Atomic Shadow wrote in to let me know that one of his favorite artists, Else Marie Pade, has passed away at the age of 91. Many of you should recognize her name from previous posts here on MATRIXSYNTH. She was an early electronic music artist, one of the pioneers of Musique Concrete. For those not familiar with the term, via Wikipedia: "Musique concrète (French pronunciation: [myzik kɔ̃.kʁɛt], meaning 'concrete music') is a genre of electroacoustic music that is made in part from acousmatic sound, or sound without an apparent originating cause. It can feature sounds derived from recordings of musical instruments, the human voice, and the natural environment as well as those created using synthesizers and computer-based digital signal processing."
Wikipedia on Pade: "Pade was born in Aarhus, and was educated as a pianist at the Kongelige Danske Musikkonservatorium (Royal Danish Academy of Music) in Copenhagen. She studied composition first with Vagn Holmboe, and later with Jan Maegaard, from whom she learned twelve-tone technique. In 1954, she became the first Danish composer of electronic and concrete music (Bruland 2001). She knew and worked with Pierre Schaeffer and Karlheinz Stockhausen as well as Pierre Boulez.[1]" See the full article for more on her incredible life.
Else Marie Pade - Faust (1962) Published on Oct 18, 2013 Mors Mea
Prolog I Himlen 0:00
Faust Og Mefisto 4:21
Faust Og Magrethes Kærlighed 11:22
Magrethes Fordømmelse 18:46
Rejsen Til Bloksbjerg Og Valborgsnat 23:03
"I first met Dennis whilst I was in the WORM studio on an artist residency in 2017. The WORM studio is like a geological trip through electronic music's history but I was about to travel even further back. Strange ghostly tones emanated from the old vocal booth next door, it was this space that Dennis had filled with mid 20th century audio test equipment, going back to the roots of audio electronic experiments before commercially available instruments from Moog or Roland, before keyboards, back to Stockhausen, Else Marie Pade, Daphne Oram, Raymond Scott and the like. Why now? is this the logical conclusion of Mark Fisher's cultural hauntology? do we end up back at the source? the sound of past futures? For Dennis it seemed more a way to dodge the hipsters, and invite collaboration.
Dennis and I had a friend in common Steve Grimley-Taylor, a lover of all things electronic and sound related (founder of Thonk.co.uk). When I expressed the idea of making a film about Dennis, Richard Foster from WORM kindly agreed to let us. This is a short film about Dennis, his journey and his installation.
Steve Guy Hellier 2018"
Vintage oscillators, filters, and other lab equipment. Some classic synths come in after the six minute mark.
"'Gloria' from the upcoming 2XLP 'Forse 1' by Alessandro Cortini. Catalog# IMPREC373
Deluxe double LP pressed in an edition of 500 copies. First 100 copies pressed are on red vinyl.
Alessandro Cortini (Nine Inch Nails/How To Destroy Angels) composed the Forse series using a Buchla Music Easel. Forse, meaning 'maybe' In Italian, is a series of 3 double LP releases Cortini recorded for Important to release in 2013."
And a podcast featuring a second track titled "Resta":
Imprec Podcast#4: "Summer Releases 2013"
"Podcast #4 with Klaus features new and upcoming Summer releases. This podcast also debuts the "Three Questions..." segment, providing artists a space to discuss their work in further detail. This weeks guest is Duane Pitre and he will be discussing his new album 'Bridges'.
Tracklist:
Jozef Van Wissem- "Where You Lived And What You Lived For"
Alessandro Cortini- "Resta"
Master Musicians Of Bukkake- "Circular Ruins"
Three Questions with Duane Pitre
Duane Pitre- "Bridges: Earth/Ember/Serpent (excerpt)"
Else Marie Pade & Jakob Kirkegaard- "Cirrocumulus Cirrostratus Stratus (excerpt)"
TOTAL LIFE- "Radiator I (excerpt)"
Nadja & Vampillia- "Aurora"
Acid Mothers Temple- "Babe, I'm Gonna Reave You"
PITRELEH- (excerpt from side A)
*Background music throughout podcast is an excerpt from the forthcoming album "Feel Free Live At Cafe OTO" by Duane Pitre"
This post is a little late going up, but better late than never! :)
I'm going to keep this one a little shorter than usual as I am aware I have a tendency to get a little too wordy at times.
First of all, I want to thank you all for taking a little bit of your day out to visit the site. I want to thank those that contribute to the synthesizer scene and actually give me something to post! Finally, I want to give a HUGE THANK YOU to all the individual supporters of the site, and the sponsors you see on the right and above! Your support literally makes the site as it is possible!
