Microscopics

My good friend Charles Webster brought me a small gift from his recent Japanese/ Australian tour to help beef up the Microscopics studio: a copy of the latest Gakken magazine which also comes with an analog synth as a simple-to-build construct kit. There’s no soldering, or hair-pulling, you just need a small screwdriver and about half an hour.

It’s like a souped up Stylophone and about the same size, with a pen (you can pretend it’s a Fairlight light pen) that makes contact with a metal (or carbon in this case) keyboard to play the notes, except the SX-150 keyboard is continuous with no note divisions, so you’ll have to determine the notes by ear like on your Theremin.
It also has a filter, LFO, simple VCA and pitch envelopes, and an external input to process your Minimoog.

The magazine also looks really interesting, with 126 pages on the history of analog synthesizers and electronic music, photos and interviews with famous users, comparisons of analog synth verses plugin copies, visits to Japanese analog synth shops with every classic synthesizer you could want, plus interviews with Mr Roland, Mr Korg, and presets, mods and stickers for your new SX-150! Probably lots more if I could read Japanese…

This is a beautifully put together magazine and kit with lots of thought, care and attention to detail put into the package. If only everything sold had this much care put in, the world would be a better place.

There are quite a few mods that people have made, such as adding a midi port or a sequencer. I’ll try to find some good examples and post them here.

I’ve added a gallery below displaying SX-150 details and pages from the magazine showing amongst other things, a pull out copy of Yellow Magic Orchestra’s (YMO) recording track sheets for their Solid State Survivor album, SX-150 mods, construction instructions, Mr Roland and Mr Korg interviews, the history of analog synthesizers, and 50 essential electronic albums.

Click to enlarge…

Continue reading…

This is the awesome filmic picture of Saturn taken by the Cassini robotic spacecraft, part of the Cassini-Huygens mission sent by NASA and ESA to study Saturn. You must click the image to see it at full size to really appreciate it.

Saturn - click to enlarge

The original is from the great Astronomy Picture of the Day site, well worth a visit.

Explanation…

Soft hues, partially lit orbs, a thin trace of the ring, and slight shadows highlight this understated view of the majestic surroundings of the giant planet Saturn. Looking nearly back toward the Sun, the robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn captured crescent phases of Saturn and its moon Rhea in color a few years ago. As striking as the above image is, it is but a single frame from a recently released 60-frame silent movie where Rhea can be seen gliding in front of its parent world. Since Cassini was nearly in the plane of Saturn’s rings, the normally impressive rings are visible here only as a thin line across the image center. Although Cassini has now concluded its primary mission, its past successes and opportunistic location have prompted NASA to start a two-year Equinox Mission, further exploring not only Saturn’s enigmatic moons Titan and Enceladus, but Saturn herself as her grand rings tilt right at the Sun in August 2009.

Saturn Wallpaper - click to download

We converted it into wallpaper, widescreen-1900×1200 and standard-1600×1200, which should fit most screens… Saturn Wallpaper.zip

Here is another 5 star Gas 0095 (abridged) review from dance web-mag In The Mix…

Sometimes an album cover says all you need to know about what’s contained inside in one glance. Gas 0095, the 1995 debut LP of England’s Mat Jarvis (not to be confused with Germany’s Wolfgang Voigt who also trades under the name), features a rare, colourful jellyfish shooting into the unknown dark depths of the sea on its cover. It’s a striking image of beauty, if only because of the pure obscurity of the creature.

Gas 0095, re-mastered and re-released this year on Microscopics, is an album that sounds fit to chronicle a documentary of such a peculiar organism. Like the jellyfish in the depths, Jarvis’ music pits high-pitch washes against deep, dark bass to create an aura of complete mystery. After ambient opener Generator, Jarvis bursts out of the blocks with Experiments on Live Electricity, which is a kaleidoscopic 16-minute train ride into the forthcoming post-apocalyptic mayhem where Jarvis fiddles with styles and never truly settles on one in particular.

