Synoiz Music Blog

Posted 2nd July 2012

Whoops well it's taken me a while to update the blog. I'd like to say I've been busy but seriously I've been taking time out, lots of other things have been taking up my life lately and so I've had both my Synoiz stuff and Neonyte stuff on the backburner for the past month.

I've been asked to do another live performance as part of a fundraiser for a new Mitsuko Studios film on August 4th, since this has just been confirmed I thought it was about time I updated this blog with how the last gig I did in Sunderland in May went. Well frankly it was amazing, thank you so much to everyone who came along, it was great to get so much support and to have great support acts like Anguaji (first performance of her material ever! To the backdrop of My Neighbour Totoro by Studio Ghibli!) and Edinburgh based electrosexuals GhostAttak (to the backing of Tetsuo The Iron Man - bit of a jump of styles there!).

There's some great pictures of the show on the Synoiz Facebook page which were taken by David Fife Photography, although here's one of them so you can see:

Here's the setlist for those who were asking:

Synoiz - The Borough Sunderland 19/05/2012

1. Shock! Horror! (Music Video)
2. Ever Emptiness
3. The Open Sky
4. Andromeda
5. Long Lost...
6. The Esoteric Order Of Dagon*
7. Getting Safer (Music Video + Tea Break)
8. You Don't Even Remember Me**
9. Another World
10. Darkling

* From the single "Long Lost..." and "The Esoteric Order Of Dagon" EP
** From "The Dark Passenger" soundtrack

I was so glad with how this performance went, there were hitches and technical issues (all of my triggers reset half way through Another World so I was hastily fixing that up before too many people noticed that the mid-track silence wasn't intentional haha) but everyone seemed to love it especially my new approach to performing Getting Safer.

Some of the backing videos that I flung together for the show have been uploaded to the Synoiz YouTube account so you can watch them there, I think my favourite is the one for Another World as it's pretty creepy in its own right.

Once again thank you to everyone who came, thanks especially to the Borough manager Grant and Lolly for making the whole thing a reality, us music types rely on great folk like you! If you can make it to the next show on the 4th of August I'll see you there!
Syn

Posted 22nd April 2012

And time goes by so slowly bloody fast

It's been a while since I posted a blog, I guess it's because I've been very lazy these past few months. Lots to do and yet it seems easier and better to just let the days flow by, I'm not that old yet but it feels like a lifetime since that joy of being a kid where the summer holidays lasted forever, now you face the reality that it's only a month and a bit and that's gone in a blink. There's lots to do but right now I'm kinda dreading releasing new material cos I can't stand promotion, maybe I should just finish something and throw it out there and pray someone sees it and spreads it about for me!

Update on Darkling

One thing that has frankly been pissing me off is that I still haven't finished and released the Darkling remix album. What's holding it back is that we're trying to get the production perfect and I have such a massive promo campaign planned for it that it just seems like too much work to cope with. Logically I should release it with minimal fuss and then, depending on reactions, temper the flames with extra promotion. Otherwise we get the Final Fantasy XIII effect where Square Enix released it expecting everyone to love it and already working on a sequel, then when people play it they decide it's a big load of rubbish and would prefer that SquareEnix work on something better rather than further promo or sequels.
I could be holding back on and planning so much for Darkling only to find nowhere reviews it or nobody wants a CD copy.

In other news - Neonyte!!!

Yep it's finally been announced (see the news page for more) that myself and vocalist/lyricist Shaun L'Orange have decided on our synth duo name - Neonyte.
There's not much in the pipeline yet as I'm waiting on my computer to be repaired before I can work anymore on our album, but we've got some synth-acoustic demos online on our Facebook page should you want to check them out!

Until next time! WATCH THE SKIES! (or something)

Posted 18th December 2011

Ohohohoho it's getting close to Christmas, and we all know what that means! The horrible and tragic realisation that you don't truly know or understand the people you're trying to buy presents for. Maybe I have a very pessismistic view of the Christmas season but for me it's just cold, ice, social expectations and sodding Wham! on the radio every ten minutes. Still I suppose it's nice for getting a bit of chill time to, say, update this blog and finally say hello to the nice new followers on Twitter.

The main thing I want to say now I've got a moment is thank you to everyone who came along to the first ever Synoiz live performance in November as part of the Cutting Edge Film Festival in Newcastle. The whole day was awesome once I'd stopped stressing about things and just decided to have a good time!

