Synoiz Music Blog

Posted 12th April 2010

Well it's finally here! The new single from my debut album "Ambients" is now out for the world to hear and download. 

"Ever Emptiness" is a dark brooding cello led piece that builds up slowly into an industrial Nine Inch Nails style peak and decline. It's one of my favourite tracks from the album and it's one where the sentiment strikes much stronger every time I listen. 

It also includes the 10-minute epic B-Side "Silhouettes" which is my attempt at a dark wave film soundtrack, both sinister, uplifting and thrilling over the course of its several movements. 

The single is available from loads of different online stores. The cheapest place to buy it is Amazon (£1.38 / $1.78) and iTunes (£1.18) which is not very much for nearly 14 minutes of music. It would really help me as an independent artist if you bought a copy of the single and left a positive review on any of the stores. 

To find out more and to see a list of other stores that stock the single, check the website by clicking here.

Watch the Ever Emptiness video

If you haven't seen it yet, please check out the official "Ever Emptiness" music video produced by local company 12 Ft Beast Productions. It continues on from the first two music videos and concludes the tale of "the man" against the masked chiaroscuro.

I hope you like what we've achieved here by managing to make something pretty dramatic and suitable for the track with almost no budget and a lot of help from dedicated fans and our friends.

Thank you to everyone who was involved, you can watch the video and see a full credits list on the YouTube by clicking here. 

A Special Message from Synoiz

Also available on the YouTube is a special message from myself mentioning the new single, ways to buy it and a little bit more background info on both the track itself and the exclusive b-side "Silhouettes". You can watch it by clicking here to visit YouTube.

Update on "Darkling EP" for remixers

Thank you to all of the artists who have sent in or are working on remixes for the upcoming Darkling EP. The stuff that I've heard so far is amazing and it's the biggest rush to hear how someone else has changed and reinterpreted a track of yours. I've decided to postpone the deadline. Initially the deadline for submissions was going to be mid-April (around a week from now) but I've realised now that I've gotten into the project deeper and heard the quality of the mixes that are coming through to me, I want to spend a lot more time with this. The EP will be released later on this year however I'd prefer not to rush the last release from my debut album.

At the moment I'm thinking about providing a 10-13 page PDF booklet with full artwork and including short biographies and details of each artist included on the digital release. This way I can allow these people who have been so amazing to me to get just a little bit more promotion and also get to be included alongside some pretty funky artwork.

Because of this there is still time for new artists to apply to appear on the EP, if you like to work on a remix of one of my tracks, please get in contact at remixes@synoiz.net

Posted 24th December 2009

Wow what a time it's been these last few weeks! I've never been so exhausted and rushed off my feet in a long while. A few major things to mention though in case you haven't already heard:

Getting Safer is out now!

That's right my new single "Getting Safer" was released as a 3-track digital download on Saturday the 12th of December. So far it's had a great reception, managing to peak at #16 on the Amazon UK Dance/Electronic chart and #49 on the Indie/Alternative chart. I got very excited to see that people were buying it and enjoying it and so it has kinda made all the hard work seem worth it.
As an independant artist it has been a real struggle getting any kind of attention in the media, whatever image alternative magazines and radio stations present I'm still getting turned away for being a little experimental simply because I don't have vocals or guitars (especially the guitars factor!) and cos I'm not soothing ambience like Enya or Sigor Ros, some alternative media that is.
I would however like to say thank you to both Solipsistic NATION for featuring "Getting Safer" on their latest Twittermix Podcast and the wonderful Olaf from Joint Venture Radio for playing one of the B-Sides "From You" on his show.

If you're wondering how you buy Getting Safer and get access to the single mix and two exclusive B-Sides, simply visit the website I set up here: Getting Safer - The New Single from Synoiz

Official Music Video for Getting Safer by 12 FT Beast Productions

Well it was a lot of hard work and required several days running around in hoodies and masks chasing Alex (then again that's the guys at 12 FT Beast's usual weekend line up) but the official music video for the single is now available to watch below. If you like it please rate it on the YouTube page and leave a comment, it's always nice to get feedback. I like how it has come together considering what little budget we had and the chaos that was the weather during the shoot!

Thank you to all of our wonderful extras and the amazing Alex who plays the lead. You can find a full cast and crew list on the minisite: Getting Safer - The New Single from Synoiz.

Merry Christmas! Have a free track on me

Well that's it from me, probably until the new year when there will be lots more Synoiz news. To say thank you for a wonderful year and to all the new fans who have come about since the release of my singles and album I've made an updated version of my Christmas track "Falling Snow" available. Enjoy it and have a very Merry Christmas from Synoiz!
Download "Falling Snow" a free Christmas track for fans

Synoiz

Posted 31st October 2009

I'm so excited, my debut album "Ambients" is OUT NOW!

You can buy it from any of the stores listed in the dropdown below, including iTunes and Amazon.

One thing I must mention is that I have had very little control over the pricing of my album and personally I think it's way too expensive on Amazon (£6.99/$8.99) and iTunes (£7.99/$9.99). To apologise for this I'm offering a FREE Limited Edition CD copy of the album (only 100 in existance) with every digital purchase from those two stores (including postage to wherever you are).

