Pete Ashton’s Shiny New Toy

seb — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:08:46 +0000

Not content with having created a blogging empire including the superlative Created in Birmingham blog (for which he jointly won a Guardian media award this year), setting up his own digital consultancy and being a vocal advocate of the benefits of the social internet, Brum-based bloggerati Pete Ashton is now branching out into avant-garde electronic music following his purchase of a Thimgamagoop.

To the uninitiated, the Thingamagoop is a anthropomorphic analogue mini-synth cum sound toy featuring a single oscillator controlled by a photocell, alongside a simple low-frequency oscillator. The amount and type of light hitting the photocell affects the pitch and harshness of the sound produced, whilst further modulation via the afore-mentioned LFO allows a dizzying array of bleeps, skronks and zaps to be coaxed out of the cute-yet-rather-sinister lil’ fella.

Following a fateful encounter with a Thimgamagoop at last year’s SXSWi, Pete finally managed to get his hands on one recently and in the space of just over a week he’s already documented his experiments with the unit in great detail, won sponsorship (via Live Brum) and is now ordering more to create a crazy-mad monster micro-synth orchestra, the debut performance of which may well take place at a future Robot Vs Dinosaur. It’s quite frankly such a dizzying rate of progress that I half-expect him to have landed a multi-million dollar record deal by next week.

For more info on the Thimgamagoop and it’s self-assembled bigger brother the Thimgamakit, check out the Bleeplabs website. And being hand-made, you can even pick your own colours!

Datassette.net Retooled

seb — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 19:03:45 +0000

Looks like we’re not the only ones with a shiny new toy to play with! After several months of hosting nothing more than an amusing teletext-based splash page, top London technomentalist and previous RvD headliner Datassette has finally got ’round to relaunching his website.

The new site includes an extensive discography, a selection of downloadable mixes (including his infamous BusinessFunk series) and bucketloads (and, I really mean bucketloads) of unreleased tracks, demos, cover versions and remixes all available for absolutely nothing. A particular standout for me is “Thomas the Mohfuggin Tank Engine Yo”, a sharp piece of social commentary in which the artist reworks a timeless children’s classic to archly reflect the decaying moral values of modern youth- or, maybe it’s just a glitched-up version of the Thomas the Tank Engine theme with some swearing stuck on top? We’ve embedded it in a player at the bottom of this post, so give it a spin and draw your own conclusions…

Meanwhile, Datassette’s debut self-titled full-length album has been continuously rotating at RvD Towers over the past few weeks. A melting pot heavily influenced by mathematics, ’80s corporate video soundtracks, old-school electro and the sound of vintage computer games, his nimble yet muscular techno constructs remind one of Alan Sugar doing the robot in his boardroom after a lovely sunny afternoon spent firing people. The album’s available right now as a download via Bleep or Beatport, whilst turntablists and vinyl badgers should hit the Ai Records shop to purchase an ultra-dense disco plate.

Anyway, find some mo-fuckin’ Thomas the Tank Engine shit in tha player below, yo.
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Robot Vs Dinosaur » The Internets

Pete Ashton’s Shiny New Toy

Datassette.net Retooled