Robert Moog

With a smart little synthesiser app on their title page (that actually allows you to record four tracks of “music”) Google tells me its Robert Moogs 78th birthday today..

Now being a bit of an electronic music fan, Mr Moog’s  instruments have played a huge part in the sound of my musical back catalogue: from the Progness of Yes, Genesis, and Floyd, through the squeaks and wobbles of Kraftwerk, Jean Michel Jarre and Tangerine Dream, to the masterly sequencing of Giorgio Moroder and the electronic stylings of Travelogue era Human League, right through to today and Etienne Jaumet’s timeless Nightworks EP, I have always loved the sound of analogue oscillators, sequencers and modulators…

So happy birthday Mr Moog and thank you very much indeed for many thousands of hours of listening pleasure, created (I know not how) by these extraordinary machines…

The Moog logo is also a timelss and lovely thing..

 

Grimes – Genesis

I knew nothing about Grimes before I wrote this post, other than I really liked the snatches of a beautiful bass line and wispy vocals from a song that I’ve been hearing over the office radio for the past few weeks, and was intrigued that Lauren Laverne and Steve Lamacq kept referring to Genesis… surely this wasn’t Phil Collins’s new direction..

 

Thankfully it wasn’t, and I now know that Grimes’s real name is Claire Boucher, she’s Canadian, she rocks a pretty cool look and having released two critically acclaimed LP’s, has recently signed to one of my favourite labels, the ever consistent 4AD Records, for her third album, which will be released shortly.

This wonderful tune reminds me of Kraftwerk, The Cocteau Twins, The Orb, Kirsty Hawkshaw, in fact everything I like about electronic music…

There’s some more of her music on Spotify, nothing as instant as this track, but certainly some beautiful tunes that I suspect will grow on me more and more as I listen to them over the coming weeks.

Definitely someone to keep an ear on…

Roger Dean & Storm Thorgerson

I got quite excited the other day when I saw that two of my all time graphic design heroes were giving a seminar/ presentation at the O2 in April, so I ordered two tickets and confess that I am looking forward to their show and tell…. I’d like to think it might be in the form of a DJ style battle, with one artist presenting an image and then the other looking to better it.. that’d be pretty good fun.

Roger Dean is perhaps most famous for the work he did with the band Yes, and their various offshoot projects. This includes the bands instantly recognisable logo and countless album covers he did during the 1970′s and 80′s, most notably Fragile, Tales from Topographic Oceans and Yessongs, a triple live album that used a huge amount of cardboard.

Storm Thorgerson, one of the founding partners of Hipgnosis is also responsible for a truly impressive selection of album covers, most notably ones by Pink Floyd, Genesis and Led Zeppelin.

Whilst both artists are renowned for their very vivid imaginations, their styles are very different. Dean mostly works (or used to, I wouldn’t be surprised if he uses digital media now) with acrylic paint and produces breathtaking images that  capture  fantastic and otherworldly landscapes.  Thorgerson on the other hand generally uses photographic images which are then modified to produce the slightly odd and sometimes unsettling views and perspectives for which he is famous.

I’ve lost track of their more recent work, so I’m hopeful that this presentation will bring me up to date as well as acting as a timely reminder or their immeasurable contributions to both music and art.