Synth.nl on TDFZ Radio Dream of Peace Special

I'm happy to inform you all about a very nice radio show that is online for you to enjoy on the Tangerine Dream Fan Zone Radio hosted by Chris Newman. The show is called the 'Dream of Peace' special and it is all about promoting the peace and how music unites all of us in that. I made a contribution to this show with two nice surprises. Chris plays a very unusual track from me called 'WarGames'. I made this track just for fun in the past and it won't be released anywhere I guess, but it fitted in this show. I announce it myself in this show and tell a bit about the movie that this track was inspired me on. This movie has been very important for me and you can read in my biography why that is. The other surprise is the music that is played behind the announcement. This is actually some rough material from a track I'm working on for my new 'OceanoGraphy' album. So be sure to check this out. The show can be found on this website:

http://www.soundfuturesdirect.com/blog/

The show is in two parts since it is quite long. I'm in the first part by the way. Here are the direct download links for the two parts:

Part 1: http://soundfuturesdirect.com/TDFZ_Podcasts/TDFZ_Dream_Of_Peace_Special_Part_One.mp3

Part 2: http://soundfuturesdirect.com/TDFZ_Podcasts/TDFZ_Dream_Of_Peace_Special_Part_Two.mp3

Have fun! I hope you like it.

Apollo Studio Acoustics (Part 10)

As posted before I'm still testing different monitors in my studio. I liked the sound ot the 8050's a lot, but I saw that they also have an all digital system with build in room correction (in the speakers itself). So I decided to give them a go as well. I'm currently testing the Genelec 8250's that look exactly the same, but are from the DSP powered series from Genelec, also the sub was exchanged for a 7270A and that is also the digital (DSP) version of the 7070A that I had before. It comes with a piece of software that you have to install on your PC, a special audio interface that connects with USB to your PC that also works as a network interface for the speakers and a specially calibrated test microphone that also connects to this box.

The first thing you have to do is install the software on your PC and then connect the audio interface so that the drivers are automaticly installed. This all went very smoothly. Then you connect the speakers with UTP CAT5 cable (same you use for network) to each other. You just make a big loop going from the audio box to the sub woofer and from there to the left speaker and then to the right. They all have a network in and through for that. Then when you fire up the speakers they instantly are recognized. You will also have to hook up audio after that. The sub again acts as a central hub and only accepts AES/SBU for input signals. So I put a converter on the SPDIF output I used for my monitoring. Then again you just loop to the other speakers. And in the software you appoint which speaker is left and right. A very weird way to connect speakers if you think about it, but it works just fine :)

After that you set up the microphone onto your primary listening position and start a wizard in the software that takes you through the room correction process. Speaker by speaker it does a number of tests to determine the distance, and after that a frequency sweep to measure the room response. What is very remarkable by the way is that you have to enter the serial number of the microphone. All microphones are calibrated by Genelec in a special room and a compensation is done in the software for each individual microphone. On the left you can see what was measured and compensated in the EQ of the particular speaker. I'm still experimenting around, so this wont be the final settings. But you can see how much parameters are available and also you can adjust them later manually to your own taste. As you can see it did some corrections in the low end that are in line with the measurements Toine did from Sound Scapes.

After the main speakers also a series of tests is done for the sub woofer. The most important one is a phase test. Usually the biggest problem using a sub woofer is to get it in perfect phase alignment with your other speakers. Well this is just a dream come true then. As you can see in the picture also the sub woofer has a build in equalizer and it is really bad to see how much had to be compensated here. Again proving that we need to do more on the acoustics of the room itself. But the end result is stunning. It really sounds terrific. So balanced it is almost unbelievable so I can say that the system actually works :) And it really does make the overall sound way better than the already good sounding 8050's I had. I wouldn't want to go back at this point. Actually I'm so satisfied with the result and the flexibility of this system that I think I'm going to go for it. I love the concept and sound of it. I wouldn't know what could possibly impress me more than this. Besides that it allows me to start working on my mixes already before the final room treatment is done. I like that idea as well :)

