents shows cov­er­ing con­tem­po­rary music…

There was no par­tic­u­lar aim at the be­gin­ning of work­ing on this track but I al­lowed it to evolve “nat­u­rally”. A lot of my music tends to change quickly or jump from one sonic area to an­other, so I wanted to try to let the piece “sit” for a while with­out, I hope, be­com­ing bor­ing.
I chose to use only sounds that I patched on a sin­gle 1976 EMS Syn­thi A, on loan from the Uni­ver­sity of Can­ter­bury, Christchurch. I de­cided that I would use only those kinds of audio pro­cess­ing that were avail­able in 1975 (a rather ar­bi­trary limit) al­though this pro­cess­ing was done with plug-​in em­u­la­tions, rather than the real thing. So I al­lowed my­self “tape” delay, phas­ing, plate re­verb, nat­ural cham­ber re­verb and spring re­verb.
I lim­ited my­self to no more than eight tracks of ma­te­r­ial at any time, and bounced tracks down if I needed more, just as one would have to do on an eight-​track tape ma­chine.

06. Ian Boddy – Ence­ladus (14:03)
Ian Boddy is a UK mu­si­cian who first got into elec­tronic music in the late 1970s. Since 1999 he has run the well re­spected Elec­tron­ica label DiN re­leas­ing over 90 al­bums as well as more re­cently cu­rat­ing the Tone Sci­ence se­ries. He has also com­posed many li­brary music al­bums as well as being a much sought after sound de­signer.

Every­thing you hear is from my VCS3 with just the ad­di­tion of Tape Echo, Moog Delay, Spring Re­verb & Ana­logue Phaser. I sent var­i­ous CVs into the VCS3 via the 2 Hi-​Level In­puts. The se­quencer I used for the mid­dle sec­tion was the Ana­logue Sys­tems RS200 + I used some RS&H & en­velopes.
The first sec­tion fea­tures a strange fil­ter feed­back patch I use which al­most sounds like a trum­pet.
This then morphs into a huge Berlin School se­quenc­ing sec­tion al­though it has such a dif­fer­ent feel as of course it’s not done on Moog Mod­u­lar but the VCS3.
The final sec­tion fea­tures 2 key­board parts that I im­pro­vised play­ing the DK2.
I’m ac­tu­ally pretty ex­cited about this piece as I don’t re­ally think any­one has quite done this be­fore using just a sin­gle VCS3 as the sound source.
It def­i­nitely has a flavour and at­mos­phere all it’s own. 

http://www.ian­boddy.com

07. Yoshio Machida – syn­thitic37dub (13:44)
Yoshio Machida is a Japan­ese sound & vi­sual artist + Steel Pan player.
He stud­ied min­i­mal art / music / film ex­ten­sively under Ku­ni­haru Akiyama, Yoshi­aki Touno, Sakumi Hagi­wara, Kishio Suga at Tama art uni­ver­sity in Tokyo.
In 2004, Machida founded Amor­fon a music label / a plat­form for con­tem­po­rary art event. In 2021 he recorded a full ses­sion using the Syn­thi A which be­came our Mod­ulisme 041.

I wanted to have a Syn­thi be­cause I knew Brian Eno used it. In the­ory I knew al­most every­thing a Syn­thi may achieve be­cause I had sim­u­lated rout­ing. But phys­i­cal ma­chine was more great com­par­ing to imag­i­nary ma­chine in my brain. So many “un­ex­pected” things (some­times kind of error) are hap­pened with this real ma­chine. I feel this is re­ally acoustic in its way.

08. Con­stan­tin Pa­pa­geor­giadis – Mod­ulisme Im­prov (20:15)
Con­stan­tin Pa­pa­geor­giadis is a tech spe­cial­ized in EMS in­stru­ments who has ser­viced about 100 Syn­this A, AKS and VCS3, adding on most many mod­i­fi­ca­tions that ex­pand their pos­si­bil­i­ties, in a 100% re­versible way, pre­serv­ing the in­stru­ment’s orig­i­nal con­di­tion and as­pect. He also re­paired the IPEM’s Syn­thi 100 in Ghent and var­i­ous other EMS equip­ment.
As a mu­si­cian, he has re­leased a solo LP as Trap&Zoid and a CD in duo with Yoshio Machida, using the Ghent Syn­thi 100.

