Wednesday 12 October 2011

Next album becomes clear

The next album will be the continuum of my last one, "strolling through electronic spaces". But it will also be different, maybe even surprising. I don't know if you can still call some tracks "songs" or "music" :)

For some tracks I returned to the concept of an album called "Erste Impressionen" I made around 10 years ago, sadly not available anywhere. That concept is to create something, a mood or an athmosphere with sound. So, some tracks are no traditional music, they got inspired by Wendy Carlos, Karlheinz Stockhausen, FSOL and others. At some time Midicrash Surge did also do some tracks like that.

I hope to finish it soon.

Thursday 18 August 2011

Greater Daemon of Khorne

I got into Warhammer around 2003-2004 thanks to my cousin. I was surprised that it was not only about miniatures but the rules of the game itself were also well done. Despite the mass of rules, difficult to remember everything, we enjoyed playing quite often on his attic.

One day I saw this beast in the White Dwarf magazine and I was fascinated: The Greater Daemon of Khorne. I do not remember when I ordered one, maybe around 2004-2005.

I started washing, cleaning and removing the seams of it, I wanted to put my best effort in. But I was uncertain about the colours. So I left it "sleeping" ... for a few years.

In 2009 I grabbed the thing out of it's box to assemble it. That's when I realized that pieces were missing, they got probably lost during the move in 2007. Those spikes were no problem, I could easily do new ones and so I started putting the Beast together. Soon I got a problem to fix it's huge wings. The plastic did not fit exactly, there were holes. I abandoned the plastic glue and I attached the wings with green stuff. That didn't just allow me to fix them, it also filled the holes. After a little sculpting you won't even notice where the wings start.

14th June 2009 : First wing attached. Looks furious!

But then I remarked another missing piece : it's jaw was not there anymore! Since Forgeworld would not send me a new one (they do not sell spare parts) I knew that I had to try plastic surgery. I continued assembling Bloddy and left that matter for later. My next step was the orientation of it's axe. The first try was not very convincing.

16th June 2009
Putting the axe above it's wing and it was fixed.

16th June 2009 - Final position of the arm
As you can see on these images, the horns kept falling off of it, I had to learn how to manipulate this monster without disassembling it to pieces again...

My next step was it's mouth, I had to rebuild the jaw. I'm not a great sculptor, but it turned out rather well. So in November 2009 he got his lower teeth. If you look carefully you can even see its tongue inside.

11th November 2009 : New jaw and spike

Here it is in it's full glory.

11th November 2009 : Isn't he beautiful?
I coated it completely black and then... there was over a year of hesitation about the colour. Khorne should be red, but that original Bloodthirster just looks horrible.

Bloodthirster from Games Workshop
It just doesnt look "natural". Even though it's a fantasy creature I have to find it credible. uncertain of how to paint him, I searched other pictures for inspiration, even painted some miniatures from "Battle Masters" in nuances of red and brown but I got never convinced. I wanted the Khorne red on it, but didn't know how to do it.

During July 2011 I finally got the idea of painting it's skin grey, and leave the armor glow in red. With this new wind in it's wings I started painting.

First layer of red on the armor.

31st July 2011
 Added then a second coat of red and a first layer of paint for metal parts and it's skin

8th August 2011

8th August 2011

Note that he is still not finished and already looks amazing!

Warhammer - My origins

It all started back in the beginning of the 90's when I got my hands on the tabletop game Hero Quest. I bought almost every extension of it and also painted those little figures. We were playing regulary during the evenings at our boarding school.

Then followed the game "Battle Masters" ("Seigneurs de Guerre" in french) which was more a strategic battle game.

Years later my cousin bought a miniature from Warhammer, I remember it was a Kroxigor from the Lizardmen. This was enough to sparkle up the old fire again and before we realized it we were surrounded by a multitude of figurines, monsters and warmachines. That's how I became the proud leader of my Empire army.

Radiohead King of Limbs: From the Basement

Radiohead were perfoming their Album "King of Limbs" at the Basement plus Staircase and Daily Mail!

Watch and listen the whole thing on Youtube! (update: Not available anymore)

Enjoy as it says it be online for a limited time only!