Synth.nl at E-day 11th of April

I will be at the E-day festival in Oirschot (The Netherlands) tomorrow. It is a very nice electronic music festival that is organized by my record label Groove Unlimited. I will be present there with a stall so you meet me there and buy my albums there with a nice discount. You can also get them signed there if you want, also if you already own a copy. Just bring it along. There will be some nice performances during the day and there will be a lot of other artists present as well. If you can make it you should come. You can find more information about the festival on this website: http://e-day.groove.nl/

Apollo Studio Acoustics (Part 9)

Last week Toine from Sound Scapes send me the first results of his measurements of the studio. He measured on several positions in the room. Here you see a combined graph of my primary listening position (shown in red) and 1 meter behind that (shown in green). Then you see three green lines. 90 dB is the volume that was send out and the graph shows the room respons. Then the result should be between the 90 and 100 dB lines. As you can see it isn't even that bad. Only in the low end on my primary listening position the are some dips. So far this is consistent with the measurements we took. We only looked at the low end until 200 Hz, so this graph looks different because it shows the whole spectrum.

Here is another graph from a measurement that was taken just before the wall in the back of my studio (at the modular desk). Here you can see also some big peeks and dips. These are the problem frequencies I hear in the room. We also walked around in the room to determine where the standing waves occur. And especially in the very low end we could determine that there was a build up in the corner near by door. We did some sine waves at 25 Hz and the door started resonating very badly and it was immensly loud. The funny this is when I opened the door it was gone. So we determined right away that this would be a good corner to do something extra to dampen these standing waves.

Toine also did some RT60 (dampening) tests like I did with Hanz as well. The first thing Toine noticed is that the test results were quite consistent. He had seen that differently. Apparently due to background noise, but my studio is very quiet so there is no interferance what so ever. Which is a good thing of course. Again in the graph you see the red lines indicating the upper and lower boundaries that the measurements should be between. You see a peak in the high end that should be ignored. Toine told me that is the measurement microphones fault. But you can also see that at 80 Hz there is clearly still a peak. This means it takes too long for these frequencies to die out in the room. The rest lookes actually quite OK. Again confirming our previous findings that we should concentrate on the low end. Toine is now calculating and simulating what has to be done to make things better. I'll update you soon on this.

Roland Jupiter 4

Since I heared that all the Jupiter models from Roland sound so much different from each other I just needed to hear the Jupiter 4 as well. I started bidding on one on E-bay a while ago and I actually won it. It just arrived last week. It looks very different from the Jupiter 6 and 8 as you can see. Especially the knobs on the front are quite unusual. It was designed to put on top of an organ and I happen to have one of those :) So that is exactly where I put it. It is not in perfect condition unfortunately. Some of the preset knobs are stuck. The rest of the electronics seem to work, but it will need some service since I heard at least one voice to be out of tune a bit.

Here is another view of it. As you can see it just barely fitted under the synth mount above it. Well actually at first it didn't but I removed the rubber feet that were on the bottom. As you can see the Jupiter 4 also has wooden sides where the other jupiters have metal sides. OK now to the sound, because that is what a synthesizer is all about right :) And indeed it sounds way different. It is quite aggressive and thick where the Jupiter 8 is more creamy and soft and the Jupiter 6 is cleaner and clearer. Especially in ensemble mode with chorus on it sounds fantastic. I'm also checking now how to get midi on it. All in all a very nice addition to my collection.

New Ikea Furniture

Last week I have been very busy building a lot of Ikea stuff. I don't understand why everybody hates it so much. It is actually very nice to see and it always fits. You just need to read the manual :) (several times). What you see here are four cabinets that hold my CD collection. In the left two cabinets is only synthesizer music and in the right two cabinets is the other music I bought on CD during the years. It is not only synthesizer based music by the way. My taste is actually quite wide, you will find some pop, rock and even some classical music. There are some band that I like a lot besides instrumental music. Examples are: Eurythmics, Depeche Mode, Level 42, U2 and even Madonna. There is also some Guitar stuff there like Patrick Rondat (who played with Jarre) and Gary Moore, Jan Akkerman etc.

