inner nerd » USA

Robot Rock du Jour: Futurisk – Player Piano LP (2010)

beaker — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 02:20:36 +0000

Hot off the press!!!

Aptly-named revival label Minimal Wave has compiled Futurisk‘s entire catalog and pressed it on collector-quality 180g vinyl, including this alternate take of their signature track, Meteoright. Destined to be a collectible. At $22, you’d be crazy not to pick one (or two) up.

SCHEMATIC: Need more Futurisk videos??? Get your fix HERE!!!

Pssst...pass it on!

Robot Rock du Jour: Crash Course in Science – Flying Turns (1981)

beaker — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 03:00:54 +0000

This EP/12″ gets me all wound up with some serious non-goth electro industrial madness!

Crash Course in Science was formed in 1979 while the three members were attending art school in Philadelphia.Flying Turns is off their 12″ Signals from Pier Thirteen originally published on Press Records in 1981.

SCHEMATICS: More videos and MP3s from the 12″…

Clean, first pressings sell for upwards of $100, with second pressings from 1986 on LD Records fetching only slightly less.

Cardboard Lamb (2:41)

Crashing Song (2:35)

Factory Forehead (2:56)

Pssst...pass it on!

Robot Rock du Jour: The Units – High Pressure Days (1979)

beaker — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 05:00:34 +0000

High Pressure Days is a filthy, gnarly animal.

Let Uncle Rico’s time machine teleport you back to 1977 San Francisco. Eschewing guitars in favor of synths (good move, fellas), The Units become one of the very first synthpunk bands. They then start tearing it up, self-releasing the original version of this track in 1979 on what is now an absurdly rare 7″ record (sells for about £100). This video features the album version, released in 1980 on the Digital Stimulation LP.

SCHEMATIC: The ENTIRE Digital Stimulation album, band portrait and flyer (via synthpunk)…

What follows is the entire Digital Stimulation LP with each track listed in its proper order. This album is an opus and deserves a concentrated listen. The last track, Cowboy, is a mind-warping experience. I just yoinked an original 7″ copy of High Pressure Days from eBay and will make/post vinyl rips and videos as soon as it arrives. In related news, an anthology was released in 2009 called History of The Units – The Early Years: 1977 – 1983 and is available through discogs.

Digital Stimulation

Warm Moving Bodies

Go

Mission

Bugboy

Tight Fit

Passions or Patterns

Town by the River

Cowboy

Pssst...pass it on!

Equipment: Speak & Spell

beaker — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 02:21:50 +0000

Jack Burton once advised: “You never know when you may need to call upon the vocal synthesis wizardry of the Speak & Spell.” Disappointingly limited vocabulary aside, here is a web emulator for use on those occasions where nothing else will quite do the trick.

end of line…

Pssst...pass it on!

Dans La Rue: Bay Area Maker Faire 2010

beaker — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:05:29 +0000

The Maker Faire is like an engineer’s craft show on acid. There’s dudes riding around in go-carts that look like cupcakes, sixty-year-olds playing Jules Verne in the Steam Punk pavilion and lots of fire. This first video features Mark Galt’s intoxicating “Quadruped” kinetic sculpture at the Bay Area Maker Faire in May 2010.

SCHEMATIC: More videos and photos from Maker Faire 2010…

Mark Galt – Electric Motor Man

Atoms & Electrons – Apple IIe + Twitter

So this fellow bought an Apple IIe for $15 and rigged it up to turn twitter avatars and feeds into 8-bit artwork. Wicked!

Life-Sized Mousetrap

Remember that game mousetrap? How about a life-sized version for your backyard?

Purincess Labs – Deathwheel 3000dx

With a perverse sense of humor and penchant for fun, classmate Purin’s Deathwheel 3000dx was a huge hit at Maker Faire.

Goligorsky Laboratory – Super Relax Concept Electric Research Vehicle (Tandem Bicycle)

David Goligorsky, Design’s Oscar Wilde, developed this electric tandem as part of his graduate thesis project at Stanford’s Design Program. Also shown is a road bike David designed and built, as well as “Hyper-Lincoln” whose red LED eyes signal out The Gettysburg Address in Morse code. This guys is off the chain. Sorry, bad joke.

Pssst...pass it on!

