LennarDigital Sylenth 1 Noodling

I'm in that traditional post-Christmas vacuum so I decided to do a bit of shopping. Last night, while demonstrating that I'm the worst Counter Strike player on this vast tumbling sphere, I was also building The Shopping Basket over at DV247.

The Shopping Basket consisted of basically everything I've wanted to buy in music tech from the last 8 months and came to a cerebellum-busting total which would have made Christmas robins drop like feathered stones from their snowy perches in dismay.

After recovering from the sight of something which would require the IMF to bail me out if I hit the Check Out button, I decided to plump for something cheaper, so I jumped into the LennarDigital Sylenth 1 Group Buy like someone who knows they like to jump, but you never thought they'd jump into somebody's pants [Editor's Note: Binster reference. Find which Binster track that sample is in, mail me the answer and you win...Binster. Note, this competition is not open to employees of Binster or Binster].

Anyway, it's CHEAP and I have it now. I have to say that a quick flick through the presets made me smile - there's a lot of "modern classics" in there, but they all sound warm and shiny and slightly hard, which is a good contrast to all the sludgy, bloopy virtual analogue stuff out there. The reverb seems fairly nice as well, unusually.

Every single producer in the world is going to have this, because of LennarDigital's (daft name, guys, just like your synth - it's ok, I forgive you) sneaky Group Buy tactics. It's very clever: I may steal it.

Oh, and I have called dibs on a preset called HydroSphere because it is awesome.

Lisa Miskovsky's verdict on my Still Alive remix

Always nice to get feedback on a remix from the original artist, especially when it's an unofficial remix for a big promotional compo...

"I think it's super cool!!!!

Finally it worked and Im playing it loud here!!!

Im getting more and more into the remix world, thank you for letting me hear this! I will tell you if need another remix of a song, amazing to listen to a song with a totally new vibe. Love it!!

Lisa."

That's an awesome response to get - I do hope she slings me a remix of something else she's done, as her voice is really suited to my style of music.

Lisa Miskovsky has a fantastic rapport with her fans - she's very willing to respond personally to almost every forum post, which is not something I've seen before. Potential rock / pop superstars take note!

Potential Massive YouTube Irony Alert

EDIT: Ha ha, false alarm!

It looks like the YouTube video I made to promote my remix of Still Alive could have been taken down by the powers that be.

If this is for a copyright violation, I will be delighted and forwarding this to every anti-copyright blog in the world, because, as I mentioned on YouTube, the track is under Creative Commons and the footage used in the video directly promotes the game itself. Cue ultra-traffic for me...I will wait and see if this is some stupid YouTube technical error, but if not....bring the noise.

Imaginary Cities Out on Promo Now!

Future State has just released the promo of my forthcoming trance track Imaginary Cities.

Release date is set for 24/01/2009.

Lemon and Einar K - Anticipation

Just before I get too cool with my track recommendations, I thought I'd point out that I'm also absolutely in love with Lemon and Einar K - Anticipation. It's full-steam-ahead big room epicness, with some pretty obvious sound selection and a fairly uninspired intro, but that riff is just magical.

Fukumuro Tatsuya

I'm really enjoying the work of this Japanese house producer a lot - combines silliness with groove and great production tweaks with bass-driven solidity in a way I appreciate. Heard Regulus on Gareth Emery the other day and went, "Huh?" but then got really into it after a couple of listens.

Can't find out too much about him at the moment and Myspace is causing me more than the usual headache, so here's two tracks by him on Marcel Woods' Musical Madness label that I found on Trackitdown.