#mute synth

[tantei-chan01]

According to Trollstopia, Branch's canonical best friend next to Poppy is a rather silly techno troll names Synth. Wonder what his brother's think of their baby brother being besties with a literal fish man?

Floyd and Bruce encourage this friendship, seeing Synth as someone who can pull Branch from out of his shell and try new things, but can also hold conversations that most pop trolls can't.

Clay is a bit suspicious due to living in paranoia for the last 20 years but will give him a chance while keeping an eye out.

John would ask Synth a few questions about himself and then stay back as they hang out. While bribing Mr. Dinkles and the other critters to follow them (Grandma wasn't the only one to teach Branch his recipes)

[dustedmagazine]

Vince Clarke — Songs of Silence (Mute)

Photo by Eugene Richards

Vince Clarke has certainly been in some storied synth bands. He wrote “Just Can’t Get Enough” (and eight other songs) for Depeche Mode’s 1981 debut, Speak & Spell, before leaving that band over creative differences. From there, he headed to Yazoo with Alison Moyet and The Assembly with Eric Radcliffe, and finally to the boppiest, poppiest synth outfit of them all, Erasure, where he played stoically as all manner of frivolity unfolded around him.  If you grew up in the 1980s or 1990s and watched any MTV at all, Clarke’s songs are burned into your cortex, and quite possibly unwelcomely, but there’s no denying he was in the thick of a certain kind of dance-y, celebratory, machine-age pop.

The critical thing to understand is that Songs of Silence is nothing at all like that.

This brooding, looming suite of songs was recorded during COVID and reflects Clarke’s sorrow and isolation as friends fell ill. He channels a haunted vibe through modular synth, building each track around a single sustained tone that runs from beginning to end. Lots of things happen around those tones, fluttery arpeggios, slashes of stringed instruments, even, in one instance, a sepulchral folk tune about a “black legged miner.” Still, these tunes are constructed around static, meditational sonic atmospheres that fluctuate in volume and timbre but do not fundamentally change. There’s a sense of the eternal in them, even when as in “Scarper” they twitch into propulsion with percolating electronic rhythms.

Consider the opening “Cathedral” with its crescendoing drones, its altered, inhuman voice sounds, its cavernous sonic space. It unfolds in one long blast of sound after another, a rumbling fog horn, a tremulous string vibration, an unearthly space voyaging organ. You can’t really participate. There’s no melody to hum, no rhythm to tap, and so the best way to experience it is through stillness. You allow it to surround you, to envelop you, to subsume you, like a mystical experience.

These cuts are mostly solitary endeavors, but Clarke invites in a few collaborators to fill out his visions. Caroline Shaw’s pristine soprano arcs through interleaved shimmers of synthesized tones in “Passage,” sounding like the dream of a dream of a dream of an angel. Cellist Reed Hays scrawls a wild, passionate signature over the hushed immanence of “The Lamentations of Jeremiah.” Warmth and anguish flare from his instrument, spilling something baroque and organic into Clarke’s ominous atmospheres.

The disc’s most affecting cut is its oddest. “Blackleg Miner” sets a old labor protest song in a desolate post-industrial landscape. The air hums and trembles around the song’s brutal simplicity, surging to obscure it, at intervals, with sounds like bells shivering in sympathetic vibration. It’s a folk song launched into deep space, hurting through black voids, carrying a faint futile message about what it meant to be human.  

Jennifer Kelly

[sibelin]

Fad Gadget for Sounds, April 1980

[kdo-three]

The Normal - T.V.O.D. (1978) Daniel Miller from: "T.V.O.D." / "Warm Leatherette" (7" Single)

Electronic | Synth-Punk | Post-Punk

JukeHostUK (left click = play) (320kbps)

Personnel: Daniel Miller: Vocals / Instrumentation

Produced by Daniel Miller

Recorded: @ David Miller's Apartment in London, England UK

Released May 5, 1978

Mute Records ((UK) Sire Records (US)

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪

Tell a Vision

[musicollage]

Depeche Mode – Ultra. 1997 : Mute.

[the-cat-at-the-theatre-door]

a mirrored picture of my old man a plato fanmix  [listen]

01. Little Shadow - yeah yeah yeahs | 02. Bitter Milk - ibi | 03. Such a Shame - talk talk | 04. Payback - jan hammer  |  05. Deformative  - black eyes | 06. A Chronicle of Early Failures - Part 1 - the dead texan | 07. Mis-Shapes - pulp | 08. Haunted (Instrumental) - radical face | 09. Disarm - the smashing pumpkins | 10. Smalltown Boy - bronski beat | 11. II. Largo assai ed espressivo (excerpt) from Piano Trio No. 4 in D Major, Op. 70, No. 1 "Ghost" - ludwig van beethovan | 12. My Eyes - the lumineers | 13. Vivaldi Variation (Arr. for Piano from Concerto for Strings in G Minor, RV 156) - florian christl  | 14. Unwell - matchbox twenty | 15. Once Upon a Dream - invadable harmony | 16. I’ve Just Seen a Face (Acoustic Cover) - the moon loungers  | 17. Memory of That Waltz - frozen silence | 18. Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want - the dream academy | 19. They Move on Tracks of Never Ending Light -  this will destroy you | 20. Cambodia - Single Version - kim wilde |  21. "Happy End" (ハッピー・エンド) -  yellow light orchestra |   22. Superstitious Feeling - harlequin | 23. Masquerade (Suite): 1. Waltz Excerpt - aram khachaturian, london symphony orchestra, stanley black  | 24. The Family Jewels - marina  | 25. The Nutcracker, “A Pine Forest In Winter” - pyotr illyich tchaikovsky, heribert beissel, bonn classcal philharmonic |  26. Seventeen Going Under - sam fender | 27. Serenade for Strings in E Major, “II. Tempo di valse” - anton dvorak, prague chamber orchestra, petr skvor  | 28. Release - michael nesmith | 29. Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-Sharp Minor, “Moonlight” - ludwig van beethoven, brodsky quartet | 30.  Race Among the Ruins - gordon lightfoot | 31. Pavane, Op. 50  - gabriel faure, sinfonieorchester basel, ivor bolten | 32. Man Made Lake - donovan woods | 33. Unflappable - vampire step-dad  | 34. Keep Up The Fight - gowan