Here is a close-up from my Jarre and Vangelis collection. I think I have most albums by the both of them. While I was putting them in the cabinet I thought it would be nice to rip them to MP3 and put them all on my Ipod as well in 192 Khz quality. So that is what I also did last week. On our next holiday (whenever that may be) I will be able to listen to all those albums again :) The last years I'm actually buying only synthesizer music. I'm still discovering lots of new but also old stuff that I apparently missed back then. There are some colleagues on the Groove Unlimited label that I start to appreciate a lot like: Ron Boots, Gert Emmens, Frank van Boogaert and Nattefrost. If you don't know them yet I can recommend you to check them out.

If you thought that is all I did and why that took me so long. Well there is more :) These ones I also build to hold our DVD collection. My wife and I love to watch movies. All these cabinets are in the hall now between the studio and the cinema and in this way that hall has a nice new function as well. If you look close you can see that on the right are also some concert DVD's and even some VHS tapes. I just love those Jarre concert DVD's. The audio on there is in surround and so very good. My favorite though is the Oxygene 'Live in your living room' DVD. I only don't like the 3D thing they did since I get an instant head ache watching that. But luckily there is a 2D version as well. It is great to see those vintage synthesizers being used in such a nice way. If you don't know this DVD I can recommend it. There is also a Kraftwerk concert DVD in my collection and of course some movies with soundtracks from Vangelis like Blade Runner, 1492 Conquest of Paradise and Alexander. I still need to find some others that also have scores by him.

Synth.nl on the Musik Messe 2009

On Thursday and Friday I will be at the Musik Messe in Frankfurt, Germany together with two friends. It is a always great place to be. We have bee there last year as well. It is the biggest exhibition of musical instruments in Europe. A lot of manufacturers wait with releasing new products there. So we hope to see some nice new stuff. I'm sure we will have a great time anyway :) We booked a nice hotel and I'm sure well find a nice restaurant as well afterwards. I'll try to make some nice pictures and show them on the blog here when we get back. So maybe I'll even see you there :)

You can find more informaton on the Messe on this URL when you are interested:

http://musik.messefrankfurt.com/

The Juno Brothers

I keep getting more and more request when I will post new overview pictures of my studio on my website. Well not yet. I'm still not completely done and I want to let my friend Chris take the overview photographs since he is a much better photographer than I am. But I'll try to sneak in some nice shots in from time to time until then. So how about this nice shot of these three Juno brothers :) On top is the Juno 106, then the Juno 6 and below the Juno 60. So do they sound the same? No not really. The Juno 6 and 60 are quite similar, very warm and deep where the 106 has a much cleaner sound. It sound a bit more digital. On the Juno 60 you can save patches though while you can not on a Juno 6. But the 106 has standard Midi and the other two don't. On the Juno 60 I use a Kenton Midi to DCB converter and the Juno 6 has a retro fit midi kit build in. Which one is my favorite? Definitely the Juno 60. I love bass lines with the arpeggiator on that one with the internal chorus on :)

Apollo Studio Acoustics (Part 8)

I have posted a lot about the acoustic treatment and measurements I'm doing in the studio. But another very important project is to select a decent pair of monitoring speakers. In my old studio I had a pair of Behringer Truths, but they are really not that good. So I went to both my regular suppliers and asked them if they could arrange that I could test some monitors in my own studio. The first pair I tested where the KRK VXT8's. For the price they are actually quite good, at that moment I was actually quite satisfied with them.

But I made a list with speakers I wanted to check out so I went on. Next on the list where these Genelec 8040's. The first thing I noticed was a much better stereo image and much more detailing a bit like they missed some low end compared to the KRK's. So I thought it would be good to maybe go for one size bigger even though I'm going to use them as near fields.

So then we went for the Genelec 8050's. And they do have much more low end. Of course because of the bigger size. But I decided that I like this better. In comparison to the 8040's they sound much more at ease. Like they don't have to work so much. I'm always amazed about all these monitor manufacturers drawing these straight lines when you look at the speaker characteristics graphics they provide, and they all sound differently ;) In the music i heard  layers I could only hear on my headphones before. So I liked these ones better than the KRK's instantly. The only thing I found was that they sounded  Ah well. I guess it is a matter of taste and also depending on your room and style of music what sounds right to you.