My other big in­ter­est in synths is the Buchla 208/Music Easel, I offer DIY PCBs to build a 208 clone or ex­pander cards that I cre­ated such as the 208 Tool­Box and VCS3 Card. I build 208s and cards on order. My first synth was a Syn­thi AKS, I bought it to make sound ef­fects in a Hawkwindish-​style band where I played the bass. Ex­plor­ing its sonic pos­si­bil­i­ties made me dis­cover mod­u­lar syn­the­sis, I got other mod­u­lar sys­tems af­ter­wards (eu­ro­rack, MU, Serge, Buchla) but my heav­ily mod­i­fied Syn­thi AKS re­mains my main in­stru­ment. I pre­fer small self-​contained portable sys­tems whose “lim­i­ta­tions” are in­spir­ing, over a wall of mod­ules.
En­ter­ing the Syn­thi and Buchla world com­pletely changed my ex­is­tence. I pro­gres­sively got more and more in­volved thanks to my Syn­thi mod­i­fi­ca­tions and many other users got in­ter­ested in my work… Work­ing on synths fi­nally be­came my main job and the best sit­u­a­tion I ever had : earn­ing a liv­ing from my pas­sion. I meet a lot of great peo­ple, I travel, I am cre­ative, I am my own boss, I can se­lect jobs ad cus­tomers… My kid’s dream of mak­ing a liv­ing with music fi­nally be­came real, not as a mu­si­cian but as a tech, which I think is even more com­fort­able and pleas­ant.

http://www.porta­bellabz.be

09. Robin Fox – Home­osta­sis for Du­elling VCS3s (04:44)
Robin Fox is an in­ter­na­tion­ally recog­nised audio-​visual artist work­ing across live per­for­mance, ex­hi­bi­tions, pub­lic art and com­po­si­tion for con­tem­po­rary dance. His laser works, which syn­chro­nize sound & vi­sual elec­tric­ity in hyper-​amplified 3D space have been per­formed in over 60 cities world­wide. In 2016 he be­came the found­ing di­rec­tor of MESS (Mel­bourne Elec­tronic Sound Stu­dio) a not for profit or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cated to giv­ing every­one ac­cess to the en­tire his­tory of elec­tronic mu­si­cal in­stru­ments, host­ing the EMS gear on which our track was recorded.

I was in­cred­i­bly for­tu­nate to in­herit the elec­tronic music stu­dio of the late Aus­tralian com­poser Keith Hum­ble which is now housed in the MESS col­lec­tion for pub­lic use in Mel­bourne. It com­prised, among other things, a Syn­thi A, VCS3mk2, ran­dom volt­age gen­er­a­tor, pitch to volt­age con­verter and 8 oc­tave fil­ter bank. I ba­si­cally learnt ana­log syn­the­sis from the EMS man­u­als and, as a re­sult, I still find the pin ma­trix the most in­tu­itive method of patch­ing synths! I love these ma­chines. I love the way that each stage can be over­driven so beau­ti­fully. No other ma­chine sat­u­rates quite as per­fectly as the EMS.

https://robin­fox.com.au/

10. Bernard Fil­ipetti – A&T bel­gian mix 1 (06:34)
An em­blem­atic fig­ure of the French al­ter­na­tive scene of the 70s and 80s, Bernard Fil­ipetti has long heated the cir­cuits of his ana­log syn­the­siz­ers within the Cami­zole group or his solo project Art & Tech­nique.
Raw, in­dus­trial, un­com­pro­mis­ing.

The first time I saw a Syn­thi was when Do­minique Gri­maud bought one … 10,000 francs in 1974 (ap­prox. 1500 euros). At the time, I was play­ing key­board, organ while Do­minique was mak­ing lit­tle noises…
The sec­ond time was at the Red Fes­ti­val in Pan­tin at the slaugh­ter­houses in Oc­to­ber 1975; There was a French duo Atom Crys­tal play­ing with 2 syn­this and be­tween them a Tand­berg tape recorder for the echo… They were play­ing sit­ting on the floor.
In 1979 I switched from key­boards to syn­the­siz­ers. MS 20 MS 50 B.A.R PS 3300… tape echo… In 1981 I bought a second-​hand Syn­thi which was un­sta­ble and half-​broken… To­wards the end of the 80’s, I started to re­ally take an in­ter­est in synths, I had it brought into shape sta­bil­ity ac­cu­racy etc.
With the Indus wave of the 90s I started to in­te­grate synths into my music. Today I have 2 to­tally mod­i­fied CV / GATE
The way I use them today is a far cry from what we did with them in the 70s. The charm of this IN­STRU­MENT are the some­times bru­tal re­ac­tions to a small change in vol­ume. The sound of the synth is very thick “Un­sta­ble” fluc­tu­at­ing but soft vi­o­lent charmer in short like love …

