I was told a long time ago, “Just get a bass station” From one of the label A and R’s I worked for long ago. I finally did and wow. He was right. This thing covers a lot of ground on the bass and lead front. I loved the sync sounds, not like a pro one, more like a roland. I could make some really aggressive bass sounds, the attack is plenty fast. The resonance is great, think tb 303. Very roland resonance. Still though, I could program some huge sounding moog type bass sounds out of it as well. Honestly, I wish I had gotten one of these long ago instead of all the big vintage gear I had. One rack space, and very fat and snappy. Sounds like a moog meets a sh 101 synth. Amazing. The build quality is decent, could be a bit better though. I give this a 4 out of 5. Can get these on the used market for about 350 to 500 us dollars. I have one for sale actually.

This past 2 weeks my work has radically changed. Moving to software has been a real bitch. In the past I would turn on all my gear, and start recording and playing on the gear live. The best results were with old cubase before pc audio midi only. I could jam out riffs fast and get them into the atari or old pc fast like on calling of the dead and fun with knives. I remember all the riffs I played on my nord lead and used the pitch bend to get that cotd sound. I would mix it all live then record to adat then add vocals and mix it again and record with a sony walkman dat recorder. No computer audio. What sucked is I lacked compressors and fx to make the drums punch hard, and things really never sounded that polished. Still I was able to write fast, I wrote calling of the dead in 3 months, fun with knives in 3 months. That is start to finish. Because the old way with live mixing and live midi was so much better when it came to composing and recording my performances in midi. But lacked the polish of good production.

I moved to PC audio based systems on hex angel. Bad midi jitter and timing, bad midi recording, high latency software made jamming and writing fast a thing of the past. I have to stop and edit the fuck out of everything I play in now. I never had to do that before. The sound quality of cubase SX 3 is a joke(all the high frequencies are rolled off, and the mix sounds like there is fuzzy socks on everything) and mixing in it is a nightmare. When you are jamming and getting musical ideas out all you want to do is that, the minute you have to edit things and fix things in the computer the logical side of your brain kicks in and then the artistic side takes a back seat. This switching back and forth between artistic and logical really ruins the flow of how I write. Even when I write with renoise, its the same thing. Except its the latency that ruins it, sound is not instant so jamming sucks. This process makes me have attention deficit disorder. Arm wrestling with the sequencers is what makes me really hate writing music with them, so I stopped trying to play and write with midi and with sequencers.

What I have been doing now is coming up with riffs and progressions on my fender jazz bass. I sit for hours and play on it and write the songs like this. Then I memorize it all and then I program it into renoise. This is turning out pretty good. I have gotten a lot of great plugins. Duende, and the Sony Oxford bundle are so amazing. They make my drums punch like never before. They make the bland boring Softsynths I never cared for before come to life and sound way more real and less plastic like than on their own. I have compared this new way of working to lust for blood, hex angel, and cotd. The software production with these plugins has made my stuff sound way better and it’s not analog at all. I’m baffled. It takes me a lot longer to write like this but I can get the production to sound immaculate. Renoise is super tight and robotic, so dance music sounds perfect on this. I’m so impressed with what is happening.

The goal on this new CD is guitarless dance music with that toybox pink dots melody to it. So it has groove and club appeal, but the super classical melody of the pink dots. Dark, Evil, think angel and womb by wumpscut mixed with the pink dots. It’s funny that I am writing all of this on guitars, but so far no guitars in the mix :) I can write so much easier with a real instrument than a tracker or the bad midi on modern pcs. Instead, I program notes in now, but i play it on bass and guitar first to make sure it works. Working title is – “Death’s Toybox”. I want every song to be melodic and dancable in a spooky toybox way. If you can imagine this. I wanted to do some metal guitars maybe ala bathory, this will only happen if i can get the guitars to sound right, and so far, no go. Still want a Bathory vocal style on a few songs for sure though. I have not started singing yet, But I have about 8 songs started, nothing is finished yet, but if I keep it up like I have been the last two weeks, I hope to have it done by fall.

I hope to bring back the tight club appeal I once had to vac. I hope to make club hits and get people dancing to spooky complex music again. Not this simple distorted repetitive crap that is being played now. I might post some sound clips in a couple of months. I am also interested in working with other artists for the remixes. Some people from the VAC forum I will ask. But who would you want to see remix some vac songs for the new single? Please comment. I also want to find people who want to do music videos and 3d animations for new VAC songs. I also hope to get great artwork for this project. I really want to make this a new VAC thing, a new sound, a new direction, one that has club appeal and musical appeal. I’m not going to do another lp like cotd, or fwk, or anything. This new project is a new thing. I like how it sounds so far. Hope to get it out this year.