Together with the 8050's I also got a 7070A sub woofer on loan. I first listened to the 8050's without the sub woofer, but finally hooked it up any way. And man what a difference does that make :) I love that low rumble. I use that a lot in my music as well and since I hope to do stuff for movies in the future it could be a good thing to add a sub woofer. The nice thing is that it acts as a crossover as well. So you connect you audio outputs to the sub and then your monitors to the sub woofer. There is also a remote bypass switch on it, so you can listen with and without it. I really like this idea.

I like the Genelec setup I have now a lot, but I will test some more speakers soon. I'll update you on that of course. Last week by the way Toine from Soundscapes already did some acoustics measurements in my studio. He is a pro in this field and has a very scientific aproach to the whole matter. He instantly had some very good and creative recommendations. He is now going to put all the data he collected (measurements, room size) into a computer simulation program and I hope to get a rapport from him soon. Of course I will share his findings on my blog (with Toine's kind permission). But judging from his first impressions there is much more work to be done on the acoustiscs side. So keep following this thread on my blog if that interests you.

Intercom for the studio

Since I'm under the ground now with my studio, it is a long way to the front door. So I didn't hear the door bell any more and when I did it took me too long to go to the door. Apparently our postal delivery services in The Netherlands are not very patient. So to solve this problem we installed a nice intercom system with a camera in the hall downstairs. I can hear the bell very well now and even tell the person on the door to wait a minute or even open the door remotely when the kids are at the door. It is amazing how simple it sometimes is to solve a problem :)

Pictures from the Schallwelle Preis Event

Recently I was nominated for a German Electronic Music Price called the 'Schallwelle Preis'. Some of you voted on me for the audience price. Thank you all who voted. I was also nominated by the jury together with three other artists for 'best newcomer of 2008'. Unfortunately I didn't win eventually but it was nice to be nominated. On the event there were taken a lot of pictures. Here is one with all the nominees and price winners of the event. You can see me standing second on the right. The event was organized perfectly by the way and they took very good care of us artists :) The picture on the left was taken by Werner Vollmer. Thanks for letting me use it on here.

Here is another picture that was taken of me toghether with Stefan from the Syndae podcast. Stefan has played my music several times on there, so obviously he likes it :) I went to this event togheter with Ron Boots who was also nominated. Unfortunately he also didn't eventually win, but we had a great time togheter. You can find more pictures and information on the event and see who eventually did win on the website of the Schallewelle Preis on this URL: http://www.schallwelle-preis.de/. I hope I will be invited again next year and I can recommend you to get tickets.

Edit:

I just got this update from Stefan (who is in the picture and was also in the jury):

You should mention that AtmoSphere has been voted third in the auditors' election for best Album 2008, right after F.D.Project and Schiller. And that you were voted amongst the best 10 in the artist category, too. :D Cheers, Stefan P.S.: The second photo is from Judith, my beloved partner in life.

That was even news for me :) I seem to have missed that.

Lift from AeroDynamics preview on MySpace

Since MySpace is my main source of marketing I decided to do something extra on there. I'm featering the song 'Lift' from my first album 'AeroDynamics' on my player there to promote my first album a bit more. So if you don't know that song yet go and have a listen on my MySpace page. You can't hear it anywhere else. You can find my MySpace page here: http://www.myspace.com/synthnl.

If you don't have an account there yet. Make one and become my friend as well on there. MySpace is a great place to discover new music. Please note that you will need the latest Flash player installed to be able to listen to the player on the MySpace page.

Synth mounting creativity

When a normal person looks at a picture like this he probably thinks that it is a nice picture with a lot of synthesizers on it. Well that was not what I thought. I was thinking it should be possible to mount on more synthesizer there. The stand on the right where the two Roland are on was designed to hold 3 synthesizer, but when I mount on more on top of that it blocks the vision into the rest of the studio and that makes everything looks smaller. But I thought maybe there is a way to mount another on just above the Yamaha, but I didn't want to buy an extra two synth stand for that. So I came up with this:

As you can see in the picture I managed to mount a Roland Alpha Juno 2 above the CS50 without sacrificing any vision and also not too much space in the room. I used the mounting holes for the third synth from the stand where the Rolands where on and mounted a bracket from the synth mounting system I use on the walls backwards on that stand. Fortunately there is a nice way Quicklok uses to adjust the angle of the stands that was identical on both the systems.

