You know, I consider myself a pretty major Yello fan (”Bostich” is one of my all-time favorite songs), but I was unaware until recently that Carlos Perón, one of the two founding members of the band (along with Boris Blank; vocalist Dieter Meier was asked to join later) who left in 1983, has had a flourishing recording and soundtrack composing career ever since. Perón’s last album with Yello was You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess, but he’d already been recording and releasing solo work prior to leaving the Swiss trio, as early as 1980.

American label Dark Entries is releasing a 4-track EP (vinyl only) by Carlos Perón, Dirty Songs, a collection of songs recorded between 1980 and 1986. The recordings were made with the core setup of an ARP 2600, Roland’s Drumatix, TB-303 and TR-808. “Nothing Is True; Everything Is Permitted (Instrumental)” recorded in 1984 was inspired by William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. “Breaking In (Instrumental)”, from 1984, is a proto electronic body music number meets Chicago acid house (and featuring snare drums played by hand though an Ovaltine box). Originally featured on the soundtrack for a film called Die Schwarze Spinne, the song accompanied breaking into a large pharmaceutical company to steal drugs. On the B-side is “A Dirty Song (Instrumental)”, originally recorded in 1986 which uses one of the earliest Roland SH synthesizers, the SH-1 A, as a solo instrument. “Et” was recorded in 1980 on a 4-track and later and remixed to 8-tracks for Perón’s 1984 Frigorex EP.

All songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. You can listen to Dirty Songs below, courtesy of Dark Entries:
 

 
I’m smitten with these tiny models of vintage synthesizers called “Analogue Miniatures” by artist Dan McPharlin. You know how something is so cute you kind of want to squeeze it to death. Yeah, I’m feeling it with these.

“Produced between 2006 and 2009, the “Analogue Miniatures” series was my attempt to pay tribute to early synthesizers and analogue recording equipment. Rather than replicating existing machines, the focus was on creating a revisionist history where analogue technology continued to flourish uninterrupted,” says Dan.

Each musical instrument is handmade using “framing matt-boards, paper, plastic sheeting, string and rubber bands.”

Here’s an idea for Mattel: They need to create a Moog synthesizer savvy Barbie doll, perhaps an homage to electronic musician Delia Derbyshire and include these tiny synths as apart of her kickass accessories. Seriously, how cool would that be? A DELIA DERBYSHIRE BARBIE DOLL, DAMNIT! I want one.

Please Mattel, make this happen.  And if not Mattel, some doll maker with an Etsy shop!

You can view more of Dan’s work here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Below, a 2009 documentary on Delia Derbyshire:

 
via Bong Boing

 
In this clip from Jim Henson’s short-lived 1989 series, The Ghost of Faffner Hall—about a music conservatory run by a man who hates music—Thomas Dolby tries explaining how a synthesizer works with the help of a matchbox and a very dizzy fly.
 

 
Incredible footage of “the king of techno,” Bruce Haack demonstrating his homemade computers for some kids on Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood in 1968, with the help of his longtime creative partner, Ester Nelson.

Nelson was a choreographer and together, she and Haack collaborated on eleven fairly avant-garde records for kids (released on their own Dimension 5 label) that combined electronic music, storytelling and a (drugless?) psychedelic outlook. Some of them weren’t that far-off from “Hokey Pokey” or “musical chairs” type activity songs, but others were weirder... like asking kids to pretend to be their own shadows or a grandfather clock.

The liner notes to Haack and Nelson’s 1963 Dance Sing and Listen Again album read:

THIS RECORDING IS A TOTAL EXPERIENCE. It exposes your child to controlled body movement, provides a stimulus for imagination and creativity, and presents a range of thought, music and sound from things medieval through today’s electronics. NOTHING LIKE IT HAS EXISTED BEFORE!

That’s a pretty big claim for a kids album, but it’s probably accurate, too.
 

 
I can’t fathom the notion that they thought they were providing a psychedelic experience of sorts, for kids! Here’s what they had to say in the liner notes to their 1968 album The Way Out Record for Children (which must be a reference to Perrey and Kingsley’s The In Sound From Way Out!):

This Wild and wonderful record offers another “Way Out” for children from typical recordings. Our first three recordings prove that our simple philosophy of love and reverse-psychedelics works. We do fill the senses with an almost infinite range of concepts, abstracts, words, sounds, advice and a contract with order and form. But we know that kids compute—so we ask them to use our basics and stretch to the sky. They do—because kids are turned on.

In this Wild and Wonderful time we hereby take the slogan “Drop Out”—turn it around—and print our own button for children ...“Drop in—We love you.”

You follow that? Was the idea of “psychedelics” somehow not yet threatening to Middle American parents?
 

 
In the video below (which reminds me a bit of Synthesizer Patel’s appearance on Look Around You) Haack and Miss Nelson explain their zany non-LSD gestalt to Mr. Rogers and the kids. Although the clips are labeled parts two and three, part one isn’t on YouTube, but nothing of Haack’s appearance seems to be missing.
 

 
Neat concept, although I had a hell of time connecting. Perhaps there’s too many folks on the server tryin’ to show off their mad Eno-esque joystick skillz?

The interface on this site is linked to a physical synth cabinet connected to the world’s largest homemade modular synth, currently housed at the MIT Museum. Turn a knob here, and Patchwerk will turn a motorized knob on the cabinet. If someone at the Museum grabs a knob, you’ll see it turn too.

snip~

When you first connect, you’ll be in OBSERVE mode, which means that you can hear the synth and see what the controllers are doing, but won’t be able to activate the knobs or buttons yourself. To switch to CONTROL mode, enter your name in the box at right. There can be up to 10 people acting as controllers at one time. If there are already 10 signed on, you’ll be added to a queue.

 
Via WFMU on Facebook

 
Better yet, keep your Italo disco. Here’s some actual Krautrock. Yes, It’s the Sauerkraut synthesizer, the work of one Gordon Monahan.

Gordon Monahan’s Sauerkraut Synthesizer is an experimental synth, built around fruits, vegetables, and a jar of sauerkraut as voltage controllers for a software synthesizer, built with ppooll-max/msp and an Arduino interface.
The video captures a live performance on the Sauerkraut Synthesizer at the Subtle Technologies Festival, on board a cruise ship in Toronto Harbour, June 5, 2010.
The Sauerkraut Synthesizer is based on a technical prototype using lemons (The Lemon Synthesizer), developed as a collaboration between Gordon Monahan, Akemi Takeya, and Noid, in Vienna, March, 2009.

 
Witness the majesty of the Lemon Synthesizer after the jump…

 
“Think of a sound—now make it.”

Here is a very cool doc by Ian Collie about London’s Electronic Music Studios, the pioneering synthesizer company formed in 1969 that created such items as the voltage controlled synth (VCS3) and the Synthi A.

These and other machines changed the way we listened to music forever. They were used by some of the first pop artists to experiment with electronic music, including Pink Floyd, The Who, Eno & Roxy Music, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk and Hawkwind.

Collie puts together a very human and warm exploration of what sound synthesis meant to the lives of EMS principals Peter Zinovieff, Tristram Cary and David Cockerell. And in a segment that involves Hawkwind’s David Brock, he also takes on how well sound synthesis meshed with the psychedelic age.
 

 
After the jump, catch parts 2 & 3…