Hilariously the performance was a bit of a shambles as lots of things went wrong and meant that neither the backing videos that myself and 12 Foot Beast Productions had spent most of the previous week filming nor the right channel of most tracks worked at all. Two of the more important tracks had to be skipped because of a bizarre and unforeseen bass limiter on the venue's mixing desk (meaning that the main parts of Getting Safer and Ever Emptiness were totally cut off)!

Still even if I see the gig as a disaster a lot of the audience still said they enjoyed themselves and it gave me a great opportunity to get used to playing in front of people and being the centre of attention (which I've never liked the idea of), I had a lot of fun with the audience, joking on about the technical issues, even attempting with Alex (after someone shouted it out) to do an a cappella version of Getting Safer that was both hilarious and a disaster.

Setlist:

1. The Open Sky
2. Andromeda
3. Long Lost...
4. Ever Emptiness¹
5. Getting Safer¹
6. Of Rolling Hills
7. Darkling

¹ These were the tracks that had to be skipped due to technical issues.

Thanks to everyone who came down and who requested songs to be played, Andromeda and Of Rolling Hills were the fan chosen tracks and went down a treat I think. Thanks also to Alex Campbell for pulling through for me and helping me out with additional keyboards and banter for a few of the tracks.

All in all the Cutting Edge film festival organised by Antoni McVay of Mitsuko Studios was a big success, there were some great films being shown as well as some hilarious ones! Lots of nice compliments (ie: "that was bloody freaky") on my scores for the films Nightmares and The Dark Passenger plus, I think it got mentioned in the news section, I won the award for "Best Actor" for the stuff I did for Le Belle Dame Sans Merci and The Dark Passenger (the soundtrack of the dark passenger was cobbled together meticulously compiled, remastered and released a few weeks ago if you want to go get it by clicking here btw). We've discussed the idea of releasing the more dramatic Nightmares soundtrack too but since it was composed by both myself and Guy Newby and edited by me we'd have to work a bit more out in terms of which versions to use, whether to include unused tracks or scenes and stuff and so it's probs a "tomorrow after tomorrow" type job.

I didn't win the "Best Soundtrack" award as that was taken by Brendan Ratliff (aka @echolevel on Twitter) and his brilliant organic score for Le Belle Dame Sans Merci. I think I would have been jealous if any of the other soundtracks had beaten the three I had done for stuff in the festival but I remember hearing Brendan's first version of the score on a pre-final edit of the film and thinking that it was exactly what I had wanted to go for but didn't really know if I could achieve, his score was perfect for the film and I'm a firm believer in the importance of considering what is best for a project and not just my own portfolio.

Anyway there may be some pictures or videos of the Synoiz live performance coming at some point, I saw one or two camera phones and Ian from 12 Foot Beast was recording the whole thing from somewhere at the back so they may get added to the YouTube or news section at some point.

Hope you're all well and if you don't hear from me, have a very Merry Christmas and happy New Year!

Posted 21st November 2011

Had a sleepless night yesterday, I've been trying to get myself into a more sensible and regimented daily routine lately and my body seems to be rejecting it. Rather than the odd bed at 3am/4am, get up at 7am that I've somehow been managing over the last few months, I've been aiming for bed at 10pm and up at 6am, it's just proving harder than I thought.

I just seem to wake up sometimes, in the peaceful but deathly silence of like 2am and I'm not sure what I should do. Do I close my eyes, push all thoughts out my mind and try to get to sleep for another 30 mins or do I get up, read or work till I feel tired again?

I've always held the belief that whenever I can't sleep that there's a reason, either a worry that needs more thought, an errand that needs to be added to tomorrow's list, or even a lavatory visit or phone that needs plugging in. Lately I can't seem to find out what that "secret concern" is. So I wonder if it's a physical thing and I'm just supposed to be weathering this until my body finally gets used to nights with more than 3 hours sleep at a time.

I suppose I have a fair few worries at the moment, my first ever live performance on Saturday is looming (1st World Problems eh?). While I'm being realistic and know that I've almost got it in hand and either way people should enjoy it, there's still that nagging doubt that Gollum-like studio dwellers like me seem to have with being "up there" and watched by people. There seems to be a few Synoiz fans in the area planning to come along as well as a few of my other friends, it should be a good time once the irrational dread and "everything will go wrong" fear fades away.

Here's hoping we all get a good night's sleep tonight! Syn.

UPDATE: Argh! Turns out I lay awake from 2am to 4am and then my alarm didn't go off so I woke up at 8am. You have to wonder sometimes...