And then in a moment of strange synchronicity you notice your lampshade looks remarkably like the cover of the album you’re listening to (Ambient 2 The Plateau of Mirror).

Now playing Ambient 2 The Plateau of Mirror by Harold Budd & Brian Eno. Originally released in 1980 this has really stood the test of time & for me the opening track “First Light” is still one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard.

Lovely review of HERZOG: A Retrospective (DiN95) by d'Voxx in this weeks @moonbuilding.bsky.social. "d’Voxx say that these tracks “do not attempt to score the films, but rather to inhabit their territories”. And what territories they are". moonbuilding.substack.com/p/issue-96-2...

It's the official release day for HERZOG: A Retrospective (DiN95) by modular synth duo d'Voxx which showcases their musical interpretations of the five films legendary German director Werner Herzog made with mercurial actor Klaus Kinski. dinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/herzog...

Tracking two complimentary sampled string parts, one at a time, through my venerable old Moog Phaser pedal (what you're hearing are the two parts playing together). Although there are some very good Phaser plug-ins, for me, there's nothing quite like the swish of a good, analogue phaser.

Latest read in my A.E. van Vogt odyssey is Rogue Ship published in 1965, another of his "fix-up" novels. Some of the political maneouvrings on board the spacecraft I found a little tedious but his ideas of time dilation at faster than light travel are really far out & way ahead of their time.

Absolutely dreary outside in SF today. This is a perfect soundtrack. Masterful work here. Ian Boddy and Chris Carter "Caged" 2025 reissue. Cheers! @ianboddy.bsky.social #nowspinning #synths #electronic #vinyl #vinylcommunity

Coming soon. The most important music of all time. The pieces that gave us direction. #ChordConfessions

The sky appears to have gone a strange colour. What could this mean?

Thanks to all who joined the Listening Party last night for HERZOG: A Retrospective (DiN95) by modular synth duo d'Voxx. It was great fun chatting and sharing the music from this wonderful album with such a good community.

Really loved the new series, Small Prophets written by Mackenzie Crook (who previously wrote The Detectorists - which was also wonderful). At times bizarre, hilarious & wistful, it's such a refreshing change to the barrage of unsubtle content that much of modern TV adheres to. Recommended.

Excellent review of HERZOG: A Retrospective (DiN95) by d'Voxx in this months issue of @electronicsound.bsky.social. "Rich in atmosphere, drama and genre-defying ambiiton, this is one of d'Voxx's most evocative releases to date".

Experimenting with the weird & wonderful exFriend synth running through the Boss DD20 & Microcosm. It is a clone of the Ellitone Multi-Synth designed by Maciek Jaciuk and really you never quite know what you're going to get out of it - which can be cool.

A gentle reminder for the Listening Party tomorrow 13th February @ 8:00pm (GMT) - chatroom opens @ 7:30pm. Join label boss Ian Boddy & modular synth duo d'Voxx to listen and chat about their new album 'HERZOG: A Retrospective' (DiN95). dinrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/herzog...

Same patch as yesterday but this time cycling through a few patches using the Program Manager Card on the Buchla Easel Command. Set in 'Both' mode this loads up different patches which I can then interact with on the front panel. A rather handy feature to say the least. #modularsynth #synthsky

Playing a drone in D Major from the Buchla Easel Command via a long 16s delay from the Boss-DD20 & then via the Microcosm. Small tweaks of timbre and tone slowly morph into each other to create this harmonic dronescape.

Next combo I'm experimenting with is the Buchla Easel Command with it's Program Manager Card heading through my trusty old Boss DD-20 Delay Pedal & then the Hologram Electronics Microcosm.

Beautiful concert by the Royal Northern Sinfonia @ the Firestation in Sunderland. An afternoon of English classics with pieces by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Britten, Holst & Butterworth. For me the stand out piece was the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis which is 1 of my favourite pieces of music.

Rough seas today so here's a simple sound design experiment. Run the audio twice - once in real time and the other at a tiny fraction faster - in this case 120 vs 120.1 bpm. Creates a lovely and intense flanging effect at the start which will eventually start becoming a short delay.