Here you can see a close-up of what I did. As you can see I did the same trick on the other stand that was next to it. I had to use other bolts and nuts though. The new bolt had to be a bit longer than the one Quicklok supplies. That one just didn't go far enough through to screw the nut on. But you can get this stuff in any hardware store. So with four bolts and four nuts and two remaining wall brackets I actually made room for two extra synthesizers in my studio. I think my wife will be so happy to hear this ;)

In the picture on the right you can even see an overview of the extra space that I created. It cannot hold a very deep synthesizer, but I already selected a suitable candidate to go into this spot later on. The synthesizer you see in the front by the way is an Yamaha SY99. That may well be one of the best digital synthesizers yamaha has ever built. Vangelis used it a lot actually. It uses FM synthesizes combined with samples. But the best thing about it is the effects sessions. You won't believe how good the reverb sounds on this machines, making it perfectly for ambient sounds. There SY77 is also nice for this. This is also the biggest keyboard I have in the studio and since my oldest daughter just said that she wants to learn playing the keyboard or piano as well. It will be nice for her to practice on it. You can use the extra octave for that of course.

Apollo Studio Airco Installation (Part 3)

All work on the installation of the air conditioning is done now. Here you can see a picture of the inside unit that was placed in the server room next to the studio. This one was really necessary since there is a lot of computers and storage units in there. When I switched everything on and closed the door it would get very warm very quickly. This unit is a special unit that can run day and night and it regulates itself so it doesn't run full speed power all the time like a lot of airco units do. It also uses less power in this way.

Here you can see where it is placed. It is on the back wall of the server room directly behind the 19 inch rack that holds all the servers and storage. As you can see it takes two 230 Volt power lines to hook it up. A special group was created for this unit as well by the electrician on the power distributor that he made downstairs. I'm not sure why there are two power connections I think one is for the inside unit and one is for the outside unit since they pulled an extra power cable along with the cooling pipes to the roof. But I forgot to ask about this.

And here you can see the result of the airco. All equipment is switched on now and the door is closed. It felt nice and comfortable right away. I put the air conditioning on its highest possible cooling and after a few hours I measured and the result. It was a stunning 19 degrees Celsius!! The humidity is quite stable stable at about 54 percent which is ideal for the equipment and I put the temperature higher now to 23 degrees. That is cool enough for the equipment and takes less energy. It has no use to make it too cold. Well this concludes the airco installation. At least something is really finished now :)

Roland System 100m

I recently acquired a very nice piece for my collection. It is a Roland System 100m (semi) modular synthesizer. It is a very nice analog synthesizer with a very typical sound. I found one is pretty good condition that came together with a Roland Model 181 keyboard. This keyboard outputs CV and Gate and is also very usable with the other modular synthesizers I already have. So I can quite pleased to find this set actually. One thing that was strange though is that it came with a 120 to 100 Volt converter. This indicates that the power supply apparently doesn't handle 120 Volts well. And I will have to go down from 230 Volts first as well.

Here is a closer view of the modules that are in the cabinet. From left to right there is the '112' which is a dual VCO, the '121' a dual VCF, the '130' a dual 'VCA', a '140' that has a dual Envelope and also an LFO and finally the '150' that also holds an LFO, a noise generator, a Sample & Hold and a Ring Modulator. So all in all it is quite a complete monophonic analog synthesizer on its own. Below the modules in the cabinet is also a nice board with multiples to be able to use the signals on more than one connection. And on the back are some connectors as well to connect the modules to the central power supply that is in the cabinet.