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And a look back at 2016...
Update: I forgot to mention, we had a total of 13,679 posts in 2016! Update2: also, as always take a look back at the exclusive label for the most interesting bits of synth history.
First a look back at some of the people (and companions) we lost last in 2016.
2016 was rough. On the maker front we lost Don Buchla, who along with Bob Moog, was undoubtably the creator of the synthesizer as we know it today. We lost Ray Wilson of Music From Outer Space, arguably one of the greatest, if not the greatest, influencers in synth DIY. Many makers out there started with his projects.
On the musician front we lost some of synths' greats including Keith Emerson, Isao Tomita, Bernie Worrell and Jean-Jacques Perrey. We lost a couple of pioneers of electronic music as well, namely Jean-Claude Risset and Pauline Oliveros.
Note the above are only those I could tie in with synths. Two artists you might notice missing are Prince and George Michael. Both deserve a mention. Prince I could have tied in with an Oberheim connection. I still remember lusting after an OB-8 after seeing his videos in the 80s.
RIP posts are the hardest to write. Not only because you are mourning the loss of someone great, but because you know your post will never be good enough.
As for new gear in 2016, you might have noticed all of the "New in 2016" labels that have gone up in posts throughout the year. I created the labels back in 2015 as a means to keep track of all the new gear coming in. I also thought it would be a quick, easy, and interesting way to get total counts of everything at the end of the year. Here are the numbers (links will take you to posts for each):
Note, as with anything, labels can be a little tricky. Sometimes there will be overlap, sometimes items will be announced one year, but released in another if at all, and of course, if I'm not made aware of an item it gets missed. You'll likely see a few items from 2015 in the 2016 list for that reason. I also found it can be difficult to categorize certain items. Drum machines for example get bucketed under synths, but I think for 2017 I will create a new label for them and just use both.
All that said, if you look at the numbers above we had 753 new products/items appear on the site last year. Always of notable interest were the items from vintage synth history that were never featured on the site before. Last year there were 21. An interesting side note is that matches the 21 we had the year prior in 2015. I won't go into any in detail as you can take a look at the label yourself and as I mentioned above I'm going to try and keep this post short. You can check out any of the categories above. Also worth noting is there were 101 new makers to the site in 2016! Check them out via the link above.
I was never one for top 10 lists, as although they can be fun, I'm a firm believer that all gear has something to offer. It's up to us to use the gear and find out. That said I do think it's worth mentioning some of the major synth releases this year. Not only does it gives us a quick look at what the major players released but it also lets us see when they were released in the year. The following is a quick list:
"The Women of ELECTRONIC MUSIC! From the 30's to the 70's!
Before synthesizers, electronic music was honed the hard way in universities, by splicing tape loops, distorting sounds, endless dubbing, and blind instinct. Here are the timeless women of future music who created our present...
Since the 1930's, CLARA ROCKMORE was the master of the notoriously difficult Theremin, and later championed by synthesizer-creator Bob Moog; LOUIS & BEBE BARRON created the first all-electronic score for the film "FORBIDDEN PLANET" (1957), using oscillated sounds and tape loops; //STUDIO d'ASSAI (Paris): Danish ELSE MARIE PADE studied under musique concrete founder Pierre Schaeffer, becoming a noted composer; ELAINE RADIGUE used the Buchla and Arp synthesizers in her work, heavily influenced by Buddhist meditation, and records now with laptop improv group The Lappetites; MICHELE BOKANOWSKI has composed for film, televison, and theatre; //BBC RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP (London): ...was created and directed by DAPHNE ORAM, inventor and sonic pioneer; she was followed by DELIA DERBYSHIRE, who brought Ron Grainer's "DR. WHO" theme to brilliant, eerie life with her studio wizardry; MADDALENA FAGANDINI co-created the proto-Techno single "Time Beat/ Waltz In Space" (1962) with young producer George Martin under the alias 'Ray Cathode'; GLYNIS JONES produced some of the Workshop's classic albums like "Out Of This World" (1976); ELIZABETH PARKER scored many BBC shows including "BLAKE'S 7", and was the person to see the Workshop out in its 1998 finale; //Fluxus performance artist YOKO ONO expanded John Lennon's mind and range with electronic music, musique