11. Do­minique Gri­maud & Véronique Vil­het – Dites le avec des Floors (02:13)
Véronique Vil­het and Do­minique Gri­maud are vet­er­ans of the French un­der­ground who ap­peared in the artis­tic and counter-​cultural fer­ment that fol­lowed May 68. Their mu­si­cal ad­ven­tures and mis­ad­ven­tures have taken them from the Avi­gnon Fes­ti­val to Cara­cas, from the Baal­bek Fes­ti­val to the Music Build­ing in New York, via the charts of the New Mu­si­cal Ex­press.
Both of them fol­lowed the by­ways of self-​production, but they also fre­quented some Chicago la­bels and even Bar­clay. Four decades later the duo per­forms mostly out­side the of­fi­cial cir­cuits, in self-​managed venues, squats and the stores of the new gen­er­a­tion of record shops.

12. Vin­cent Ep­play – Men­tal­iste Mémo (02:22)
Vin­cent Ep­play is a French sound artist.
Since the be­gin­ning of the 90s, he has been de­vel­op­ing an un­clas­si­fi­able artis­tic work ex­plor­ing the in­ter­ac­tion be­tween the sound process and vi­sual forms. He began to de­velop a par­tic­u­lar and forward-​looking ap­proach to elec­tronic music, cen­tred on in­tu­itive com­po­si­tion, learn­ings from musique concrète and a po­etic/hu­mor­ous re-​appropriation of vin­tage sound/film ma­te­ri­als.

I first got ex­posed to the Syn­thi A through two major records of the 60s and 70s:
« White Noise, An Elec­tric Storm » by David Vorhaus with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Delia Der­byshire – which brought me to know the pro­duc­tions of The BBC Ra­dio­phonic Work­shop.
« Video-​Adventures Music for boys and girls » by Do­minique Gri­maud & Monique Alba – an im­pos­si­ble to clas­sify record re­leased on the fa­mous Eng­lish label Rec­om­mended Records.
Fol­low­ing these disco­graphic dis­cov­er­ies, a friend with whom I started my first ex­per­i­men­ta­tions and sound scram­bling lent me a VCS3… A first ini­ti­a­tion with this evil and fan­tas­tic ma­chine gave me the virus.
A few years later, my meet­ing with the com­poser Bernard Parmegiani who in­vited me one af­ter­noon in his stu­dio in Saint-​Rémy-de-Provence, and gave me for a sym­bolic sum a whole set of “sound ma­chines” as they called them, among which a Syn­thi AKS with its EMS se­quencer key­board – opened again to me “the doors of un­heard sounds”!
This syn­the­sizer re­mains my fa­vorite ma­chine, a most un­tam­able in­stru­ment, with sur­pris­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties and sounds.

13. Head­bog­gle – Bacon Groove (02:45)
San Fran­cisco’s Derek Gedale­cia has boasted over 100 re­leases in his twenty plus years com­pos­ing and re­leas­ing music that spans from dense lay­ered noise, syn­the­sizer based works, avant neo-​classical, to giddy elec­tron­ics to rag­time piano… He is invit­ing to ex­plore alien ter­ri­to­ries whether play­ing a Buchla Music Easel, a Syn­thi AKS and every in­stru­ment or pro­duc­tion tech­nique at his dis­posal.

