I hadn't really planned to make this video. But most of northern Europe has been surprised by an abundance of snow a few days before christmas. So I decided to put on the silver moon boots and make a last minute christmas video in the snow covered town.
This song was originally recorded by Danish rock band Gasolin' in the mid 70's. Here I play it on the Elka X-1000 organ."
I try to keep MATRIXSYNTH about the gear and MATRIXSYNTH-C about the music, but I'm making the exception with holiday posts. Syndae has a number of tracks up featuring Christmas tracks from various synth artists including Suzanne Ciani. You can find them here.
"It' christmas time again, that season where funny white bearded guys walk along bright enlightened roads in the cities laughing a loud "Ho Ho Ho". And, thus, it's time for a new special christmas edition of your favourite podcast on fine electronic music. Christmas songs and carols, written or interpreted by well known artists from the electronic and new age music scene. Enjoy the wonderful and devotional sounds by Erik Wollo, Geigertek, Ilja, Jack Judson, John Dyson,Megatone, Michael Shipway, Picture Palace music ft. Amethyste, Ron Boots, Suzanne Ciani, Synth.NL, Terje Winther, and Voynich/Strellis."
"I removed and retained the RCA jack board and installed a 1/4" output and a 1/4" input that feeds an external audio source to the filter. The old jack board will be included with the purchase of the synth. I demonstrate the filter modification using an Epiphone Les Paul in the Youtube video embedded below. This feature really enhances the capability of the synth."
"It was in 1970 that Hideki Matsutake was grabbed by the playback of Walter Carlos's Switched-On Bach using a synthesizer and a computer at the American Pavilion of Expo '70 in Osaka. In June the following year at his age of 19, he makes his first step into professional music as an apprentice to Isao Tomita, providing him the chance of operating one of the few Moog III-P sythesizer units existing in Japan.
Establishing a company of his own named Musical Advertising Corporation (MAC) in 1974, his involvements with new music artists such as Yoshitaka Minami and Akiko Yano started. In 1978 he participated in the production of Ryuichi Sakamoto's first album, Thousand Knives. In the following years between 1978 to 1982, Matsutake served Yellow Magic Orchestra as its sound programmer, eventually to become known as "the fourth member" of the band. He also led sequencing work for numerous Technopop albums by other artists, especially at the beginning of the 80s.
In 1981, Matsutake formed "Logic System" with Makoto Irie, with whom he toured to perform in other Asian countries several times. The unit has released 10 albums to date, 2 out of them released in 8 countries. Its latest album is Tansu Matrix, released in 2008.
Matsutake is currently Chairman of Japan Synthesizer Programmers Association (JSPA).