concrete, and 'happening' experiments; //COLUMBIA-PRINCETON ELECTRONIC MUSIC CENTER (New York): A premiere focal point for international composers since the 50's, including composer and Associate Director PRIL SMILEY; ALICE SHIELDS combined her operatic voice and poetry with the revolutionary synthesizers of the late 60's and early 70's; teacher DARIA SEMEGEN wrote traditional classical music as well as electronic; WENDY CARLOS had massive mainstream success with the all-synth "Switched On Bach", before writing groundbreaking film scores for "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE," "THE SHINING" and 'TRON"; nearby at Bell Labs, LAURIE SPIEGEL spearheaded computer graphics and software design as well as new music; maverick ANNETTE PEACOCK went from Free Jazz piano to the first synthesizers, threading her early 70's raps and rock with freeform electronics; //Argentinian BEATRIZ FERREYRA, who also studied with Schaeffer, is an esteemed composer and teacher; //SAN FRANCISCO TAPE MUSIC CENTER: The crucial West Coast electronic center, including Morton Subotnick, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and PAULINE OLIVEROS in 1962; it moved across the Bay to become the... //CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY MUSIC (Mills College, Oakland, CA): Oliveros was the first Director, perfecting her signal processing system for live performance; student and now Co-Director MAGGI PAYNE trailblazed video imagery and record engineering along with her music; alum CYNTHIA WEBSTER played in the early synth band Triode, founded electro mag SYNAPSE, and now runs Cyndustries designing software for electronic music, such as the Zeroscillator.
Their innovations led to Progressiv Rock, Krautrock, New Wave, Coldwave, Darkwave, Electro Funk, Industrial, Techno, and Electroclash. Their fringe future music is now the soundtrack of today.
See also:
ALICE SHIELDS -"STUDY FOR VOICE AND TAPE" (1968)
"Sound, the infinite frontier! Science had chopped the world into atoms, components from which to build. Modern art deconstructed reality, reconstructing our perceptions of it. And the first Electronic Music likewise took apart sound and turned it inside out for new compositions. Vladimir Ussachevsky founded the first Electronic Music Center jointly with Columbian and Princeton universities in 1952. He brought in avant composers from countries worldwide with new perspectives and radical expirementation. This included women like Daria Semegen, Pril Smiley, Wendy Carlos, and Alice Shields. In the 50's, Electronic Music was distortions of recordings. Sounds on a tape recorder would be manipulated by feedback, repeated spliced loops, overlapping tracks with multiple recorders, and using oscillators and reverb to sculpt the tempo, tone, or texture. This prevailed in continually advancing ways well through the 1960s. Alice used these techniques in creating this composition. A gifted mezzesoprano, she first sang a poem she'd written. She accompanied this with the first analog Buchla synthesizer, a rare and recent device only beginning to draw the attention of the hippest pop musicians. She then manipulated pitch and speed in textural patterns to supplement the freeform song. This was the cutting edge music of the future, usually heard only in academic circles. But it made its way into film soundtracks (from FORBIDDEN PLANET to Wendy Carlos' A CLOCKWORK ORANGE), Fusion Jazz (Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock), Progressive Rock (from George Harrison's 1969 ELECTRONIC SOUND to Krautrock and Kraftwerk), Funk (Stevie Wonder's T.O.N.T.O., Bernie Worrell), on to the synthesizer explosion of New Wave, then Hip Hop (from Bambaataa's ElectroFunk to Public Enemy's radical sculptures of noise), Industrial (synthetic abrasion), and the Electronica music of today; as such, Alice Shields is a godmother of Le Tigre, Peaches, Chicks On Speed, Lesbians On Ecstasy, and Ladytron, to name a few."
MALARIA! -"Your Turn To Run" (1982)
"The Women of 80's ELECTRO! Coldwave, Darkwave, Synthpop, Industrial!
As synthesizers got smaller and cheaper through the 70's, 'future music' went from acedemia to the street. Punk, PostPunk, Funk, and HipHop artists brought attitude and new styles into the pop vocabulary throughout the 80's that forged the music of today. Here are many women from the first Electro rock era..."
I want to start by thanking everyone that comes to MATRIXSYNTH and helps make it what it is - the readers, the supporters, and of course all the sponsors on the right.
THANK YOU and have a GREAT 2015!!!
This site is a labor of love and a ton of work. This site is ultimately meant to be an testament to everything synth in the making. We have over nine years of daily synth history captured here, 119,983 published posts. I can't wait to see what the future brings us in 2015!
That said, here are a few interesting bits from 2014 in the longest post of the year. ;)
