Electronic Music
Careful With That AKS Eugene… Pin Park Live Broadcast From Soundgas Studio
WRITTEN BY: Tony Miln
UPLOADED: 22nd May 2019
Pin Park are Maciek Polak and Maciek Bączyk; they make music using (almost exclusively) EMS synthesizers and effects. We were delighted to invite them for the inaugural live broadcast from the Soundgas Studio a couple of weeks ago as part of their recent UK mini tour. Below you will find the video of their performance.
It was a real thrill to see a pair of Synthi AKS set up back to back (with additional sounds and loops courtesy of their Boss RC-505 Loop Stations). Maciek B usually uses the RC-505’s onboard delay and asked if we couldn’t find him something more interesting for the show: a super clean Binson Echorec 2 T7E freshly-modified with our super slow varispeed motor fit the bill nicely. Maciek P (of our brothers in vintage gear Analogia) uses an EMS 8 Octave Filter Bank live to ‘tune’ the reverb from a Boss RV-6 which is incredibly effective.
Those who may think that music made exclusively on Synthis is likely to be niche/experimental and lacking melody and structure are in for a surprise. Pin Park’s music is warm, comforting and utterly beguiling: it confidently references classic krautrock (without ever veering towards pastiche) and more contemporary electronica; one of the new album tracks is reminiscent of Kraftwerk in their pomp. Another standout track for me features haunting and ethereal whispered vocal samples (run through Maciek P’s EMS Vocoder 1000) which are recordings of Maciek B’s daughter talking in her sleep.
The gig was a great success, and it was a privilege to watch as the two Synthi masters weaved their enchanting soundscapes, undeterred even when our newly-installed Calrec desk joined in noisily mid-track with a failing opamp on one channel. New technology was comprehensively shamed by the 45-year-old Synthis which operated flawlessly, unlike the iPhone and Apogee One which refused to play ball for the live Instagram Live broadcast resulting in a restart using the onboard iPhone mics. The show has been mixed and edited by our engineer Ben Hirst and is now live on our IGTV channel (embedded below!). Later this month we’ll be featuring an interview with Pin Park where they describe some of the fascinating processes involved in recording with EMS Synthis and effects and also the VCS-3.
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We’d like to thank the two Macieks for visiting and getting our studio live broadcasts off to a flying start – we’re all eagerly awaiting the new album and are limbering up for a Soundgas remix later this summer.
The recording of the new Pin Park album is complete and it is currently being mixed. Their first album, Krautpark, is available now on bandcamp (see below for YouTube stream).
For more of my own musings on delving into the Synthi AKS, check out “Machines With Soul“.