Robot Rock du Jour: Neil Young – Trans LP (1982)

beaker — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 04:55:17 +0000

In 1982, Neil Young was abducted by robot aliens who grafted an organic neural-net processor onto his existing human brain and sent him back to Earth to make vocoder-infused, heavily distorted guitar rock. Five of the nine tracks on Trans were recorded by this Neil Young Beta Unit, who also remixed Mr. Soul as the b-side on the Sample and Hold 12″ single.

SCHEMATIC: Other Neil Young Beta Unit videos and cover art…

So, the actual story here, according to Wikipedia, is that Neil Young’s son was born with cerebral palsy. Somewhere along the line, Mr. Young found that he was able to elicit a better response from his son when using the Moog vocoder. Pretty awesome. Not sure if this album is a result of Mr. Young pushing the creative envelope or just ruminations on technology and communication. Either way, this album was a really, really pleasant surprise.

Sample and Hold (LP Version)

We R In Control

Computer Age

Transformer Man

Computer Cowboy

Mr. Soul (Dance Remix)

Trans LP Cover Art

Pssst...pass it on!

Robot Rock du Jour: Justine and the Victorian Punks – Still You (1979)

beaker — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:47:45 +0000

This track treads a fine line between funky disco and satin-smooth pillow talk. This particular cut is actually experimental composer/saxophonist Peter Gordon’s lovely re-arrangement of Battisti Lucio’s early Italo track, Ancora Tu, with some lover’s chat provided by pioneering NY-based designer/artist Colette.

SCHEMATIC: Battisti Lucio’s Ancora Tu video and photos of Colette’s work…

Battisti Lucio – Ancora Tu (1976)

Regardless of what on Earth this dude is running from, this video is unmistakably Italian.

Deadly Feminine Installation at Fiorucci (1978?)

Living Environment (1981)

Art on Stage at Danceteria (1983)

Pssst...pass it on!

Real Genius: Giorgio Moroder – From Here to Eternity (1977)

beaker — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 10:18:40 +0000

Moroder is the undisputed progenitor of Italo. The uncanny resemblance to SNL’s Father Guido Sarducci notwithstanding, Moroder is a synth god. More machine than man, Moroder is to Italy as Kraftwerk is to Germany.

Although Moroder made some Taleggio over the years, From Here to Eternity is an early Italo masterpiece. First published as an LP in 1977 on US-based Casablanca Records, near mint copies of this album are still widely available for about $20. Synthspotters love this video…

SCHEMATIC: Some Moroder TV appearances, a Casablanca Records promo video, more details…

Moroder’s discography is longer than the Dead Sea Scrolls. Among other massive hits, Moroder was behind Donna Summer’s 1977 smash, I Feel Love.

He also did the theme song for the crazy-ass movie Midnight Express in 1978. Below is a classic German TV show (check out those mics!) introducing Moroder and his oscar-winning track, The Chase, which is 13 minutes of mind-warping synthesizer amazingness. In this all-too-brief clip, Moroder goes from laying it down in German to working a Minimoog in an ultra-rare LIVE performance.

Here is the original 8-minute 45RPM version of the track. I can’t seem to find the 12″ version, so will upload mine.

Here is the Casablanca Records promo where Moroder demonstrates his vocoder skills.

Moroder produced everyone and everything in the 1980s. Beyond rescoring the 1920s Fritz Lang film Metropolis, he was responsible for Top Gun (along with German protégé Harold Faltermeyer), Blondie’s Call Me, Irene Cara’s What a Feelin’ LP which included Romance ’83 (and Flashdance), The Neverending Story and so forth.

Pssst...pass it on!

Equipment: Syntheridoo

beaker — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:54:43 +0000

This is far, far out, man.

Kyle Evans’ digeridoo-synthesizer hybrid could single-handedly create sound effects for every sci-fi vehicle and spaceship ever imagined.

SCHEMATIC: A straight up demo video…

This video via Make via MatrixSynth

Pssst...pass it on!

Snort: Shotgun Start – City Boy (2009)

beaker — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:51:56 +0000

Hot damn!! Check out Wormser at 0:54 and 1:16!!!

Between the acid synth lines and vocoders, this cut coulda been a contender. Unfortunately, the right hook is just a bit weak. The video, however, is GENIUS!

Found this one on MATRIXSYNTH-C.

Pssst...pass it on!