She Blinded Me With Science

In Cardiff the other day, I picked up this old GEC in house magazine from 1964. It's a fantabulous little booklet detailing all that was going on in GEC in the month I was born, including an article about their brand new 'Fluorescent Tubes' designed for kitchens.

It's crammed with things like, Marriage Announcements, Promotions, bowling and cricket scores. They just don't publish things like this anymore which is a real shame. It was also special since its featured factory was one that used to live only 24 miles up the valley from where I am sitting now.

It has a beautiful retro feel and a sincerity not often found in big business these days. Definitely one for the wall of my studio should I ever build one.

Juxtaposed with that are my struggles last night with virtual synths, beatmapping audio samples, and getting my head into running several modular vintage units simultaneously on one lap top. I neeeeeeeed more RAM !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

'She Blinded Me With Science' is probably one of the best known Dolby tracks from the eighties, and definitely one of the most commercial. It has that feel of 'mad boffin' keyboards with pop sensibilities. And it so perfectly meets the creative mood at the moment.

'The spheres are in commotion,
the elements in harmony,
She blinded me with Science'

And of course it featured the sublime Magnus Pike..... how could it not be a classic.
Enjoy.

History of Modern

Well this week kicked off with the release of the much anticipated new album from the officially reformed OMD. And what a little cracker it is. It tastes, sounds and feels like an OMD album but with one big difference, it has the freshness their first 3 or 4 albums had. Not a tired refrain in sight.

It has the punchy-ness of McCluskys newer albums with all the choral breath backing stuff of the earlier stuff. And to add to that a good dose of new ideas. This is not a review, just my opinion. Personally I think reviews should always be on the positive side, unlike the one on Amazon from a certain chap from the BBC who took great pleasure in deriding every aspect of the new work.

To add to this I did another mix down of my completed tracks from some work I did last Thursday. Of the nine tracks now only two need a tweak, one some minor additions, but six were just right for me. I would say that it was more than half way to completion now.

Unfortunately I started my MSc this week so things will be going very slowly on the music front from here on in. It may take a good six months to finish the final few tracks off.

So, all in all a very good week musically.

Having the new album still very much in my head I must of course chose something from this album for today’s track. Well unfortunately I cant decide between at least five of the tracks, so today’s track is in fact the whole album.

‘New Babies, and new toys, it’s better with the girls but its bigger with the boys’

Welcome back OMD