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Susan Gardener

Susan Gardener Radio

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08 Pripyat
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08 Pripyat
Album:
Released: Jan 1, 2009
Label:

General Info

  • Genre: Electronica / Techno

    Location South, UK

    Profile Views: 22599

    Last Login: 1/3/2013

    Member Since 7/24/2009

    Record Label Beachmusic

    Type of Label Unsigned

  • Bio

    .. ..The Forest of Miracles.. is out now on ..iTunes.., ..Amazon.., and ..Play.com... The CD release is imminent... .. .. Enjoy my new video ..Pripyat.. - my tribute to the ghost town of Chernobyl, featuring the amazing photography of Nige Burton. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ...... .. .. The album has a theme - I'll leave it to your imagination and googling powers to work it out, but there's a huge clue in the video. .... An explanation though of the track Softlight 11.08.99: it's a musical landscape describing my experiences of the solar eclipse 10 years ago. Wow! was it really 10 years ago? We took a boat out into the middle of the channel. We were worried we wouldn't see anything as we were only getting occasional glimpses of the sun through the clouds. At the time of the eclipse though, the clouds parted and we got a perfect view of nature at her most majestic - very privileged when most of the UK was buried under cloud! .... In the music you hear the 'sun theme' sneaking in regularly in its variations, the moon's shadow approaching the boat, the diamond ring, the eclipse itself, the 2nd diamond ring and finally the shadow receding. .... I hope you enjoy Softlight and her brothers and sisters ;-) ...... A little about me: .... I started playing guitar in my early teens as a form of rebellion - I had no money but I stole all my dad's cigarette tokens (remember them?) and found another pile of tokens for £1 in a junk shop and sent away for a cheap trashy acoustic from the cigarette catalogue - the only good that ever came from my dad's chain-smoking. The guitar had a terrible action and hurt my fingers but I was able to learn all the chords in the 'Beatles complete' book and even try a few Led Zeppelin songs. .... This was the time though of late 70s/ early 80s synth pop, Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Visage, Ultravox, and I coveted my friends EDP Wasp synth - what a great sound from such a cheap plasticy looking beast - classic synth, just a shame about the touch action keyboard. Unfortunately even the Wasp was out of my financial reach. .... University beckoned and armed with my first grant cheque (yes, these were the days of funded education!) I purchased... a classic synth? ... well no - still somewhat out of my price range, but an electric guitar was a step in the right direction - I have my Yamaha SC-800 to this day - you can hear it on the track 'A Forest of Miracles'. .... Various student bands followed, I learnt my craft on the guitar, but still found myself coveting other peoples synths - our keyboard player had a Korg Delta - a very under-rated, if somewhat limited, synth with a nice string layer. The rich kids in one of the other bands had a Jupiter-8 though - wow! At least we got to play with a Prophet-5 and TR-808 in our one session in a recording studio. .... The world of work followed and my first pay cheque bought a Yamaha DX7. I loved that beast, and even reckoned I could program it - I came up with some really cool, if slightly anarchic sounds. Having sold the DX7 some years ago to fund a car, I recently bought a DX7IIFD - more a nostalgic purchase really, as the sounds don't really live up to the expectation of one's memories, but expect to hear it on some of my future releases. .... Over the years I've slowly amassed a collection of the sort of gear I yearned for in my youth - Korg M1, Octave Cat, Waldorf Pulse, Roland JX8P and JP-8000, Roland S760 sampler with colour monitor upgrade (beautiful piece of kit, but sadly overtaken by computer sampling), Yamaha AN1x, Roland TR-909, most of which you can hear on 'The Forest of Miracles', and I seem to now be amassing a collection of classic drum machines such as the Roland CR8000, Korg Minipops 120, Bentley Rhythm Ace and a circuit bent Alesis HR16 which will pressed into service on future releases. .... I was proud of my first release 'Music from the motionless picture', but felt I was let down by a lack of computer power - it was recorded pretty much live from the hardware, driven by MIDI from an underpowered PC. .... The arrival of enough computing power to work 'in the box' has freed me to create the music I'd always dreamt of producing. I love the Spectrasonics Omnisphere synth, and the Arturia V-collection, including the wonderful ARP 2600 and Yamaha CS80 emulations. The trouble is, having now played these, plus the Jupiter-8 and Prophet-5 virtually, it just makes me want to own the originals even more. Ah well - I guess I'll never lose my love of classic hardware. Anyone have an EDP Wasp they don't want? ;-) .... I hope you enjoy 'The Forest of Miracles'. .... You can listen to the album now on ...... with an extra track 'Graphite'.

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