Worlds in a small room – interview with Steve Jansen (former member of Japan)
Steelberry Clones had the great opportunity to talk to Steve Jansen during his recent visit to Sweden. Steve Jansen was former percussionist in the legendary 1980’s new romantic act Japan (also featuring David Sylvian, Richard Barbieri and Mick Karn). After the band decided to quit in 1982 Steve has embarked on a long and successful journey, some times in collaboration with his brother David Sylvian on his solo albums, sometimes in more unknown appearances together with Japanese artists like Yukohiro Takahashi (YMO), but also driving more pop orientated endeavors with the Dolphin Brothers, which he started together with Richard Barbieri. Steve Jansen has at many occasions been dubbed as one of the most important percussionist of his time, and the characteristic sound that gave way for their all time selling album Tin Drum, has provided him with the opportunity to play with most of the leading artists since then. I wanted to know more on what has happened since then, his views on today’s music scene and the evolution of electronic music, as well as discovering his more recent works in the border lands between pop, ambient, arts and experimental music.
Today’s music scene
Steve Jansen is a highly productive musician, if it is not something on his own doing you will certainly find Steve in collaborations with David Sylvian, John Foxx, or as part of the band on tour with Ryuichi Sakamoto in Japan. So I asked Steve to give me an update on what he is up to right now and his collaboration with Sugizo.
Most recently Steve has been involved in finalizing Mick Karn’s new Dalis Car album, partly to keep his spirit alive, but also as a fund raising initiative for his relatives. Steve has therefore been active both as a mixer and performer of the new album and engaged in the process of reworking some of the new tracks. The yet untitled album is due out in the October – November time frame. As most of you know Mick Karn died recently and one of things that Mick Karn was doing at the time was to produce a new Dalis Car album. Dalis Car’s first album “The Walking Hour” released in 1984 was an interesting album where the borders between various musical styles were mixed to create a very unique album at the time. With Sugizo Steve recently contributed a rhythm track to a new recording, a track also featuring Mick Karn on bass.
With some thirty years as a musician, working across most prominent genres – as a new romantic pop star as part of Japan, to exploring the fields of ambient electronics and jazz fusion, to bridging the gap between modern art visuals and experimental music, it is highly relevant to ask Steve’s view on today’s music scene. Steve says that today’s scene is of course in many ways very different from back when he started his career. The power of the record companies put a lot of constraints and pressure on the bands to deliver on time, but also to make music in line with what they and the fans were requesting – “pleasing the record label almost became a means to an end”, Steve says. Today you have much more freedom to explore and the artists does not work under the same pressure. So although it is harder to make a living you are the one in control. With modern music technology you almost have endless possibilities to manipulate sounds and craft your own ideas – inside your head.
Back to Japan
You really cannot write about Steve without touching on the subject of Japan, both as a band and as the country where both David and Steve over the years has continued to find inspiration, collaborations and a solid fan base. When Japan ended as a band in 1982, (doing their last tour in Japan, followed by a live album), the band members ended up doing several projects on their own or in collaborations with each other.
I wanted to know how this fascination with Japan as a country came to shape their music going forward. Steve tells me that it has probably been more that they have all individually made their own subjective interpretations of the music. And although it was a strong influence on the Tin Drum album, Steve says that more recently it has been more important for him to embrace modern rhythms and electronic sounds, although that he has in his collaboration with Sugizo been working to incorporate the sounds of traditional Japanese Taiko drums.
Steve and David Sylvian have over the years done several highly acclaimed albums where they have been exploring the boundaries of ambient, electronic and jazz. As a listener you can easily picture late night improvisations where Steve and David together with other musicians like Harold Budd and Robert Fripp, would jam together beautiful ambient landscapes. I wanted to know if this was an accurate image of the music production process and how the songs took their shape.
Wheel Ring
Gear used:
Wiard AO Uncle
Toppobrillo Quantimator TWF
Make Noise René Brains PP Wogglebug QMMG Math
4ms Noise Swash RCD
Analogue systems RS 110
Doepfer A 117
A 134 cv from Moog MP 201
Featured hardware – RS 110:
The RS110 consists of a two channel audio mixer followed by four, parallel, resonant filters with voltage controlled frequency and a unique “insert” point in the feedback path that generates and controls resonance.
Filter Modes
The RS110 offers four filter modes. These are 24dB/oct low-pass, 24dB/oct high-pass, 12dB/oct band-pass and 12dB/oct band reject (often called ‘notch’) filtering, with the cutoff frequencies (Fc) of the high-pass and low-pass outputs being the centre frequencies of the band-pass and notch outputs. Each of these filter characteristics is described in appendix 2.
