Why so glum?

7-string fretless “Orchid” and LYRA 8 Organismic Synthesiser - 11th Dec 2024

What is it about the Dark Matter? Increasingly, whenever reaching for something original or new, I know I’m going to pick the shadowy, veiled, desolated option. My brother is basically the same - I recognise it in most of his output, and more recently, we’ve been “jamming”, and heading in the very same direction each time, but we were not reared as dour/bleak bohemians. I suppose it’s a bit like an interview I saw with Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, where he explained that the brooding music they were creating was “fun” and that it “made the hairs stand up on the back of your hands.” Yep, it is fun, and I’ve been trying to figure out ways of making it happen more readily and more often. >>>> For years I imagined it would be interesting to have a fretless guitar. This would enable violin-like glissandi and slurring not possible on a regular guitar. It would also feed into the steel guitar intonation I already do. After years of thinking about it, I’ve finally gotten one together. It’s a 7-string Ibanez thrasher’s budget model, de-fretted, slots filled with a pale veneer and a hard danish oil finish, along with a beautiful, free-hand painted orchid concept on the body by Janine Bailey-Cooper, gold on black. It sounds exactly as I imagined, slippery, edgy and fluid, strung up with a very “jazz” set of flat wounds. It’s fantastic with an Ebow, totally geared for the strange and unpredictable. >>>> In addition to this, my brother visited mid year, bringing with his a brand new LYRA 8 synthesiser from the SOMA company. They make an array of unconventional instruments that tap into the chaos and entropy inherent in much of life. Within 30 seconds of fooling with the LYRA 8, I knew I would have to own one. Since Glendyn really wished he’d bought one in a darker green, we quickly made a deal and the new synth was mine. >>>> The Lyra 8 has eight oscillators that need to be manually tuned across a wide and somewhat touchy range. Each of those voices can then be manipulated in a variety of ways, each of the those being a journey deeper into the void. It’s almost impossible to generate the same sound with this unit twice. It’s excels with the addition of spatial treatments - modulated reverbs and delays help to create otherworldly soundscapes that mesmerise and inspire. It’s fascinating how modern tech can put into anyone’s hands the capabilities and potential of bygone sophisticated musical laboratories. Rock ‘n’ Roll might be just about dead, but this is interesting for now.

Have a listen to this basic mix - Lyra Orchids