[iamlisteningto]

Vince Clarke’s Songs Of Silence

[lucyvsky]

kind of the song of all time

[jmalkki]

Synth cherub Martin L. Gore.

instagram | twitter | DeviantArt | mastodon | Post

[odk-2]

Suicide - Rocket U.S.A. (1977) Alan Vega / Martin Rev from: "Suicide" [First Album]

Punk | Synth-Punk

JukeHostUK (left click = play ) (320kbps)

Personnel: Alan Vega: Vocals Martin Rev: Keyboards

Produced by Craig Leon / Marty Thau

Recorded: @ Ultima Sound in Blauvelt, New York USA during 1977

Released: on December 28, 1977

Red Star Records (US) Mute Records (UK)

Happy 4th of July

Suicide: Alan Vega | Martin Rev

[dustedmagazine]

Duet Emmo — Or So It Seems (Mute)

Photo by Angela Conway

In the early 1980s with Wire in hiatus and nominal front man Colin Newman exploring a more classic sound on A To Z and Not To, his bandmates BC Gilbert and Graham Lewis delved into abstract ambient, electronic and musique concrete under the name Dome. A studio encounter with Mute founder Daniel Miller (The Normal and Silicon Teens) led to the recording and 1982 release of this one-off collaboration which was and has been largely disregarded but has now been remastered by Stefan Betke AKA Pole.

Duet Emmo is an odd combination: the austerity of Gilbert and Lewis knocking against Miller’s playful synth pop proclivities. Or So It Seems plays with this dichotomy with mixed results finding some intersections and common ground between the three. Something of a time capsule, the album looks backwards to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Brian Eno’s ambient works, nods to contemporaries like Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle and displays some DNA of future synth pop, industrial ambience and techno. 

On the song-based side, Gilbert takes lead vocals on the title track with the orotund theatricality typical of a section of the English synth scene. He aims for deep seriousness but leaves enough wriggle room to combat accusations of pretense. The result sounds like a lesser Eyeless in Gaza played over a slowed down version of Silicon Teens souped up synth rendition of “Memphis Tennessee.” “The First Hand” has a rolling squelchy Radiophonic riff and proto-techno arpeggiated synths as Gilbert and Miller intone sententious lines about love in a consumerist climate. Both are more interesting for what they could have been and how they point to the future. 

“Long Sledge” is a 16-plus minute long ambient drone piece. Distant bass drum and tom beats back machine noise that ebbs and flows like an aural tour of an ironworks in winter. When the drums drop out, it feels like the gates and windows have been thrown open to snow filled gusts as the molten metal cracks and screams at the affront. “Gatemmo” sounds like an outtake from any number of modern voice based ambient records. 

Or So It Seems is a fascinating document of its time, an anomalous entry into the discographies of its producers but nonetheless of interest to fans of both and the scenes from which they emerged and in Miller’s case championed. A step on the path from Eno, COUM Industries and Western Works to synth pop and beyond.   

Andrew Forell

[suppermariobroth]

The Koopa Cape track in Mario Kart Wii has a dynamic musical score. It consists of three parts, the beginning, the river, and the underwater pipe, which each play their own arrangement of the music. Internally, this is done by playing several tracks at once and muting those belonging to the sections the player is not in.

For an unknown reason, one particular instrument, a synth melody, plays separately from the others despite not belonging to a specific part of the track. Instead, it plays in both the beginning and the river section, but is not embedded into either of them. It is possible that at some point during development, it was intended to play by itself somewhere on the track.

Above is the synth track in its isolated form, extracted from the files.

Main Blog | Twitter | Patreon | Small Findings | Source: youtube.com user "salt.6999"

[kdo-three]

The Normal - Warm Leatherette (1978) Daniel Miller from: "T.V.O.D." / "Warm Leatherette" (7" Single)

Electronic | Synth-Punk | Post-Punk

JukeHostUK (left click = play) (320kbps)

Personnel: Daniel Miller: Vocals / Instrumentation

Produced by Daniel Miller

Recorded: @ David Miller's Apartment in London, England UK

Released May 5, 1978

Mute Records ((UK) Sire Records (US)

'Warm Leatherette' "revolutionized electronic music, with its punk aesthetic, stark sound and dark subject matter."

[firjii]

The latest in my 2024 Dragon Age covers project!

This song has very strong medieval or early baroque vibes and I decided the best way to let that shine was to make it a simple instrument solo. You're hearing taped piano (yup, parts of the piano are wrapped in materials to mute or alter sound), which I think seems like a distant cousin of harpsichord or early experimental pianos but also feels modern like a synth.

[imwithmars]

Black Celebration is the fifth studio album by Depeche Mode, originally released on 17 March 1986 by Mute Records. "Black Celebration is the album where Depeche Mode finally came of age. The innocent synth pop of youth was suddenly engulfed in a dark perverse world of bleak atmospherics and seedy lust. The Basildon boys had given up the friday nights in local Youth Clubs for fetish clubs in Berlin."

The beginning of the Depeche Mode era.