Gig review: Sparks, Sep 2017

Oli Freke · October 2, 2017

Sparks: O2 Empire Shepherds Bush, London
Thurs 21st September 2017

Arrived a bit late for this one - partway through the set, but caught enough to have a good time.

Sparks are a fascinating band - they've been around for nearly 50 years having formed in 1968. An extraordinary feat in itself. And yet they've never really fit neatly into a pigeon-hole. Yes, they're part-glam, part-rock opera, part-Kurt Well, part-college rock humour, but then they've also worked with Giorgo Moroder and many others. A unique band in many ways.

Good melodies and wryly amusing lyrics are their staples, along with Ron's deadpan Hitler-mistachioed presence. (The highlight was Ron suddenly breaking character and doing a mad loping shuffle dance during the breakdown of 'Number One in Heaven'. Genius)

Songs on their new album fit into their general oeuvre with great titles like, 'Apart from that, how did you like the play Mrs Lincoln?' and 'Scandinavian Design'.

These new tracks were interspersed amongst the classics like, 'Number one in heaven', 'This town ain't big enough for the both of us', and my current favourite, 'My baby's driving me home'.

So - great back catalogue, great stage presence and an enthusiastic crowd of fans made for a genuinely enjoyable, unpretentious and feel good evening.

Videos

Great 80s synth video with a guy in braces and Herbie Hancock

Oli Freke · August 29, 2017

Also Vince Clark demonstrating his system. For some reason playing drums using a string sound to record with. Surely he didn't always do that..

Posters

Very nice electronic music poster: Electric Love Blueprint

Oli Freke · June 14, 2017

Follow the link below to see a very nice poster charting the history of electronic music. The twist is that it's presented as an electronic circuit board, making it super attractive to look at.

I'm not sure if the electronic components in any way relate to the bands who have been assigned resistors, capacitors, etc, but I think it would be even better if it did. Kraftwerk should naturally be shown as a power-cell, for example...

Anyway, click the image below to see the full poster on the www.wearedorothy.com website, where you can purchase a copy.

Videos

More Vangelis - this time a long documentary type thing

Oli Freke · May 24, 2017

On a bit of a Vangelis research tip at the moment. I've been listening to his music all my life, but never knew very much about him. Always seemed very mysterious and from another planet, seemingly never giving interviews and so forth.

On the other hand, that's probably because the internet didn't exist then, and as it turns out, he's been in the public eye giving lots of interviews over the years.

Lots of interesting stuff in this and plenty of epic synths and Mr V playing 'em!

Videos

The Devil's Work (aka Vangelis' synthesizer)

Oli Freke · May 22, 2017

What in all that’s holy is this machine Vangelis is using in this video? At 4 secs in – the rotating one-arm bandit thing with heretical symbols on it. What on earth is it?

I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s quite bizarre!

Update: a knowledgeable keyboard playing friend of mine has pointed me in the direction of the answer to this...unsurprisingly, it's a weird custom thing:

"The user with the nickname "Red Baron" who uploaded this video in Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/80936319), wrote the following interesting comments:

1) All these white boxes are a custom MIDI system made by YES Audio under the orders of Vangelis and especially for his playing needs. The big terminal white boxes write on the back side "YES AUDIO, CUSTOM DESIGN FOR VANGELIS". This custom setup is connected to various synths, mainly racks. Also he uses 17 foot pedals, 16 volume and one sustain pedal as you see in the video. All this system help him to play live without the need of overdubs and sequencers. In fact, Vangelis compose/arrange/play and record at the same time! Its a unique technique and he is using it at least the last 25 years, this MIDI system is already in use since early/middle 90s.

2) Its obvious that this guy is genius. :-) I can't think any other keyboardist in any genre that he can play like Vangelis. What Vangelis can arrange, play and record in 5 minutes, the rest of keyboardists need few hours or more to do the same thing with all these DAWs and record methods they use. What Vangelis plays the most of the times, the result is a ready to release music work without the need of overdubs or post production. The whole system is connected to few RADAR hard recording systems, whatever he plays is always recorded. He uses Mackie consoles to connect his synths from his main setup and in his studio the main final console is a Euphonix System 5-B. You can see it in the video infront him."

Peter Howell demonstrates the Dr Who theme on Arp Odyssey & Yamaha CS-80

Oli Freke · May 10, 2017

Great little clip of Peter Howell explaining how he produced his version of the Dr Who theme using an Arp Odyssey and Yamaha CS-80. This is in the late, great BBC Radiophonic Workshop, of course.