Pet Shop Synthesis

2021 Revision 

Pet Shop Synthesis is by far my most popular blog post and still seems to be providing people with enjoyment 13 years after I wrote it. However, a lot has changed since 2008, and whilst the majority of the text remains valid, there are a few inaccuracies and quirks of formatting that left the article looking a bit tired. Thus, I have revised the text and tried to bring it a bit more up to date. It's still not perfect, but I will endeavour to iterate and tweak it to keep improving.

Unfortunately I have had to turn off comments for this and all my other posts as this article seems to attract spam on a daily basis otherwise.

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The remastered CD isn't quite in crisis yet, not with Crises anyway

Crises by Mike Oldfield has always been one of my favourite albums. As a fan of the sound of the Fairlight CMI and eighties music in general, the twenty minute title cut really has everything for me. The second side opens with the hit single ‘Moonlight Shadow’ and the Jon Anderson collaboration ‘In High Places’. Nobody needs pretend ‘Foreign Affair’ is anything other than filler but the intricacies of ‘Taurus 3’ soon banish it. Proceedings close with Oldfield’s take on "heavy metal" in ‘Shadow on the wall’ which features some of co-producer Simon Philips best drumming (gated snares and all!!).

The new deluxe and super deluxe editions take the original 1983 masters and see them baked one last time for mixing in pro tools. The new masters are obviously louder but seem to offer more stereo separation without losing too much of the dynamics. It’s a good job and these tend to be few and far between in the loudness wars.

 

The 5 disc ‘super deluxe’ box set is a lesson in how to make a great reissue. Other record companies should take note (EMI I’m looking you squarely in the eye here, the ‘Electronic’ reissue was a complete shambles). The fact that Oldfield himself has completed the new 5.1 surround mixes and seems to have generally been involved in the project is telling. This is a considered and worthy re-release of a great album.

It's OK not to love Tubular Bells.......

Like many others, the first Mike Oldfield record I ever heard was Tubular Bells. I didn’t buy the album when it came out as it was released the same year I was born. In fact, I didn’t buy it at all. Back in the 80’s when CD players were first becoming popular; manufacturers would bundle in free CD’s with a new player. One of my five (yes five) freebies was Tubular Bells. When I first played it I was totally bemused by it and rarely listened to it again - I was expecting something different.

It wasn’t until I saw the premier of Tubular Bells II on TV a few years later that I thought this Oldfield guy might actually be quite good. I went back to Tubular Bells but still found it a bit too odd and gritty for my taste. The sequel however, was a glistening and fluid journey through a magnificent musical landscape. I decided to blindly venture into Oldfield’s extensive back catalogue and see what else came up (not something I would recommend without assistance).

Now, if the next album I had bought had been Discovery or Islands my Oldfield odyssey might well have ended there and then. Happily my next purchase was Crises. As a fan of the Fairlight the title track was an immediate favourite. If you couple that with Moonlight Shadow and a few other less well known but interesting songs, you have a great album. In fact Crises (the track, not the album) remains my favourite Oldfield composition. Suddenly I was a Mike Oldfield fan.

When The Songs of Distant Earth was released I was stunned. For some reason I found it a quite affecting piece of music and the more I revisited the album the better it seemed to become. I still like to listen to the whole album rather than selected tracks as it is such a cohesive and moving piece of work. It remains my favourite Mike Oldfield album by quite some way.

Fast forward twenty years (surely not...*checks*…yes twenty) and Oldfield has just released some nonsense remix album that is barely worth the entrance fee. I started reading some reviews online just to check that my opinion of Tubular Beats isn’t too out of step with fellow fans. As a devotee of electronic, rather than acoustic or guitar driven music, I always assumed my opinions on Oldfield albums were often contrary to the majority of his fans. But the more opinions I read online the more I realised my destain for Tubular Beats and love of Crises and The Songs of Distant Earth is shared by many.

So if you are a Mike Oldfield fan; I’d just like to say, it’s OK not to love Tubular Bells. You are not alone.

All the sounds of the Fairlight CMI in one CD

I have always been aware of the group ACT because of Claudia Brucken’s involvement. However, her collaborator on his project, one Thomas Leer, was until recently something of a mystery to me. Having recently acquired his 1985 album “The Scale of Ten” I seem to have discovered a Fairlight/Linn Drum classic.