After spend­ing many years study­ing clas­si­cal and rag­time piano, and then rock gui­tar in col­lege bands, I was able to ac­quire an EMS Syn­thi A about 15 years ago.
This was the same year I ac­quired my first Eu­ro­rack (Doepfer) setup. The lay­out and sounds from the Syn­thi were so mind-​expanding and en­tic­ing that my Doepfer sys­tem col­lected dust for a few years. I learned sig­nal flow and mod­u­lar syn­the­sis first on the Syn­thi and then went on to re­fine that knowl­edge with other mod­u­lar sys­tems.
I have re­leased many record­ings and they al­most al­ways fea­ture the Syn­thi A some­where. Cheers to EMS for their de­signs and es­pe­cially the Syn­thi which has and will bring me years of dis­cov­ery and en­joy­ment

14. Mathew Wat­son – 09082014 (01:02)
Mat Wat­son is a Naarm (Mel­bourne) based artist fo­cussed on the ex­plo­ration of elec­tronic sound and the drum set in many forms and under many guises. He has an ex­ten­sive and di­verse list of past and on­go­ing artist col­lab­o­ra­tions, and has per­formed at arts fes­ti­vals, music fes­ti­vals, gal­leries and the­atres across Aus­tralia, Japan and the USA.
He has re­leased solo and col­lab­o­ra­tive al­bums ex­plor­ing a vast spec­trum of sound, style and form, moon­lighted with Bronx leg­ends E.S.G, and col­lab­o­rated on sev­eral large scale Bore­doms BoaD­rum per­for­mances in Aus­tralia and Japan. He wrote, arranged and con­ducted Mag­ni­tudes – a work for 40 syn­the­sis­ers per­formed by the MESS Syn­the­siser Or­ches­tra at the Sid­ney Myer Music Bowl in Mel­bourne and most re­cently, cu­rated and pro­duced HEAVY SPEC­TRA, an in­di­vid­ual audio vi­sual work, and event for ex­per­i­men­tal artists work­ing with sonic den­si­ties at Max Watts in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia.

My first con­tact with EMS was via Aus­tralian music leg­end Ollie Olsen. I met Ollie through a mu­tual friend back in Jan­u­ary of 2006 and we quickly be­came great friends and started to make music to­gether. Ollie’s sen­si­bil­ity and ap­proach to elec­tronic sound had a pro­found im­pact on my own ap­proach to elec­tronic sound.
Work­ing with Ollie at that time sig­nalled a huge shift in focus as I moved away from pri­mar­ily play­ing in bands, to im­mers­ing my­self in a highly per­sonal sound world, with a focus on ex­plor­ing process and art. I often think of this per­sonal sound world as a re­sponse to a wak­ing life, or com­ing from some type of dream state. Those are the sounds and ideas that con­tinue to in­spire and ex­cite me and the Syn­thi is the ma­chine that al­lows me to ex­plore those cu­riosi­ties and re­flec­tions.
I find the Aks can go from bru­tal to frag­ile in a breath and I love ex­plor­ing all of it. The big rev­e­la­tion was learn­ing to let go, ac­cept and lis­ten, not to bend it to my will. Em­brac­ing the Syn­thi’s nu­anced be­hav­iour al­lowed for those beau­ti­ful syn­chro­nous mo­ments of an inner world man­i­fest­ing through the in­stru­ment. Dis­cov­er­ing em­pa­thy for the ma­chine was a lib­er­at­ing mo­ment. Each ses­sion I spend with the Aks yields new ideas, which lead to new sonic ex­pe­ri­ences and ul­ti­mately in­spires a sense that time is stand­ing still.

15. Willy Van Buggen­hout – Mod­u­lar (20:19)
Willy Van Buggen­hout (16/04/1954) stud­ied elec­tronic music in Brus­sels with André Stordeur (stu­dio synthèse) and Peter Beyls (Luca). He’s been play­ing EMS Syn­thi AKS for nearly half a cen­tury and been a mem­ber of sev­eral group-​improvisations, work­ing with many fine mu­si­cians and or­ches­tras from all over the World !

When Philippe asked me for his ITA­TIOM on EMS, my Robin Wood cus­tome de­signed EMS VCS3 Mk1 had just ar­rived! And due to Coro­n­avirus con­fine­ment mea­sures I could not have ac­cess to my Brus­sels stu­dio equip­ment or im­pro­vise with other mu­si­cians as I usu­ally like to do. So – I made this piece es­pe­cially for Philippe’s ITA­TIOM on EMS ex­clu­sively play­ing this brand new VCS3 Mk1 . (As extra’s the VCS3 has VC osc shape, VC fil­ter re­sponse and un­slew, and an en­ve­lope fol­lower).
Since my Teacher André Stordeur died last year – of corona-​ not so long after we hon­ored him by giv­ing the André Stordeur Trib­ute at the An­ten­nafes­ti­val (Evergem-​Ghent). I would like to ded­i­cate “Mod­u­lar” to his mem­ory.