Dub dot dash

Music Machines - local 84 styles
I recently mentioned the Music Machines event coming up on November 21st - a collection of classic synths and drum machines happening in Auckland. My mate Jason, who is putting this event together, has been researching the history of electronica in NZ (he's originally from the UK, and grew up there in the 80s and 90s, so it's all new to him). I put him onto another mate of mine, Tom Ludvigson, a wicked keyboard player who has been round the traps for a while.

Tom currently plays in Trip to The Moon amongst others, but back in 1984 he was involved in a collaboration with a group of Auckland musicians who cooked up NZ's first electro breakdance record -Sidewalk City, by Snap. I remembered I had a copy of it on vinyl, so I dug it out and digitised it for Jason. He's put it up on the music machines site, go have a listen, it's very cool.

From Music Machines: "Tom been a synth man for about 30 years and has been involved in many Auckland bands as a player and composer, head over to his site Jazzscore for more on Tom’s musical projects.

We were discussing the synth scene in the early 80’s, as this was when I first got in to hiphop and electro back in the UK, Tom remembered working on a track under the name “Snap” called “Sidewalk City” which Tom said had been influenced by the early electro coming out of the states at the time. I was aware of bands like Car Crash Set which seemed to be influenced more by the darker side of synth music at the time and wasn’t aware of any US influenced electro coming out of NZ from the early 80’s, I had to hear it....

.... I thought I’d ask Tom for any recollections of the session as I’m fascinated by all the elements which make up the track, particularly the mc vocal and the layers of synths and techniques used in the production.

“Recalling the session, recorded to 24track tape at Harlequin Studios, a few things stick out:

• The musicality of the “Triangle” production team of Graeme Gash, Paul Streekstra and Noel Connolly;
• The experimental the-studio-as-an-instrument approach;
• The trial-and-error art of overdubbing Polysix arpeggiator lines in sync with the track without the benefit of hard sync: first tweak the arpeggiator tempo knob until it sounds right, then trigger it exactly on time, every time. It worked with repeated drop-ins…;
• Borrowing a just-released Oberheim OB-X polysynth to do state-of-the-art sounding overdubs for the extended dance mix;
• Four of us jamming the extended dance mix at the 24-track console, eight hands together tweaking sliders and delay buttons for a dubby atmospheric mix.”