Listening Party 13th February @ 8:00pm (GMT) - chatroom opens @ 7:30pm. Join label boss Ian Boddy & modular synth duo d'Voxx to listen and chat about their new album 'HERZOG: A Retrospective' (DiN95). dinrecords.bandcamp.com/merch/herzog...

Great to see HERZOG: A Retrospective (DiN95) by d'Voxx at No.1 on the Bandcamp Electronica CD chart. The modular synth duo have created musical interpretations of the five films legendary German film director Werner Herzog made with the actor Klaus Kinski. dinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/herzog...

Wondering if this whole YouTube Shorts thing is worth doing. Handy for putting up quick videos of patches and musical/sound design excerpts I'm currently working on. Have a gander of this and if you want to see more please let me know &/or subscribe to my YouTube channel. youtube.com/shorts/TAF8T...

HERZOG: A Retrospective. This bold new release by modular synth duo d'Voxx sees them expanding their sonic horizons with musical interpretations of the 5 films legendary German film director Werner Herzog made with the mercurial actor Klaus Kinski. dinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/herzog...

HERZOG: A Retrospective. This bold new release by modular synth duo d’Voxx sees them expanding their sonic horizons with musical interpretations of the 5 films legendary German film director Werner Herzog made with the mercurial actor Klaus Kinski. dinrecords.bandcamp.com/album/herzog...

This patch is like a cloud of weirdness. Same Buchla patch as the last one but patched the Resonant Garden in a different way so I can feed some of the electro-acoustic sounds of the wires back in through the Buchla. I always find these sort of soundscapes totally fascinating.

Patching up the Buchla Easel Command with the Folktek Resonant Garden utilising a chain of three effects (long delay > pitch shifter > shimmer delay). There's an entire world to explore just with this simple patch.

These two should prove to be an interesting combination - Buchla Easel Command & Folktek Resonant Garden.

Latest read in my van Vogt odyssey is this volume which contains 2 novellas: Earth's Last Fortress & The Three Eyes of Evil. Like much of his work from this period they contain a surfeit of ideas that the length of work & plot can adequately accomodate. And some of these concepts are really far out!

Happy February! Just turned on the paid subscription option for Moonbuilding Weekly. If you've already pledged you will be a bona fide subscriber very soon. Thank you. Subscribe now to support a vibrant DIY electronic music scene. moonbuilding.substack.com/welcome

My small sample playback rack. Based around the BitBox Micro which has 4 outs running through the AJH Triple Cross (that I helped design) which morphs 2 pairs of samples which then run through the Starlab. By increasing the LFO rate on the left an amazing stereo tremolo effect comes into force.

Nostalgia rules in a hilarious evening seeing The Fast Show on stage at the Sunderland Empire. Which was nice. Brilliant. Scorchio. Nice. Greaaat. Ooh, suits you sir. I was very, very drunk. I'll get me coat. Chris Waddle. No offence. Does my bum look big in this? etc etc.

Next setting up the second, higher sequence line. For now this is a simple voice from Braids > VCF > VCA. Maths is the envelope here with some VC of it's decay. Main thing I'm trying is changing the quantised pitches of this higher sequence line against the bass using the Tenderfoot QQ2.

Setting up the bass line layer in this new Eurorack setup. Final out from the DPO through the AJH Synth V-Shape & Matrix VCF. Sequenced by the Doepfer A-155-2 and adding some top end FM via the left side of the DPO. Echo FX from the Disting. You're going to need good speakers to hear the bass end.

I'm terrible at keeping all my Eurorack style mini-jack cables tidy as they usually get cast into a big plastic box. Over time they end up as a right rats nest of entanglement so I then have to sort them all out into neat, colour coded piles. Which has a certain degreee of satisfaction in itself.

Testing out the drone layer in the new Eurorack layout. Morphing Terrarium Wavetable > Cwejman Frequency Shifter > Cwejman Spacial Phaser > Erica Black Hole Effects. On the left is the Livewire Vulcan Modulator = 2 x LFOs. Plenty of options here for totally changing the sound from calm to chaotic.