The keyboard fits perfectly with de modular desk and fits right under the raiser that I made in the center. And even then I had room left to put my soldering iron right of it. Looks nice right? :) I had the keyboard of the Formant there before, but I think this keyboard is more versatile since it has the outputs for CV and Gate on the keyboard itself. The keyboard does have to be connected to the modular though cabinet, since it takes its power from there. When connected the CV and gate signals are prepatched by the way to the modules. So in fact it is considered a semi-modular for this reason. I don't know actually if there are more prepatches. I'll have to find out.

I put the modular itself on top of my modular cabinet for now. I can take it down easily if I want, but probably it works fine when it stands there. I don't think the electronics would have anything to suffer from it standing on its side and the spot that was still open is perfect for it. I put the Formant keyboard on top of the Formant synthesizer for now as well. I'll probably won't use it so much when the Roland keyboard works like it should be. Hopefully I can start working on my DIY projects as well soon. I still have lots of stuff to finish, but I want to finish work on the studio first. And besides that last week I started to finally make some music as well. And that was also too long ago.

AtmoSphere now on Amazon

My AtmoSphere album is now also available on Amazon.com. You can buy the album in digital form here as MP3 download. You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Atmosphere/dp/B001U27E38/

Even though I'm quite happy with these new ways of distribution, since I know lots of people buy music this way nowadays, I'm not really into this myself. I still prefer a physical CD for my record collection. I would like you to consider the same as well since the quality of the music is even better and you can enjoy the artwork even more and read some interesting stuff about the album in the booklet. Well in case you agree with this you can find the other sales links take sell physical CD's on this URL: http://www.synth.nl/AtmoSphere

And please do consider to buy my music when you like it. You will support me and my record label for the hard work that was done and you will make future releases possible.

And thank you so much to everybody that already supported me! I do appreciate it a lot!

Synth.nl mentioned on the Cakewalk Blog

It looks like Cakewalk/Roland noticed the blog posting I put up on the V-studio 700 console I put up on here. I found this post through the Cakewalk newsletter they send out to their customers. It is nice to get some exposure in this way. Too bad though that they didn't read that well in the biography on my website and got the date wrong that I started producing music on the bottom of the article. That happened in 2005 and not 1990. That was the time I started collecting synthesizers actually. Ah well I shouldn't complain about some free publicity right? ;) Here you can find the Blog posting they did:

http://blog.cakewalk.com/synthesizer-expert-adds-sonar-vstudio-700-t-studio/

Apollo Studio Acoustics (Part 7)

Recently I also did some new measurements together with my friend Hans in the studio. This time we tested with the bass traps in place. Compared to the last measurements it looks a bit better and much smoother, but there are still some nasty dips there that we hoped to get rid off. So I'm afraid the bass traps alone wont be sufficient and we will have to do more to get a good room response in the low end. Something else that is strange is that the frequencies of the peeks and dips shifted a bit compared to the older measurements. I don't really understand how that can be. In the higher frequencies everything is quite OK now by the way. And for me it is good enough now to be able to start getting used to working on monitors in stead of headphones. But is as to be better to be able to make good mixes.

The waterfall graphic looks quite different from last time. As you can see RT60 decay times of the low frequencies have drastically decreased. That is the work of the bass traps dampening these low frequencies. But we did decide that it was time now to call in the professionals because we can only start guessing what to do next. So we went to ask around and found two professional acoustic engineers. I invited them both to come over and look at the room. They both had a very different approach in looking at the problem. The first one was more practical and the second one more scientific. I decided to start with the scientific one. On Monday this specialist will come and do some measurements with his own equipment and he will take exact measures of the room. This data will then be entered in a special computer program that will start simulate the sound behavior in the room. From these simulations it is possible to predict what needs to be done to solve the problems. With this data I will go to the first specialist and together we can then determine what needs to be build or bought in acoustic treatment. I'm quite curious what they will come up with. This whole acoustics theory really is starting to fascinate me. I learned a lot of new things in a short time. I'll keep you posted on the progress :)

Apollo Studio Airco Installation (Part 2)

The airco installation in the studio is done now. Here you see a picture of the unit that is placed in the hall. On the left you see a little pump that pumps out the moisture that is taken from the air. This water is then pumped upstairs. You can also see that they made a nice enclosure around the airco unit from white painted steel. It looks much nicer now. It is still a big thing, but it is just a hall where it is hanging so who cares :) It shouldn't have been much deeper though. The door can only just open under it.