There is no switch to select between the modes because all four are available simultaneously from the appropriate output sockets. However, the cut-off and resonance can not be defined individually for each, and the controls act upon each mode equally
Cutoff Frequency
You can control the cut-off frequency manually using the FREQUENCY control. In its fully anticlockwise position, Fc is approximately 30Hz. As you rotate the knob clockwise Fc will increase until, it its fully clockwise position, it exceeds 15kHz. These extreme positions are called ‘closed’ and ‘open’ respectively. You may also control Fc using one or both of the CV inputs:
If you apply a CV conforming to the 1V/oct standard, Fc will track the CV in exactly the same way as an RS90 VCO would if you applied the same CV to its CV-IN 1V/OCT socket. If the CV is supplied from a keyboard then, in common parlance, the filter is tracking the keyboard 100% and, with the resonance at maximum, you can ‘play’ the filter as if it were a conventional oscillator. You can also use this facility to make a notch or band-pass filter “track” the notes you are playing, and this can be used to create many special effects.
You may wish Fc to track incoming CVs differently, so the CV-IN VARY input is provided. This socket and its associated LEVEL control allow you to specify the filter’s sensitivity to CVs within the range ×V/oct to approximately 0.4V/oct. The former of these makes the filter invariant to incoming CVs, while the latter makes it over-sensitive compared to CV-IN.
You can determine Fc in the range 3Hz to 50kHz using combinations of the frequency control knob and the voltage control inputs.
Resonance
The filters have a common resonance, ‘Q’, that you can control using the RESONANCE knob. In its fully anticlockwise position, Q is approximately zero, and there is no emphasis of the signal at Fc. As you rotate the knob clockwise Q will increase, whereupon every mode of the RS110 will accentuate the harmonics that lie close to the cut-off frequency, Fc. Increasing Q further, the filters will exhibit ringing, and will severely colour any signals passed through them. Finally, if you continue to increase the resonance beyond a certain point, the filter will itself begin to oscillate, even in the absence of an input. Each mode will now produce a stable tone at the cutoff frequency determined by the various controls. This oscillation takes the form of (approximately) a sine wave, and it is produced by all four of the conventional audio outputs. The exact nature of the wave varies slightly from mode to mode, and you can use these subtle differences to create tonal variation when using the RS110 as an oscillator.
Real-Time Granular Synthesis Meets iPad
ApeSoft iDensity is designed for asynchronous sound file granulation, offering iPad users a genuine granular playground able to generate a wide range of effects, from common to downright weird. These effects include time / pitch shifting, time / pitch jittering, intricate textures, grain fountain / pulverizer, recording and manipulation of buffers, complex scrub pad exploration, dynamic envelope shaping, and many more.
As apeSoft notes, iDensity for iPad will give you all the basic and advanced tools you need to manipulate sound in subtle and surprising ways. All these features are packed in an optimized, user-friendly, visually sharp interface that is easy to access when improvising live, composing in a studio, or sound designing at home and on the go.
The iDensity app allows you to record audio directly with your iPad mic and load up to nine built-in sound samples or add your own WAV, AIFF, CAF, MP3, M4A or MP3 files via iTunes. Moreover, iDensity makes it possible to record the stereo output (of granulation) into the documents folder while scrubbing in the wavepad or moving granulation parameters in real-time. The mixdown / audio results can then be synchronized with iTunes.
iDensity features at a glance:
- Nine built-in sound samples
- Record audio directly with iPad mic
- Add WAV, AIFF, CAF, MP3, M4A, or MP3 files via iTunes
- Capture audio output — up to eight shapes for the grain envelope
- Record the granulation audio output
- WavePad zoom selection — wavePad scrub
- WavePad peak normalize, and more
For more information on the iDenisty app for iPad, visit the iTunes App Store or the app’s dedicated Web site, densitygs.com.
Cool new beats on the new DSI Tempest drum machine
“This is a demo of some of the things i’ve come up with the past week that i’ve been one of the lucky beta testers for the DSI Tempest. I’m loving it so far.. finding it very inspiring to play and use and create new drum beats and sounds. I’m going to try to tell some of the things about the Tempest that arent talked about too much already.”
“The design of Tempest reflects a rethinking of what a drum machine needs to be in the current era. It’s not so much a drum machine as a new musical performance instrument for the creation, manipulation, and arrangement of beat-oriented music, with an intuitive and efficient use of human gestures.”
Tempest’s 16 velocity- and pressure-sensitive pads are arranged in an 8 x 2 array to facilitate both real-time and step entry of beats. Two pressure- and position-sensitive Note FX slide controllers provide a unique new method of performance and control.
