Showing posts with label 1979. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1979. Show all posts

October 29, 2010

Yamaha CS-15 (1979)


















The CS-30 is a large, knob infested, black analog synthesizer with traditional features. It is a monophonic synth with extensive analog control and shaping. It has two oscillators with separate outputs, two VCF resonant filters, two VCA amplifiers and three envelopes. It also features a ring modulator, external audio triggering and a simple but useful 8-step sequencer for use as a sketch pad, pattern or arpeggio effect. The CS-30 does not have any on-board effects, memory nor MIDI. Although the CS-30 is just a monophonic synth with a short 44 note keyboard it offers a lot of programming flexibility, and plenty of knobs.
This synth really has its own sound. The CS-15's got style. Built like a tank with a lot of nice knobs and best of all, not one but two of those funny sounding multimode filters. It's actually a duophonic / bitimbral synth but you have to connect it to CV (Hz/V like Korg not V/Oct) to get the extra voice. Each of the two VCOs has its own CV/Gate control.

June 06, 2010

Throbbing Gristle - 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979)























20 Jazz Funk Greats is the third studio album by the british Industrial Music pioneers Throbbing Gristle. It was released in December 1979, through record label Industrial. It is the band's first fully studio album, as prior albums contained both live and studio recordings. The production is credited to "Sinclair/Brooks". The album's cover photograph was taken at Beachy Head, a chalk headland on the south coast of England, close to the town of Eastbourne in the county of East Sussex, and one of the world's most notorious suicide spots. On the 1981 Fetish Records issue of the release an apparently dead and naked male body lay in front of the band on the album cover. Someone described the album's style as such: "In a smash and grab that testifies to both increased musical ambition and a relentless urge to wrongfoot audience expectations, 20 Jazz Funk Greats finds the band waking up from D.O.A.'s dark night of the soul and feeling curiously frisky. Snacking on not only the titular funk and jazz, the band also takes touristic zig zags through exotica, rock and disco", ultimately describing it as a "kitsch detour toward mutant disco".