The whole album is created on the Fairlight CMI and sounds like a cross between The Art of Noise, Thomas Dolby and Peter Gabriel with a bit of pop thrown in for good measure. The samples Leer uses are lo-fi 8 bit crunchy brilliance that could only come from a Fairlight. As the album unfolds some classic Fairlight presets are thrown in with some futher creative sampling to add the magic. This is the album I always wanted to hear the Fairlight produce.

For the ridiculously low price of £4.98 you can buy a CD that shows of an electronic ‘instrument’ like no other. Yes, Mr Leer has a good voice, and some of his songs are really quite brilliant, but the fascination for me is hearing a Fairlight used imaginatively. Sure Jarre, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel et al used the Fairlight to great effect but rarely in such isolation. If you wish to hear this machine in its full glory these is no better place to start.

The democratisation of music creation

Whilst reading an interview with the group Blancmange (circa 1984) one statement by Stephen Luscombe struck me as being highly prophetic.

The article in question comes from an early music technology magazine and centres on the groups use of the then revolutionary UMI 2B sequencer. The UMI was a MIDI interface that allowed a BBC ‘B’ computer to act as a 16-track sequencer. This does not sound exciting now, but back in 1984, the only alternative was to use systems such as the Fairlight CMI or the NED Synclavier. When you consider the BBC ‘B’ cost around £399 and a Fairlight £25,000, you can see why the UMI caused such a stir. Vince Clarke owned a Fairlight back in 1984 but quickly saw sense and switched to the UMI and Casio CZ-101 synthesizers; he never looked back.

“It’s an interesting concept, and a very levelling one, to think that over the next few years both amateurs, would be pop stars, and actual recording artists might be using exactly the same type of set ups to create music, and that the days of wistfully wondering whether the only difference between yourself and your idols is a massive recording budget are numbered.”

As well as being one of the longest sentences I have ever read, this quote is a very accurate summary of exactly what would happen over the next ten years. Yet this statement is more problematic for me than it might seem at first glance. I did indeed spend a great deal of time listening back to my compositions in the late 80’s thinking: “If only I had a Fairlight CMI I could be the next Jarre”. The problem was obviously the equipment I used and if I had the money, I could be a recoding artist.

However, in the same article Stephen Luscombe hits the nail on the head when he says, “It’s the democratisation of music really, which is good. But even with computers it’s still the same thing of ‘shit in, shit out’. At the end of the day it’s what you put in to the thing that counts.”

The incredible democratisation of music technology which has occurred over the last 20 years is taken for granted by new comers but is still a thing of wonder to those of us who remember dreaming of DX7’s and Fairlights. Yet the flip side of cheap professional quality recording equipment is the realisation that you can’t accomplish the same results as your idols. When music technology was prohibitively expensive, we could still convince ourselves that our talent was only restricted by the fact that we had no money. Now I know differently.

Yet on reflection I’d still rather have my bedroom filled with DX7’s, D50’s, microphones and a super computer and produce crap music than to simply dream of something that I might never experience. You never know I might still write that number 1 album.

My obsession with the Fairlight

For me it all began in 1988. The Fairlight CMI music computer became something of an obsession. Ironically 1988 saw the demise of the company and the end of one of the most influential pieces of music technology. But the 1980’s were about only one instrument for me and its effect lingers to this day. 

The Pet Shop Boys album ‘Actually’ was one of my favourites in the 1980’s. As with many records around this time, ‘Actually’ included a credit to the ‘Fairlight programmer’. Much of the music I listened too seemed to use the Fairlight and as a budding electronic musician I had to know more about it.

In the days before the internet the only source of information on such obscure topics as music synthesizers were books. I first saw a picture of the Fairlight CMIIx in a biography of my musical hero Jean-Michel Jarre [see right]. Jarre sits poised with his light pen ready to edit waveforms with his modular Moog 55 behind him. Forget the pink jump suit.

Gradually I began to recognise the distinctive sound of the Fairlight everywhere. I also learned just how expensive it was and realised such a thing would only ever be a dream for me. I wanted one very badly for many years.

Yet as music and technology moved on in the early 90’s, the Fairlight was discarded. To be honest I moved on too as the new dance scene took over with its Akai S1000 beats and Korg M1 piano riffs. 

In my nostalgic middle age, I find myself listening to the songs of my youth and the yearning for the Fairlight CMI is rekindled. Recently I acquired many of the original CMIIx samples to use in my software sampler and was amazed at how terrible they are. The poor quality of the 8-bit samples gave me an even deeper admiration for the artists who used this synthesizer to make such polished and beautiful music from such a low quality source. I have no doubt that as this blog continues the Fairlight will crop up many times.