On the other side they also made a nice cover for the hole they made. They mounted a wooden plate and painted it in the right color with the paint we still had left. When they were done installing they switched it on and there was no cold air coming from it. They said it would take a while before it would be cold. But after an hour or so it still was blowing air at normal temperature and it even switched itself off after about two hours. So the next day I called them and they came very quickly finding out that they forgot something silly on the outside unit. But after that it worked like a charm. It is much nicer to work in the studio now. And the noise is quite low, but I can switch it off with a remote when it is not nessecary.

The electrician was there during the installation as well, to provide the airco installation with power from two extra groups. He also mounted an extra pump for the ventilation system. We used to have one for the upstairs and downstairs of the new part together. But since upstairs in this room there is a washing machine and dryer the ventilation has to be on full power, where for downstairs the medium power was sufficient and gave less noise in the studio. So now they are separated on two pumps and I can control the new one from downstairs as well, where the controls used to be upstairs first. The control comes with a timer as well, each time I press a knob I can give it 10 minutes of full power. So usually when I leave to studio I press it a couple of times. But now everything is nice and comfy. Last thing left is an airco for the server room. There airco is needed because it gets very hot from the computers running there.

AtmoSphere review on Guts of Darkness

Sylvain Lupari of Guts Of Darkness just wrote a very nice review on my AtmoSphere album. You can find it here:

http://www.gutsofdarkness.com/god/objet.php?objet=11902

But since it is in French I place an English translation here that he posted on the Groove Unlimited website.

Please enjoy :)

Michel van Osenbruggen (Synth. NL) 2nd album is inspired by the layers of atmospheres which surround our planet. A little in the same vein as its 1st opus, AeroDynamics, the Dutch synthesist continues to forge energetic music with catchy rhythms. Atmosphere offers a beautiful range with a touch closer to nebulas atmospheres than cosmic one, as we found on AeroDynamics. A new kind of progressive synth pop with a heavy approach. Troposphere is fomented like a grain in space. A train comes from nowhere and releases heteroclite sound effects. The ambiance is cosmic, except for fine cymbals which initiate a percussion set more vigorous, in a cosmic sphere with Mellotron chorus and light hazes. A syncopated sequence is melting agreeably in this space landscape, creating a sustained rhythm which girdles an active nebulosity. In a track, Synth.NL situates his music. Melodious and rhythmic, stuffed of heavy Mellotron which gives the impression to slow down the tempo. Heavy and dilly-dally Troposphere, just like Cumulonimbus which seems to be his remix, rebound in the tympanums with an amazing sound richness. Atmosphere abounds of these titles with vaporous and climatic intros which lead to frank and vigorous rhythms, with a Jean Michel Jarre touch. Titles like Troposphere, Altocumulus, the excellent Altostratus and the very Jarrian Exosphere with his delightful violins, exploit chipped sequences on percussions very well freshened and on melodious synth. Some great cosmic candy, intelligent and appealing. Stratosphere intro plunges us into a cosmic static broth which is animating softly on circular cymbals and a hiccupping sequence which surrounds a movement hardly rhythmic. Melodious, the synth floats wistfully whereas the title immerses in a black mood with, in background, the initial melody which floats more than agitating. One of the more ambient tracks we find on this album, along with Thermosphere and Cirrostratus which always oscillate between the fragmented nebulosity and rhythms. Atmosphere is more elaborate. A soft rotary sequence with a Mellotron choral insufflates a soft melody that dry strike of percussions does not manage to spoil. A good track, like the majority that composes Synth.NL 2nd opus. Synth pop with a more progressive touch, like Mesosphere and its long synth solos and Nimbostratus with its dramatico-cosmic approach.

If you have like AeroDynamics, AtmosPhere will not disappoint you. A strong album in rhythm and which brushes the roots of ambient EM does not go unperceived. There is a strong Jarre influence, in particular on percussions and synthesized refrains which bite easily the ear. A good album for fans of pop synth, with great percussions moves and well builds orchestrations.