"Shortly after selling his company to CBS in the late 60s, Buchla was tasked with designing a less expensive system to market to schools and universities. EMS had just released the VCS3 and it had started to overtake that market due to low cost and high functional density. Don seemed more interested in researching computer control and had started devising his 500 series system which CBS was not willing to fund. In early 1970 to meet contract requirements 6 prototypes of the 'System 3' were delivered to CBS before Buchla and CBS parted ways."
Pre-order on black and clear vinyl at IMPREC, and digital at BandCamp.
"Wonderful to hear such beautiful, billowing sound clouds emanating from the legendary Touché." - David Rosenboom
Shasta Cults is the musical project of Canadian electronics technician Richard Smith. For almost two decades, Smith was the official Buchla & Associates repair tech for studios, collectors, and musicians around the world. Having worked for artists such as Aphex Twin, Suzanne Ciani, Morton Subotnick and institutions such as The Library of Congress and Mills College, Smith has had the unique experience of restoring and interacting with nearly every model of Buchla instrument constructed over the past 50 years.
Recorded over the span of three months in the fall of 2018, this album was programmed using the only fully functional Buchla Touché. Developed in the early 1980s with hardware by Donald Buchla and software programmed by musician David Rosenboom, the Touché features waveforms generated internally by twenty-four digital oscillators and uses frequency modulation along with sophisticated digital and analog signal processing to produce complex timbres.
This LP is a continuation of themes first heard on Configurations, with more consideration given to the generation and recording of the pieces. The album's six tracks – a collection of sonic experiments and hypnotic drones – span almost forty minutes, showcasing not only the incredible fidelity of the Touché but also Smith's evolution as an audio engineer.
Put on some headphones, find a comfortable chair, and let this LP transport you to the mystifying southern cascades of Siskiyou County.
RIYL: ELEH, Sarah Davachi
released November 13, 2019
Programmed, recorded and mastered by Shasta Cults - Fall 2018
Artwork by IMPREC
This appears to the previous location of the NMC (National Music Center) Calgary. The EMS SYNTHI 100 now appears to be in be Live Room B at at the current location. See: https://www.studiobell.ca/living-collection.
"Recorded in 2017, employing the processes of non-linear waveshaping, frequency modulation and feedback, Configurations consists of eight programs captured live to multitrack using a rare, fully functional Buchla 700 digital-hybrid instrument designed in the late 1980s. Whereas previously released works made with the 700 almost always consist in simple manipulations of the single factory preset, this album delves deep into the instrument's rich sonic vocabulary to offer the listener a more elaborate demonstration of the system's capabilities."
A ship sinks beneath the silver mirror of the sea-top, temple gongs ring through an empty valley, industrial machinery sputters, heaves, lurches forward, stops, falls apart… These sound events may be the most acute musical referents of Shasta Cults, the music project of Canadian synthesizer technician Richard Smith. Using obsolete electronics, Shasta Cults pursues the true sound of the instrument, freed from the tyranny of emulation, no strings/woodwinds/piano presets. Shasta Cults' compositions seek out unchartered territories where sustained drones may swell, build, or evaporate; where timbres collide, amplitudes fluctuate, sounds emerge, raw, primeval, new hybrids form from the collisions of electricity and frequency. There may be stretches of silence punctuated by bell-ish tones from futures unheard; a sequence of notes may verge upon melody before mutating into ugly moans, the sonic equivalent of funhouse mirrors. But the end result is far more than chance operation, sporadic sound fields, or indeterminate academic exercise. Instead, Shasta Cults brings us back to nature, back to the possibilities inherent in nature, to the truth of evolution, stitching both musical tones, and the sounds of 21st century living into a form which is as real, as imponderable, and as ungovernable as our own memories.
Recorded in 2017, employing the processes of non-linear waveshaping, frequency modulation and feedback, Configurations consists of eight programs captured live to multitrack using a rare, fully functional Buchla 700 digital-hybrid instrument designed in the late 1980s. Whereas previously released works made with the 700 almost always consist in simple manipulations of the single factory preset, this album delves deep into the instrument's rich sonic vocabulary to offer the listener a more elaborate demonstration of the system's capabilities.
Presented here in limited quantities this release is intended as a high fidelity audio archive of this obscure musical artifact."
All Buchla 700 and effects.. a 266 controlling filter cutoff on one track.
This is the first video ever featuring the graphic output of the Buchla Touché waveshapes, from currently the ONLY Buchla Touché with the ability to display them. This is as rare as it gets in the synth world.
"The Touché uses non linear wave shaping for timbre generation, same as the 360, 400, 700 and 259e (a distortion based wave shaping technique). It has 9 native wave shape tables (6 user programmable). A sine wave is generated digitally and then sent through the selected table. Timbre is effected by the amplitude of the sine wave, so it accents high and low harmonics more, based on sine wave level. Timbre modulation was Don Buchla's wave shape technique. This particular Touché is a development model that will display wave shapes, as well as allow you can program your own… if you can figure it out." See this page for some technical info on Waveshaping from ussb.edu.
The following was composed on the Touché using sine waves.
"1981 Buchla 300 Electric Music Box. A quick demo of the process of loading Patch IV, setting up the 221 controller for 300 control, and a walk through the various programming screens."
"This particular Buchla is from 1981, one of the last modular systems Don would have made before he introduced the 200e 20 years later."
No audio, but that is a rare bit of synthesizer history right there. You can find the Buchla 300 featured in the following posts in order of appearance:
Composed, performed, recorded, and mixed by Sarah Davachi
Mastered by James Plotkin
Layout by Konrad Jandavs
Special thanks to Richard Smith
Vergers is Davachi's third full-length release following Barons Court (2015, Students of Decay) and Dominions (2016, JAZ Records), and her second appearance with Important Records following 2014's August Harp cassette on the Cassauna imprint. In this work, she meditates on a single electronic instrument, the EMS Synthi 100 synthesizer, while also weaving sparse acoustic elements – her own voice and violin – into a series of three long-form, muted gestures.
Elements of distance and alienation are certainly at play in the textural quality of these compositions, a feeling that is further defined by track titles that reference the spirit world and an album title that calls to mind the solitary tasks of the church orderly. The record opens with the aptly titled, 'gentle so gentle', a side-long movement that harkens the glacial character of Davachi's previous efforts. 'ghosts and all' and 'in staying' suggest a more disjointed path, with the latter culminating in a subtly dissonant dirge that leaves little absolve between the organic, the artificial, and the impermanent.
released November 25, 2016"
Sarah Davachi - Vergers Promo Published on Nov 29, 2016 Shasta Cults
In the video above Sarah Davachi plays with a SYNTHI AKS.
"Sarah Davachi (b. 1987, Calgary, Canada) holds a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of Calgary, and a master's degree in electronic music and recording media from Mills College in Oakland, California. As a composer of electronic and electroacoustic music, Davachi is engaged in practices of analog synthesis, psychoacoustic manipulations, and studio composition. Davachi's compositional projects are primarily concerned with disclosing the antiquated instruments and forgotten sonics of a bygone era in analog synthesis, with concurrent treatment of acoustic sources – particularly organs, strings, and woodwinds – often involving de-familiarization through processing. Her work considers the experience of enveloped sonic dwelling, utilizing extended durations, gradual transformations in texture, and simple harmonic structures that emphasize variations in overtone complexity and natural phasing patterns.
Her work as a music researcher concerns aspects of experimentalism, organology and archival study, and phenomenology and perception, and has been published and presented within Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom..." You can find her full bio here.
