Happy New Year!

A prosperous new year to you all!

My only new years promise:
There WILL be at least one new Moulin Noir CD this year.

Photo by Diana Malm from the Ultrafoxx gig.

Setlist for the Ultrafoxx gig

I have spent some time in Portugal on a much needed vacation... spending some time learning the digital camera that has been collecting dust for years.

Info and pictures from the Ultrafoxx gig will come up soon. I am now collecting pictures from photographs... and have trouble finding pictures of Hans Åkerman. If you photoed Hans at this gig - contact me!

The setlist:

The Tower
Maria Calling
Kiss Me Quick
The Waiting Game
Castles
Utopia - Here We come
Live Happily
Spellbound
I Cant Sleep
Descending - Basement Area (the never ending version)

Ultrafoxx

The Moulin Noir gig starts 22:30!
Club Ultrafoxx

Moulin Noir LIVE 24/10

Modular, Step III

What initially would be a one rack simple modular concentrating on noise and drum sounds got a second rack.. and is still growing. Since my wallet was a bit drained because of the Voicelive 2 and an in ear monitoring system this step contained just two modules: The Doepefer A-140 Envelope generator and a second MFB Dual LFO. I would like to have had four envelopes, but due to planned future modules I just couldn't fit the 12 TE for another MFB Dual ADSR. I had 8 TE to play with and that was it. Also the Doepfer has other features than the MFB. It doesn't have the Hold stage nor a lin/log switch. But it does have much longer times with a three way rocker switch for range, and the inverted out frees up the the MX224:s for other use. Placement is quite dictated by the depth of the modules. To the right will go some big and very deep modules, so the position to the left was the only option for the 5.5 cm deep A-140. Three envelopes and four lfo's will have to do. MFB lfo:s can be used as simple envelopes. Most importantly I bought 25 more wires. I had _grossly_ miscalculated how many wires that is required ;) (The red wires leads to the peavey filter that annoyingly has the inputs on the back side.)

VoiceLive 2 arrived

I finally received the TC-Helicon Voice Live 2. Initial testing some presets with one of AKG:s absolutely cheapest consumer market dynamic microphones I concluded this thing is fantastic. The "built in technician", makes even this decent consumer mic sound great. Voice adaptive eq, deessing and a gate that seems to work as seemless as a well setup downward expander. And the harmoniser sets entirely new standards. The choir voices sound absolutely fabulous.

My original idea with this was partly to not have to lug around a heavy vocal rack live, and partly to test choir arrangements in the studio as a composing help. The voices can then be rerecorded with my "real" voice when I figure out a good arrangement. But this thing is so good you can use it for choirs in the recording. It even handles when you go from singing to a whisper. I had heard some nice demo's on the net before buing but it sure surpases all my expectations.

Downsides? Well, I've found one. A wallwart with a flimsy connector that is bound to pop out live. It's a pity since it's so well thought out for live use otherwise. A notebook style external powersupply would have made sense for such an expensive piece of gear.

Sparks - The seduction of Ingmar Bergman

I listened to the premiere of Sparks new record, which is also a radio musical comissioned by Swedish radio:
Swedish Radio - Sparks: The seduction of Ingmar Bergman

It was WONDERFUL :)

Here is Russel's speach afterwards, Part 1 (Thanks Mrrf:):



Part 2:
The record has a warning text :)



"There is a chance this very dynamic recording makes you raise the volume more than usual. But we know what we are doing."

So and slow it grows

Now it starts getting useable. In the second rack this far: Doepfer A-170 Dual Slew Limiter, A-180 Multiples, Analogue Solutions MX224 Mixer/Inverter/Buffer, Doepfer A-138c Polarizing Mixer and a second AS MX224. Placement is a bit dictatded by the fact the MFB rack is quite shallow where the power/midi module is.

Moulin Noir Live at Ultrafoxx

For more information see Club Ultrafoxx at myspace!

More modular

Rack two for the modular project just arrived with some vital utility modules. Now creation of some serious noise can begin.

Information about a stockholm gig can soon be disclosed. Preliminary date is the 24th of october.

Noise Modular Project

I have had a Peavey Spectrum filter for quite a while. My original purpose with it was to add analogur filter to one output on the ASR-10. But I hardly used it. The spectrum is almost a monophonic synth with a mixer instead of oscillators. It's got a moog-like filter, a vca, and two envelope generators and the usual midi control. Well oscillators and lfo's was needed to make it sound. And MFB have recently released the wonderful VCO:s from Synth II as a module. So I bought a MFB/Schneidersladen rack and some modules. From left to right it's MFB MIDI/CV-Netzteil, Doepfer A-117 Digital Noise/Random Clock/808 Sound Source, Doepfer A-118 Noise/Random, MFB Dual LFO, MFB OSC-02 Triple VCO, Doepfer A-138b Exponential Mixer, MFB-DUAL ADSR, Doepfer A-132-3 Dual linear/exponential VCA and Doepfer A-106-6 XP Filter. I call it the "Noise Modular" since it has several sorts of noisegenerators. Notice anything missing? No utility modules! I had miscalculated Teileinheiten and two Analogue Solutions MX224 Mixer/Inverter/Buffer (splitter) didn't fit. How useful is a modular without utility modules? Another MFB rack is now ordered which to start with will contain the two MX224:s, a Doepfer A-180 Multiples, Doepfer A-138c Polarizing Mixer and Doepfer A-170 Dual Slew Limiter. I think this will be one for it's size very powerful synthesizer. The Doepfer XP filter is inspired by Oberheim Xpander and contains 16 filtermodes of which eight can be used simultaneously. Sounds from three parts of the racks can then be fed to the Spectrum synth engine. I'll continue to fill the second rack of cause. More lfo's and envelopes. And a ring modulator. The MFB oscillator has a built in X-OR gate type ringmodulator like the MS-20 and ARP Odyssey, but I definitely want a "true" ringmodulator too. Also the Doepfer wave multipliers seems very interesting. Expect to hear much from this on the next album...

Changes in website

If you open this blog from moulin-noir.com.. the old news is now history, and will be found clicking the history button!

The Moulin Noir blogg

Hello everyone.. The news section on www.moulin-noir.com was very seldom updated. Partly because things slowed down, partly because editing pure html is a bit cumbersome. Often news were rather updated on www.myspace.com/MoulinNoir but all people don't have a myspace account. So I've decided now that things start to happen again to communicate on this blog.. and integrate it as a new news section on my website.