Android 3.2 synth real-time HDMI out and EerieSynth, microtonal synthesizer
ACER ICONIA A100 android 3.2 Honeycomb
http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/12/acer-iconia-tab-a100-r…
Realtime HDMI output of
Ethereal Dialpad synthesizer
Drag your finger around the screen to create
flowing music with this expressive touch synthesizer.
please contact adam smith for Developer kit available for making your own dialpads.
http://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~amsmith/
“A demo of a new app I’m working on. It’s not ready yet, but it will be soon. “
Sinner’s Day 2011 featuring Front 242, Recoil and….
…and here is the complete line up:
On Sunday 30 October 2011 Hasselt (BE) will host the best of new wave, EBM, electro, synthpop, post punk, darkwave and industrial. For this 3rd edition the festival will work with 2 stages in the main hall of the Ethias Arena so that visitors no longer need to choose between 2 different halls.
Here’s a round-up of the bands playing:
FRONT 242 (BE) – Undeniable the biggest electronic band that Belgium ever was able to export before, during and after (and not thanks to) the New Beat era. Signed nowadays with the Belgian electro label Alfa Matrix they are set for a few more surprises in the next months. The influential Belgian band will celebrate its 30th birthday at Sinner’s Day. Happy birthday guys!
THE CULT (UK) – The band became cult itself by melting Led Zeppelin’s hard rock with The Doors’ mystique and The Cure’s dark new wave. If there’s one The Cult song that you all know, it’s the anthem and million seller “She Sells Sanctuary” which was recorded for the band’s second album “Love” (1985). This will be a unique opportunity to see the band live.
THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS (UK) – The Psychedelic Furs were top of the bill in the Club during Sinner’s Day 2010. It was their first concert in Belgium since 25 years. They are back now for the main stage bringing a mix between punk and pop.
THE EXPLOITED (UK) – Punk and New Wave, the pair has gone together for years. Since 1980 The Exploited has been the image ‘par excellence’ of the punk movement with “Punk’s Not Dead” being their first legendary album. 11 guitar players, 10 bass players and 8 drummers, we’ll see singer Wattie Buchan showing that the band has still enough guts after 31 odd years.
JOHN FOXX AND THE MATHS (UK) – John Foxx was the original singer of Ultravox and was the very first British artist to actually make a complete synthesizer album. Foxx was also the guy who penned “Underpass”. Enough said? Well, he also was responsible of Gareth Jones joining up with Mute records.
RECOIL (UK) – Recoil is the project of Alan Wilder, the former musical director, sound sculptor, producer, magician (…) of Depeche Mode. Wilder was also one of the first musicians to work with samples. Live he creates a universe of sounds which you hoped you’d have heard before. Expect the necessary Depeche Mode hints during the live show. This is one of the last shows Recoil will probably bring for a very long time, so make sure to be there.
BLANCMANGE (UK) – Contemporaries of Depeche Mode, Soft Cell, The The and more (they were all featured on the Some Bizarre CD compilation with rare to find tracks or versions), Blancmange brings catchy synthpop presented by their first big worldhit “Living On The Ceiling”. In the rest of Europe they scored massively with the brilliant track “Don’t Tell Me”.
DIAMANDA GALAS (USA) – We thought we had missed our last chance to see her live at work, but behold, there’s always Sinner’s Day to make us happy. The American diva with Greek roots has an amazing voice, period. Her 3,5 octaves cut through you like a knife. From vocal terror to endearing blues and back. We couldn’t have described it better. For the connaisseurs, she also sang vocals on various Recoil tracks. A must see if you are more an eclectic music fan.
KMFDM (GER) – Teutonic sounds will come from KMFDM, better know as Kein Mehrheid Fuer Die Mitleid (or as ‘Kill Mother Fucking Depeche Mode’). The band was founded by Sascha Konietzko in 1984. Konietzko literally lives and breathes industrial.
THE MISSION (UK) – Here’s another Side-Line favorite (really Wayne!). The band singlehanded helped give gothic a face (Andrew Elderitch being too numb) and got massive MTV airtime with “Deliverance” or yet the beautiful “Butterfly on a wheel”. On Sinner’s Day they will celebrates their 25th anniversary. The gig will be the only concert in Belgium this year.
KARL BARTOS (GER) – Kraftwerk is half dead, long live Karl Bartos. Expect bleeps and beeps that lay in the line of what he used to do with Kraftwerk. We are very much looking forward to see this Einzelgaenger at work.
VISAGE (UK) – Visage is the brainchild of the remarkable Steve Strange, who not only graced the tabloids for the brilliant tunes he crafted but also for his very chaotic life style. His major hit “Fade To Grey” is still being played worldwide. Let’s see what he can deliver us live in 2011.
