MATRIXSYNTH: Roxy Music Do the Strand


Monday, August 04, 2008

Roxy Music Do the Strand


YouTube via thomasdaniel.

sent my way via Ben of the excellent Bad Science

Synth content: What the heck is Brian Eno playing?! I'm guessing it's an EMS synth, but what?
"Roxy Music 'Do' the Strand on The Old Grey Whistle Test"

7 comments:

  1. It's an EMS VCS3 aka 'the Putney'.

    ReplyDelete
  2. whoops; no it's not...I've seen a dvd of roxy on the old grey whistle test with eno on the putney but this isn't the same...sorry; spoke too soon!

    ReplyDelete
  3. it looks to me like an Ems Synthi A with a cricklewood keyboard and one of their pitch to voltage converters turned sideways in some sort of portable flight case...I could be wrong, but that's what I think it is...although, it may just be me, but I hear nothing coming from it. Lip synched perhaps from the LP?

    ReplyDelete
  4. The side sections on top look like part of the EMS Synthi 100.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Here's a proto-Utopia video featuring M. Frog Labat playing a similar VCS3 weirdness machine:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4vmlB7L6mQ

    Along with Todd on Clapton's old SG...

    ReplyDelete
  6. Cool. I actually put that video up here as well. It's a couple of SYNTHIs in a custom enclosure. Now that I look at it, it is possible that he has two SYNTHIs inverted so the patch panels are aligned in the top center middle for the Do the Strand performance. I thought it could be the SYNTHI 100 as well, but the knob layout and center piece is different. Two SYNTHIs rotated in a custom case looks more like it.

    ReplyDelete
  7. It might not be EMS after all: Here is Robin Wood´s (EMS) reply when I asked him exactly the same question some time ago:

    "The synthesizer Eno is playing on 'Do the Strand' (Old Grey Whistle Test) is an enigma to me. This was not made by EMS but looks like it may have a matrix in the middle. Someone once told me this instrument was owned by Phil Manzanera.
    The 'Virginia Plain' (Top of the Pops) performance is done with a regular VCS3 and DK keyboard."

    ReplyDelete

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