Update: Too bad the time limit is over, the video has become private... But wait, someone re-uploaded it without the chatting between the songs:

King of Limbs: From the Basement

Sunday 7 August 2011

First things first - part four

One day I was playing something on my guitar I liked and gave the piece to Rick End. He composed some lyrics and the result was Litany.

I also reconnected with "Surge" and we exchanged our knowledge and experience. We recorded some of his tracks in a recordstudio with Tinna, later he started to publish his works as "Midicrash". I really spent some dark but good times in the studio listening to "Surges'" gloomy music :

Since then I published two other albums on Jamendo, Waiting in 2009 and strolling through electronic spaces in 2010.

Friday 5 August 2011

First things first - part three

With the beginning of the year 2000, "San" and I went to Cologne to study as sound engineer at the SAE. We learned quite a lot, even if we had sometimes some stress. I remember my final practical exam, simulating a whole recording session under the critical eyes of Ulli Pallemans. One part was sampling a drum sequence from Logic with the Akai. I saw that the record level was too loud and I searched in vain the level adjustement in the menus. I was unable to do anything against it and as I didn't hear any distorsion, I moved on (I had no time to loose - there were other tasks to do). Later I realized that there was a big red knob on the sampler to adjust the record level... But eventually I got my diploma, and that's all what matters :)

During this time I did many experiments, I got everything I needed to record my songs. I was mainly working with Reason and Logic. Bought some new stuff, among them the OB-12, although it was called "Oberheim" it was from Viscount, an italian organ factory.

The OB-12
The musical result of this period can be listened on my first published album on Jamendo: Winterdust.

Wednesday 3 August 2011

First things first - part two

When I was around 16 or 17, I was in a boarding school and came home only on weekends. Some students brought their guitar with them and I found myself fascinated by that instrument, whether acoustic or electric. Some friends let me play sometimes and I learned the basics quite quickly. I think I got my first guitar (an acoustic one I still use to play) when I was 18.

I joined the formation "Junk Food" as a keyboarder. The band was composed of a singer, a guitarist, a bassist and a drummer. We were all, except for the bassist, from the same school and knew each-other well. The guitarist of the band ("San", as he likes to be called) is still a close friend. Through this band I met "Surge" since he was playing the bass. Sadly I played on one concert only, my second three manual organ was too bulky to get it out of the rehearsal room. :)

After school the band came apart and we went our own ways. The drummer continued to play in various bands like MiAirMiEau or Zap Zoo."Surge" entered later the realm of electronic music as Midicrash.

"San" and I started the project "Sansara". That's when I bought my first real syntheziser, the Kawai K5000W. This synth is using additive synthesis, a not very common technique as it is quite complicated to use. Contrary to the subtractive synthesis where you start with mostly rich waveforms like a sawtooth, the additive synthesis lets you build your whole waveform from scratch by setting each (!) harmonic from its level to its ADSR envelope, and more. With a maximum of 64 harmonics it quickly gets a confusing task.

My first real syntheziser: K5000W from Kawai

"San" and I did experimental ambient-like songs that we collected in an album. It got never published though. Shortly I left the project and continued to work alone.

to be continued...

First things first - part one

I'm a musician since childhood. I remember singing in the corridor at the age of 6, trying to imitate my favourite songs (although I do not sing anymore :)), I have learned to read notes and play recorder in primary school and soon after that my eyes began to sparkle at the sight of synthezisers. I also remember that I was convinced Casio and Bontempi being best choice. I think I had a Bontempi ES3200 and soon realized that it was not the shining gem I was hoping for. Today I think that Bontempi tried to do the worst sounding keyboards.

My first synth was probably a Bontempi ES3200
During my teens my family offered me a Farfisa, an electric organ with two manuals (and one foot-manual). That was not exactly what I wanted, but I learned a lot with it. I also found an old book with Sonatines from Clementi on the attic of my grand-parents and started playing them on the organ. I remember playing Op. 36 Sonata Number 5 for the first time when I suddenly realized that I played Phil Collins' "Groovy Kind Of Love"! Like Mr Collins, I used to play it slower than the original. Playing the beginning of the second part even slower gave it a very mystic atmosphere I liked.

I was also very fond of computer games and I caught myself quite often humming songs from games like Double Dragon, Tetris or even Super Mario. I got apparently influenced by those crappy tunes, the damage was done :)

to be continued...