Reconfiguring one of my Eurorack cases for some gigs I have coming up this year. What I'm after here is some simple analogue sequencing that I can play with in real time playing two independent synth voices with an extra layer of spacey drone textures. Let's see how this layout works.

Just finished this mini-tome, 'what art does' by Brian Eno & Bette A. Certainly interesting and an intelligent attempt to pin down such an ephemeral subject. I've always thought that creativity is a side-effect of conciousness. As such it's inside all of us.

Now playing Solo Three by @erikhallmusic.bsky.social. Another superb release by this master craftsman playing all the parts to 4 minimlaist compositions by Branca, Palestine, Laurie Spiegel and the stand out piece, Music for a large Ensemble by Steve Reich. erikhall.bandcamp.com/album/solo-t...

Continuing my A. E. van Vogt odyssey with 'The Mind Cage', published in 1957. I've read elsewhere that van Vogt was a big influence on Philip K. Dick and I can see why, with this novel featuring two minds being swapped and all the repercussions that has on each of their perceived realities.

Rewatching Heat, directed by Michael Mann in 1995. What a film. There’s precious few of these about. Proper grown up script. Brilliant acting, especially Pacino & De Niro, excellent characterisation. Wonderful cinematography. Great score. And that shoot out in the street - astonishing.

Another arrival and a real favourite of mine from Ian Boddy and the DiN record label. ‘Coil’ (DiN 74) 2022, CD. Just hauntingly beautiful atmospheres and textures throughout. It all just clicks, well so well worth checking out.

A gentle reminder of the DiN January sale: 25% off everything on the DiN Bandcamp store until the end of the month. Use the following discount code at checkout on CD, vinyl, digital, t-shirts, Eurorack modules, prints and even the total discography. dinwinter26 dinrecords.bandcamp.com

Really enjoyed 28Years Later: The Bone Temple. It’s not gonna be for everyone as the opening half has some extremely tense & gory moments. But by concentrating more on what the humans are doing rather than endless zombie stuff makes it a more interesting film. And Fiennes turns it up to 11.

Demo mix for the upcoming d'Voxx album 'HERZOG: A Retrospective' (DiN95) released on limited edition digipak CD on February 20th. Five tracks, each a musical interpretation of the five films Klaus Kinski made with legendary director Werner Herzog. tinyurl.com/ypnbd9zv

This is going to be some concert. Playing alongside @flcartographer.bsky.social & @sulkrooms.bsky.social at the Capstone Theatre in Liverpool on Saturday 25th April. We'll each do a solo set followed by a 3 way jam which should be great fun. capstone.hope.ac.uk/whatson/elec...

On a Slow Flow Echoes, a meeting of generations on the altar of Krautrock with two tracks from Doppelganger by Ian Boddy and the storied German drummer/synthesist Harald Grosskopf. wp.me/p4ZE0X-xnu

In depth interview with Markus Junnikkala who runs the Be A Better Artist website. As well as talking about my music career, library music, sound design & modular synths we also touch on what it means to be creative and how to sustain this over a long career. youtu.be/HyvC63PI0GY

Good to see another couple of DiN releases featured in a list of top albums from 2025. This time in Cyclical Magazine with Doppelgänger (@ No.6) my collaborative album with @haraldgrosskopf.bsky.social & Hydrology (@No.20) by @loulayorke.bsky.social. online.pubhtml5.com/qori/gayz/

The next release on the DiN label will be 'Herzog - A Retrospective' (DiN95) by the synth duo d'Voxx. Out on limited edition Digipak CD on February 20th it is a truly cinematic suite of 5 pieces celebrating the quintet of films made by legendary director Werner Herzog with the actor Klaus Kinski.

Many thanks to the ever excellent @igloomag.bsky.social for including 4 DiN albums (DiN93 @flcartographer.bsky.social, DiN91 @haraldgrosskopf.bsky.social) in their Best of 2025 list as well as the @muterecords.bsky.social 25th anniversary edition of Caged. igloomag.com/features/bes...