I love this album, spookily it was exactly a year today that I finished the album with my tongue-in-cheek horror piece "Shock! Horror!" which was the last track made for Ambients. It seems weird that it's been an entire year of producing/mastering/re-mastering/promotion and working on the EP and three singles (two of which are still to come). Please buy the album and and follow the instructions on the mini-site to get your free CD.

Since posting the best place to get the Ambients album is now the Synoiz store, click here to visit it.

Posted 28th June 2009

What? What is theeees? A blog? A BLOG?

Yes, exactly. I've finally forced myself to sit down and update my blog. A lot has happened since last I updated this, I've been ill, I've had the most gluttonous comfort food imaginable, I've played more games of Risk than the mind can handle however (and I can only tell you this aptly with the use of an eyesore) the brilliant news is that

LONG LOST... IS OUT NOW!!!

Oh yes, it finally actually happened! My debut ambient single "Long Lost..." is finally released to the world in its 3-track nothing-really-happens glory. We're still in the process of promoting it at the moment so if this is the first you've heard of it being finished and released then I don't blame you. I've done a really terrible job of organising myself on this but the reason we held off "Getting Safer" as the first single was so we could try our hand at this music video/promotion lark on something smaller first.

That being said though, "Long Lost..." is one of my favourite tracks on the album and I'm so amazed at how well it's turned out. Such a sense of pride seeing it there on Amazon to buy!

You can check out more information on the single as well and the music video itself (as well as a special message from me talking about the song and other random stuff...) on the special "Long Lost..." mini-site that I set up:

What's next?
Well today I've had a rather lazy day, was up till 4am playing Dynasty Warriors with my housemates and bizarrely enough Ian Lawlor, who directed the music video for "Long Lost..." above, it was lots of fun but it makes me think I need to get back into playing computer games. The last one I really made time for was Resident Evil 4 and that was years ago now... wait, Silent Hill Origins too, that was good. Anyway if I ever intend to make a living doing game soundtracks I'm going to have to listen to what everyone else is up to in the industry so more games in the future I think.

At the moment I'm working frantically on the soundtrack for my friend Phil Lutas' puzzle game for the XBox Live Marketplace. It was (if you've heard me mention it before) going to be called "Pebbledash" but apparently they're having to change it now due to similarities between Pebbledash and Boulderdash (considering they're pretty much the same sort of game, fair cop really). Now this is the thing, I NEVER expected this to be so difficult! I've spent so much time on these 5 tracks that I'm beginning to get sick of them lol.

Basically the problem is that every time I tried to make proper music for it the tracks ended up way too dark/dramatic/focal, whereas the game is a very vintage style arcade game for kids so I've had to change my style significantly and dredge up loads of old fashioned vintage synth noises and catchy melodies in order to make music that fits. The hardest part is fitting it to the game (+ sound effects) and listening to it over to see if it gets annoying. I wish I had a playable demo of the game so that I could play it and listen to the music to see if it gets frustrating when the game gets tough...

I'm still not happy with any of it however when finished there will be 6 tracks in total. I've uploaded the three problem children above so you can have a listen to them, please tell me what you think, too vintage? Too boring? Too repetitive?

Hope you're all doing well, please help me out by checking out the single and buying it from Amazon.
Graeme x

Posted 15th May 2009

(This was written on Friday on the bus but I haven't had time to upload it until now!)

On the bus to London at the moment, I was kinda dreading it as usually coach trips are agony but thankfully I've got a bit of leg/laptop room and there's no screaming children apparent (seriously though, why would you take your newborn on a 7 hour coach journey? I always wonder about the logic there, maybe they're all masochists...)

Things have been weird for the past two or so weeks and I just haven't stopped. I've been so busy with my music, my job and helping people out that I have had no time for sleep, been scraping by on 4 hours sleep and then getting up for the 9-5 for 4 days of the week. Last night I was up till about 1am finalising a version of "Ambients" to give to the lovely Rob of Temposhark when I get to meet him this weekend. They're filming the music video for their new single "The World Does Not Revolve Around You" on Saturday and I'm lucky enough to be one of the many extras on it. I'll probably be tweeting all about it so if you don't already you can follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/synoiz

I'm glad the Temposhark thing came up though as it means I get to catch up with all my London mates while I'm down there, I haven't seen Mark in yages and apparently he's finished his first novel finally. We'd always been bouncing stories off each other for years but he's the only one to actually knuckle down and complete a novel. I got like 200 pages into mine and then realised it was unfollowable dirge lol.

Also as people from Twitter will know I've become a bit of an eBay-aholic this past week, yesterday I bought a Sony digital camera for only £65 and the phone I've wanted for ages, the HTC G1 for just £108. It's hardly breaking the bank like but it's nice for me to stop being frugal for a bit, although I should be saving for getting the physical copies of "Ambients" printed!

Err... what else... oh yeah. A rather downbeat new VBlog is available on YouTube if you want to check it out: Synoiz on YouTube filmed after spending two days mastering the album in Edinburgh and realising I wasn't sure about any of it.

Oh yeah, watch this space too as I was helping a friend out with his final year uni art project for photography on Wednesday (how strange to think that this time last year I wrote the "Chernobyl" OST for another friend for exactly the same exhibition!) and we ended up taking some Synoiz promo shots. All I'm going to say is that they're both beautiful and horrible. We were on an old spot of wasteland if that gives you an idea what to expect. I doubt they're gonna sell any albums but I loved what I saw on his little camera screen thing.

Hope you're all doing well, thanks for reading this!