PATTI SMITH (USA) – This American lady is labeled as ‘the ultimate queen of new wave’. Debby Harry was better looking so is said – well tastes differ – but Smith surely was more vigorous. Her most famous songs are “Gloria”, “Because The Night”, “Dancing Barefoot” and “People Have The Power”.
Doors open at 12AM, and the first show will start at 1PM. The last band will end at around 1AM, followed by after party. Tickets are only 58 euro in presale, so head for www.sinnersday.com to get hold of yours!
Improvised solos on the TouchContinuum
Background information:
The final release candidate version of the TouchContinuum!
I’m playing my Nord Modular G2X synth over MIDI.
The two solos were improvised over self made jamtracks.
Thanks to the new rounding algorithm, the intonation isn’t that bad this time 
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HOW TO GET IT
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There is NO DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE so far, but I’m working on it! The source code will be released on github.com under the GPLv3 licence.
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For more Informations about the multitouch table hardware I refer to my other videos.
Relectro – new effect plug-in for Windows and Mac
LinPlug has announced the release of Relectro, an effect plug-in for Windows and Mac.
The relectro is some kind of effect not yet existing, its dedicated to transform drum loops into something sounding substantially different, electronic, strange … suitable for almost any kind of electronic music
relectro features
- Main processing section with effects similar to
- – Compressor / expander alike section
- – Cut-filter with infinite edge steepeness
- – Comprehensive pitch sections for
- relative pitch changing of the input
- pitch fixing of the input
- (inverted) pitch following of the input signal
- – Variable wave repeat
- – Variable waveform replacement
- – EQ-alike section with 2 bands
- Main modulation section with
- – Two conventional LFO
- – Two modulation step sequencer
- – Modulation matrix with pitch- and volume-follow
- Output section with HP and LP filters and chorus.
- Two wheels for dry/wet blending and morphing.
- MIDI program change supported.
- MIDI learn. Settings can be saved / restored.
The LinPlug relectro for Windows and Mac (VST/AU/RTAS) is avaialble to purchase for $79 USD / 59 EUR.
Gary Numan – The Fall (Promo Edit)
1 x minute clip of Gary Numan’s new promo video The Fall. The full video is featured on the Super Deluxe and Deluxe Editions of the new album, Dead Son Rising
Gary Numan has a new studio album called Dead Son Rising.
The new album developed out of a set of demos the singer had left from previous projects, but as he explains: ‘The original ideas that sparked off these songs are now barely visible. It’s grown into another animal, something more experimental.”
Produced and co-written by Ade Fenton ( Numan’s collaborator on 2006’s Jagged), the material ranges from the heavily anthemic ‘The Fall’ (written about ‘an old friendship gone bad’) to the Arabic and ghostly ‘We Are The Lost’ and one of the standout moments, the brooding ‘Dead Sun Rising’. The latter both contain elements from a sci-fi fantasy story Numan has been writing over the last few years. Meanwhile, troubled relationships are explored on ‘For The Rest Of My Life’ and Not The Love We Dream Of’, and there’s also room for two instrumentals (‘Resurrection’ and ‘Into Battle’), showcasing some of the ‘soundtrack-type’ material that Numan and Fenton have been working on recently. It all adds up to one of Numan’s most atmospheric albums – one for those who loved his B-side experiments in the past but also containing some very direct, streamlined electronic rock in the likes of ‘Big Noise Transmission’, ‘The Fall’ and ‘When The Sky Bleeds, He Will Come’.
Track Listing
1. Resurrection
2. Big Noise Transmission
3. Dead Sun Rising
4. When The Sky Bleeds He Will Come
5. For The Rest Of My Life
6. Not The Love We Dream Of
7. The Fall
8. We Are The Lost
9. For The Rest Of My Life (Reprise)
10. Into Battle
11. Not The Love We Dream Of (Piano Version)
Available Now
Dead Son Rising is available exclusively through Gary Numan’s Official Shop and was released on September 15th.
The Echo from the Reason crew
Reason 6 introduces three new creative effect devices: Pulveriser, Alligator, and The Echo. In this micro tutorial we’ll take a look at The Echo.
The Echo brings together the best features of crisp digital delay, warm crunchy analog delay, space echoing tape delays, and even loop-based effects. We’ll take a look at the major functions of The Echo and explore a few ways you can use its powerful delay settings in your music.
For more information about The Echo and Reason 6, head over to www.propellerheads.se
This tutorial features a remix of “Everything” by Little Jinder, remixed by Mattias Häggström Gerdt
DATAMASKIN
