Big Blue Car

Track listing:
1. Sun Rises  2. A Slack-jawed And Toothless Sunday  3. Pugface  4. Organic Folding Machines  5. Just then, The Sea Waved Back  6. Nightshuffler  7. Ornamentals Of J B Prendergast  8. Evolved Under Shallow Drifts  9. Concrete Sets

Listen to the full album on Youtube: Sun Rises As Concrete Sets
 

I've always had an interest for synthetic audio from sequencers and synthesisers. Mesh'd is my synthesised sandbox of tryouts.

Years ago, you could make your own keyboard synth quite cheaply. All you needed was a bucket load of patience, some soldering skills and access to an oscilloscope. The synth kit in question was the 'Transcendent 2000', a keyboard controlled single oscillator monophonic synth. It was branded under the 'Powertran' name and I believe it was in fact produced by the British company EMS who, at the time, didn't want to be seen endorsing a home built synth kit for the masses. EMS made the popular VCS3 synth used across the 70's by big bands of the day such as; Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, Roxy Music, etc. Bob Moog took over the mantle of new popularity around this time with his Mini Moog. 

Anyway, I digress... The Transcendent's oscillator was a nightmare to keep in tune and mine would wander out of phase very slowly over time (you had to zero and tune the oscillators using an oscilloscope which I didn't have). Even so it was a great tool to learn how oscillators, filters, ADSR and LFOs etc, all worked (or grated) together.

After that I managed to find a used Korg MS20 which had in/out patch connections across two analogue oscillators. From then on I was bitten by the synth bug and either bought or hired many of the early ones from Roland, Korg to Yamaha's ultra clean 80's FM synths; the DX7, 9 and 21 in particular.

To date, Mesh'd has been the home of my synth playground of sequences and sound & rhythm doodling. It's musical style didn't sit easily within the songwriting part of Big Blue Car so I have kept them separated in the past.

Until now Mesh'd has been very much Big Blue Car's 'alternator ego'. But recently however, I've decided to put all new material under the one banner. I explain why in this recent blog page.