Microscopic is similarly epic in length, circular key melody floating above sirens, liftoff sequences and tubular bells. Jarvis follows up these two studies with a series of interludes, the briefest of which, Miniscule, carries the unofficial title of ‘shortest track ever’, at under one second long. Timestretch is another cute experiment, a four-minute track shrunk down to the size of a one second blip which can apparently be resized into its glorious original state (which this reviewer attempted and failed).

The other interludes provide a conceptual break from the slow-burn space-house of the longer tracks. But it’s on these long tracks where the album shines. Jarvis is a master at turning electronic chaos into sustained ambience. Disparate textures are layered atop each other in a way that neither clashes nor clutters, each contributing to the underwater, aquatic sound palette. Discovery is a shining example of this, AM radio keys resting on cool oscillations resting on whiny synths rounded off by stuttering kick drum. On paper it doesn’t work, but in practice, Jarvis has the technical flair to coalesce these different elements into a neat package.

Original pressings of the album now fetch three figures on eBay. It’s an amusing point that someone would be willing to pay USD $460 for such an unassuming flash on the electronic music timeline, but the fact is ultimately irrelevant. What’s more important is that this underappreciated gem can now get the attention that it has deserved after more than a decade of obscurity.

5/5

And another from Chris at Rate Your Music

GAS - GAS 0095
Absolutely seminal melodic ambient techno, with touches of house occasionally.  Space music.  Music for exploring the stars.  Music To Play Elite To.  Just generally amazing, emotionally charged, deeply creative music. Finally available again, to purchase and download at Microscopics

There’s a Gas 0095 review from Kris Needs in this months Record Collector Magazine. We liked the amusing last line…

GAS 0095

How to save on your Gas bills

During the 90s Nottingham boasted a prolific hotbed of electronic dance music producers, many of who were lucky to have their work released on the local Time then Emit labels. By 1995 the latter had reached cult status which has grown over the years, meaning that albums such as Mat Jarvis’ Gas0095, acclaimed at the time as an ambient electronic classic, can now push towards $500 on eBay. Experimental label Microscopics are answering that demand by reissuing the album remastered in the original artwork.

Before it became rare, the album was notable not only for the gorgeous electronic soundscapes wafting from its grooves, but for boasting the shortest track ever made, Miniscule, running for less than a second, while Timestretch is a four-minute track shrunk to two seconds. Elsewhere, Jarvis stretches out on inter-planetary excursions which weave spacey melodies into lush carpets of percolating synths and glistening melodies, conjuring anything from beatless Krautrock to Japanese composer Kitaro on the sweepingly emotional Microscopic. Earthshake, created with Brian Horsfield, ventures into beautiful deep techno orbit with a four-four kick, cemented as a timeless classic and later revisited beatlessly on Earthloop. Tim Wright collaborates on the pastoral Discovery, along with masturbating guinea-pigs. Seminal, seductive and now sensibly-priced.

Update: Here’s an excerpt from a review in Beatmag…

…Less known was Emit Records on which this classic by Nottingham-based Mat Jarvis was originally released in ’94. Ethereally laid back, but with hints of dark technological threat, ‘Gas 0095’ boasts gimmicks such as (a whole) tune compressed into one second but its true value derives from such tracks as the majestic ‘Microscopic’ which revel in being deliciously, languorously cosmic.

So now that YouTube has higher quality versions of the newer videos, you may think it would be easy to embed them on your site/ blog/ MySpace page, but it isn’t. If you embed the code they give, you will only be able to see the poor standard quality videos.

Lets try to link to the higher quality videos.
Here’s the link to our Gas - Vapourware video…
youtube.com/watch?v=yhZb_TTXSJI

So even if you switch to the high quality version it will still give you the same link. But if you now add ‘&fmt=6‘ to the end of the link it will magically show the high quality version…
youtube.com/watch?v=yhZb_TTXSJI&fmt=6

Or add ‘&fmt=18‘ (fmt stands for format btw), which will link to the higher quality version in stereo…
youtube.com/watch?v=yhZb_TTXSJI&fmt=18

So what happens if we add ‘&fmt=18‘ to the embed code of the standard link…?
Well, nothing, we still get the standard quality video. Google don’t make this easy.

