Alternate Reality

Selected infrared photos from our archives. Some are taken as is, but most were tweaked with the channel mixer or turned to monochrome.

All the images were shot with Olympus e-510 (great infrared performer) and 720nm IR filter.

IKEA Retro Style

Stylish B&W photo collages from local IKEA:

Drunken Sailor

I have spent pretty much time with my cousin Gosis and her friend SpongeBob lately. After all I was inspired to make some simple and cheery music to remember the fun we had altogether.

It was a good practice to play some accordion again (haven't touched the thing for years), as well as to make the music and video cuts in sync. So here's what we've got (Warning: DON'T play it if you are NOT a SpongeBob fan!):

Night, Street, Light...

Kinetic light painting during a night walk to create these simple artistic abstractions:

Majestic Panoramas

Super wide panoramic images of Swedish natural landscapes. And a couple of 'alien' (infrared) landscapes too. Shot with a tripod (but for the first two). Stitched with Hugin.

You're My Heart...

...You're My Soul - this popular song from the 80-s often starts spinning around in my head when I see somebody with a keytar. And I guess I'm not the only one who associates this performance instrument with retro music in general. Anyway, now we have one too!

Alesis Vortex - the latest addition to our friendly family of midi controllers (yes, it's a controller, not a synth). We got this one on the spur of the moment but now it has become truly a heart and soul of the company.

With a strong made-in-China feel (as probably everything these days) it's a fantastic tool with lots of possibilities. Very handy to move around (it's totally wireless), very easy to set up and go (great for Ableton Live, REAPER, VSTs), very many controls (keys, pads, knobs, PB wheel, slider, accelerometer, sustain and other buttons), and very nice to look at. Definitely one of our best investments in 2014. See official specs

Thomas Anders with the classic Korg RK-100 MIDI controller/keytar

As for the Modern Talking song, this was the first one I set myself to remake when Vortex arrived. Just for fun at first, but then things got more and more profound, more ideas, more retro songs we wanted to cover... So after all, now we have an active tribute project on!

This is still an early version of You're My Heart, You're My Soul with clean vocals (my aunt Spacedog singing) and a quick mix and master. The final (robotic) version coming soon...

What Once Was

I have an intention to put all my more or less established music endeavours together and place them all in one place (maybe on a separate page here). I believe it's a good practice to look back and around just to understand better where I stand now and to move on.

Back in 1999 when I recorded my first demo I would have never thought that 15 years later I would be downloading my own stuff from the Internet because I would not find it anywhere at my place. Those were the times! No DAWs, no programming, no instrument of my own. Nothing but desire to create. But that was not important at all because everything was so true...

Dunkelherzlich (yeah, so very dark and German)... The first steps in composing and recording which later found the way to my main project Spinefish. I guess I sent out no more than 10-15 cassettes for the whole time then (no money too). But anyways, it's somehow there and that's a good thing about the Internet.

And now it's an easy part - to collect all the rest...

Irish Slides

Meanwhile we enjoy the rest of the summer and we enjoy playing slides (Irish traditional music).

A few words about the instrument that I use. A low whistle/fipple flute in the key of C handcrafted in the Scottish Highlands (Alba Whistles). I named this one Tuna, probably because it's very big and shiny (in fact, the biggest cosmic drainpipe that we have). And this is how it sounds:

Merrily Kiss the Quaker | Denis Murphy's Slide | Thugamar Féin an Samhradh Linn

Since my main music machine is still in maintenance, we play around with less intensive and mostly free solutions to produce new stuff. Here's what was used to make this piece:
 

Sforzando + Sonatina Symphonic Orchestra (for orchestral basis);
Alchemy Player (lead and synth strings sounds);
Drum loop taken from Taverns (World of Warcraft soundtrack);
REAPER (DAW to put it all together);
Lightworks (to compile the multicam video).