Refuge en Verre on CDBaby.com

I have good news. Refuge en Verre, the collaboration album I did together with Ron Boots, is now also available on CDBaby.com. That means that you can buy it as High Quality MP3 download, Artwork included. They also have CD's in stock. So if you are in the USA now you can order it from US company, pay in dollars and it saves you shipping costs. I'm happy to see Groove Unlimited has put it on there. You can find it on this URL:
http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/RonBootsSynthnl I'll put the sales link also on my own website where you can also find more information on the album http://www.synth.nl/Refuge

Apollo Status Update

I though it would be nice to give you a little update on my Apollo project. I know some of you are really waiting for this album. In the picture on the left you can see roughly what it is going to look like at least. I can't give you previews on the sound yet, but that will come very soon. There will be 12 tracks in total and the total length of the CD will be around 68 minutes. I also determined the final order for the tracks now. I still have a month left to make the deadline for a release on E-day and I still need to play a melody on one track and then lots of work is to be done on details like adding sound effects, editing drum variations, playing little ad-don melodies.  It is going to be a tight call whether I'll make the 16th of April release. I'm still not sure because when I'm done also the remixing and mastering has to be done in the very last moment. It won't be much later if I don't make it but it would be nice to have it on my stall on E-day. I'll do my very best and I'll keep you updated on it.

NachtWacht Radio Premiere on Syndae

And another radio Premiere for Stefan from the German EM Podcast Syndae. Stefan was the first to play my NachtWacht (Night Watch) track from the Dutch Masters sampler CD that was released yesterday by Groove Unlimited. Thank you very much for the airplay Stefan :)

I have sent this track to several radio station so lets hope some more airplay will follow. You can listen to Stefan's podcast online. My track is opening the show you can find it on this URL:

http://www.syndae.de.

Dutch Masters Sampler CD Released!

As follow-up to the highly successful Analogy series (part 1, 2, and 3), Groove Unlimited released a new sampler CD called 'Dutch Masters'. This time the approach is very different. The idea is to do an album with Dutch EM artists and let them compose music to a painting they like. You will hear music the artists composed to paintings of Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Mondriaan, Escher, Bosch and many more. Of course there is also a track by me on this CD. Other artists that participated are: Ron Boots, Gert Emmens, Eric van der Heijden, Bas Broekhuis, Remy, Void, Rene Splinter, Meesha, and René van der Wouden. If you want to hear how these artists translate the image of their favorite painting into music get a hold of this album! I have the music from the album already for a while and I must say it is one of the best sampler CD's I have heard in a long time.

I did my song about a famous Dutch painting called 'Nachtwacht'. Back in school I learned about our famous Dutch Masters from the 'Golden Age' and I must admit that I never really cared much for paintings, until I saw a group of actors perform a live statue version of the Nachtwacht (Night Watch) painting by Rembrandt van Rijn. After that the painting started to fascinate me more and more and I wondered what it should sound like and that is what I expressed in this track. I hope you like it. It is a bit different from my usual track I think.

You can listen to my song on my website on this URL: http://www.synth.nl/DutchMasters.

You can listen to sound clips of the other tracks on the Groove Unlimited website on this URL: http://www.groove.nl/cd/g/gr-177.html

Groove Unlimited decided to release this CD as a limited edition. Only 400 copies are sold. So be quick! I have a feeling this one could be sold out very quickly. You can order it from this URL: http://www.groove.nl/jump2.php?artnum=gr-177.

More Apollo Artwork

I promised last week to show you more of the Apollo artwork when it was done. Well now it is. Bart just send me the last files. I'm sure there will be some little tweaks before it is finally pressed but this is globally what the back will look like. You can also already see the track list. The song titles are final and so is the order they will be in. The track lengths can be different on the CD, since I'm still working hard on some of the tracks. Another thing you might notice is that the mastering will be done this time by my good friend Hans Landman. We will also work again on one track together like we did on my AtmoSphere album.

And this will be the CD itself. You can actually put the moon in your CD player eventually. There will be more text on there later on as well. I do have some other pictures for the inside of the booklet, but there I still need to write all the text for those. Pfffff so much to do :) In the mean time I'm also working on a new theme for my website. That will be in Apollo style too when I'm done with the CD and when I'm sure when the release will be. And the last thing then will be a nice promo video for the album. So you can imagine I guess that I'm a bit busy here and that I won't be able to write as much on this blog as I normally do. But I'll try to keep you updated from time to time.

DIY Drum Module Video

A new video I made from a test run with a drum module I build and my sequencers.

Last year I build a drum module based on schematics from the 'Electronic Drum Cookbook' by Thomas Henry. I build it on breadboard but never got around to test it yet. Yesterday someone was filming my studio here so I couldn't work on my main desk for a while and decided to give the module a go. I hooked it up to my sequencers in the modular setup and got to test them in the process as well. We took some shots of this as well and last night I decided to make a little video from it. The noise coming from it is not spectacular but it was just a proof of concept. I made this video in Sony Vegas and that was also a test run for me. I plan to make more video's in the future for you to enjoy. The music on this video is from a track called 'Mercury' that a made for a sampler CD last year. You can listen to the whole track on my website. Look for the SchallPlatte 12 sampler CD.

Apollo Cover is Ready

I know I have been quiet on here for a while, but I'm working very hard on my Apollo album at the moment so I don't have much time for other projects. In the mean time I'm also working with my designer Bart on the artwork for the CD. We found a great picture of a Saturnus V rocket standing on the Launchpad that we used and I really like the font that Bart used. It really fits the space theme and the time that these events happen in were space travel was still considered futuristic. We are working now also on the other artwork that I hope to show to you very soon as well. The use of the picture is courtesy of NASA of course. I still aim for release on the 16th of April by the way, but I still have a lot of work to do so I'm not entirely sure at the moment that I will make it. But I'm going to try hard :)

Dutch Masters Artwork done and New Release Date

It took a bit longer than anticipated but the artwork for the upcoming Dutch Masters CD is finally done.You can see it in the picture on the left. Because the artwork took a bit longer the release date was a bit postponed and is set now for the 18th of February. So very soon! As stated before it will be a limited edition of 400 copies and pre-sales has started already. I have heard the whole CD a couple of times now myself and I can highly recommend it. There are some great tracks on this CD and the rest good. No average work here. So be sure to get a copy of it. You can find more information about this CD, my contribution and a link to where you can buy it on my website: http://www.synth.nl/DutchMasters

Ron Boots & Synth.nl nominated Twice by Schallwelle Jury!

I have some very nice news. After the listeners voting has ended I also got an E-mail saying that Ron Boots and I were nominated by the jury as well. This morning I saw on the website that we have been nominated twice even. We are nominated for best international artist but also our CD 'Refuge en Verre' is nominated as best international CD. And this is next to the listeners voting. So at least we made the top 5 twice there :). We are going to the award ceremony together on the 12th of March and there the winners will be announced. We'll see what happens. I'm sure we will have a good time. I'd like to congratulate the other nominees as well, especially my good friends from Morpheusz, Nattefrost and Remy. You can see the list with other nominees here: http://www.schallwelle-preis.de/nominierte. As you can see the competition if fierce. But we are honored to be in those lists of course. I'll let you know what happens. And thanks very much to everyone that voted for us!