Gas - Vapourware - Standard Quality (mono)

We need to add the code ‘&ap=%2526fmt%3D18‘, so here is the higher quality version with the added code…

Gas - Vapourware - High Quality (stereo)

This is the embed code. Copy and paste, and replace the ‘http://www.youtube.com/v/yhZb_TTXSJI’ text with your YouTube video link to use on your own site…

<object width=”425″ height=”344″><param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/yhZb_TTXSJI&ap=%2526fmt%3D18&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0″></param><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”></param><embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/yhZb_TTXSJI&ap=%2526fmt%3D18&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”425″ height=”344″></embed></object>

Geek out…
Standard Quality - 320×240, Sorensen H.263 codec, bitrate ~300kb/s, mono
Higher Quality    - 480×360, Sorensen H.264 codec, bitrate ~900kb/s, stereo

More…

Downloads…
Gas - Vapourware (mpeg hi-res 60mb)
Gas - Vapourware (ipod video 11mb)

Related…
Gas -Vapourware (blog)

Matrixsynth has posted a series of photos he’s taken of his Microscopic Moog that came with all pre-orders of the Gas 0095 CD.

Close-up

Microscopic Moog & manual

View the rest of the series of 25 photographs

Links
Visit MatrixSynths blog
Listen to Gas 0095 CD

We are very pleased to announce the full release of Gas 0095 remastered on CD.

Track Listing and previews…
Gas 0095 (album mix)
1 Generator
2 Experiments on Live Electricity
3 Microscopic / video
4 Miniscule
5 Pixels
6 Vapourware / video
7 Selenium
8 Earthshake
9 Mathematics and Electronics
10 Timestretch
11 Earthloop
12 f
13 Tellurium
14 Discovery
15 Generator 74

The CD also comes with the 320k mp3 version as an instant download and includes free shipping.

Available to buy now, on CD, 320k mp3 and 24bit flac.

Further info

Available now from all good record shops,
or more accurately, only available from these stores…
Microscopics
Ultimae
Databloem
Hypnos
CDBaby

Also digitally from iTunes and AmazonMP3

Here is what happens when you pass raw electronic waveforms through a voltage to electron beam converter, more commonly know as an Oscilloscope, and map the input voltages to Lissajous curves. Pure analog in:analog out.

View on YouTube

The music is ‘Vapourware‘ from the album Gas 0095.
Equipment used: Sequencial Circuits Pro-One, Korg Station.

Credit: Many thanks to Albert Callejo for the Oscilloscopes.

Downloads…
Gas - Vapourware (mpeg 60mb)
Gas - Vapourware (ipod video 11mb)

Related…
Gas - Microscopic

This is the original uncropped image from 1994 used for the cover of Gas 0095…

The original scan, used as a placeholder for the printers. click to enlarge

The Designers Republic original Freehand layout. Click to enlarge

I chose a jellyfish (comb jelly, ctenophore), as it is probably one of the most alien looking species on earth; has no brain, no eyes that we would recognise, kind of alien and Earthly at the same time; just bizarre and beautiful. I chose this particular photograph for its striking graphic qualities and simple colours, plus it almost looks like an alien spaceship zooming off into the night.

The artwork was designed by Ian Anderson the big cheese at The Designers Republic, who went on to become superstars of the graphic design world with their original ideas, style and humour,  and are in the enviable position of being able to pick and chose their preferred projects, from Sony’s Aibo to Aphex Twin to the Emit series…

A big thank you to Ian Anderson who sent us the original files, produced in Macromedia Freehand on the Mac back in the middle ages (1994).

Links
The Designers Republic
The Designers Republic - Wikipedia
Comb Jellies (Ctenophora) - Wikipedia

Rhapsody (Realnetworks) has announced it is going drm free and has converted its five million songs to mp3 format.

So now Rhapsody join Amazon, Napster and Zune to be wholly or mostly selling all their songs and albums in the universal and drm-free mp3 format. Apple’s iTunes store also sells some drm-free music, although it’s only in iPod format.

This is only good news for music lovers. Next, we want to see the big stores offering albums in flac format, and even 24bit flacs…

Gas 0095 is available drm-free from us, iTunes, Amazon, Napster and now Rhapsody.