Hideaway Studio

Bass Machine was in essence an attempt to revisit a commonly used trick of the trade whereby the warm roundness, power and motion of the Minimoog’s bottom end was blended with the bite and clinical accuracy of FM bass. The result is a nice example of where the whole is greater than sum of its parts…

In 1984 Dave Smith and his team at Sequential Circuits released the Six-trak which was one of the first instruments not only to feature the then new MIDI control system but was an early multitimbral offering. This was quite a technically advanced feature to be seen on what was a relatively affordable synthesizer in those days.

The Polivoks was designed by Vladimir Kuzmin with input on the aesthetics from his wife Olimpiada who was apparently inspired by Soviet military radios of the time. In production between 1982 and 1990 the Polivoks was manufactured at the Formanta Radio Factory in Kachkanar, Russian SFSR.

Orbitone Collection II was conceived very much as an extension to the original release of complex warm electronic textures made with unusual combinations of vintage technologies. Featuring The Worlds Oldest String Synth That Never Was!

I have always had a bit of a soft spot for evocative cinematic synth strings and especially pseudo realistic string ensembles. Probably as a result I’ve almost subconsciously amassed (and sometimes restored) a small collection of historically important string synths over the years and found to my delight that they blend and layer very nicely with one another.

As with all of my Kontakt instruments, the ethos behind them is not so much an attempt to capture and recreate the past but an opportunity to present the original source material as textures, elements and building blocks in order to create something new. At the same time, hopefully some of the original beauty and character of these rare and vintage instruments and equipment will shine through.

Chromatix is a celebration of yet another successful resurrection of an old classic saved from the grave…

Most should realise by now that I have a fascination for rediscovering old technologies and combining the best of them in a constant attempt to create something new and unusual. Some of you will also know that I’m a big fan of the retro computing scene and especially the demo music scene that grew up around it during the mid ‘80s and into the ‘90s.

Constellation: Apollo 203A was in many ways a celebration of yet another successful resurrection of an old classic saved from the grave… This time it was a 1976 Polymoog model 203A most definitely rescued from a fate worse than death!… she could have become a coffee table! Well ok, maybe not.

The GDS/Synergy II+ is surprisingly capable of synthesizing all manner of percussive sounds including many of a similar but not identical nature to their analog counterparts from drum machines of yesteryear.