With Martin Dubka, Ian Boddy & Nigel Mullaney, John Biddulph, Mylar Melodies, Wisdom Water.
You can find Part 1 of Cymru Beats 2017 HERE, Cymru Beats Part 1: Afternoon Synth Meet
Who Rocked And Who Flopped?
Simon Jones, the event organiser, opened the evening with an introduction to the World of Modular Synthesizers.
Dr. John Biddulph
Dr. John Biddulph kicked things off with his expansive modular setup plus an Arturia MatrixBrute and a Folktek Luminist Garden.
The performance started with an ambient soundscape centred around live play with the Folktek Luminist Garden.
He then moved forward with more melodic music and more prominent rhythmic parts.
Interesting soundscapes, I enjoyed his performance and so did the rest of the audience. He rocked.
Incidentally, Dr. Biddulph uses his KB37 as an instrument for his ‘music and sound programme’ a programme he developed as a specialist provider of autism and Asperger Syndrome (ASD) courses and counselling. He explained how he uses two Waldorf KB37 eurorack keyboards where an autistic child is free to fill one of the keyboards with his/her choice of modules and create custom sounds. I won’t go into more detail here because I am not a specialist in this field.
I had the opportunity to speak very briefly with him, I look forward to meeting Dr John Biddulph again and learning more about his work and hopefully having more time to discuss musical forms within the context of Modular Synthesizers.
John Biddulph Synthesizer Live Setup with a Folktek Luminist Garden, Eurorack Modules and Waldorf KB37
John Biddulph’s performance had elements of pre-sequenced voices mixed with modular tweaking, live playing of the Folktek Luminist Garden, and live keys on the Waldorf KB37
Wisdom Water
Next to take the stage was Wisdom Water
Ivan performed his electronic music with a versatile setup that included four rows of Eurorack Modules, a Moog Sub 37, Elektron Rytm/Octatrack/Heat and an outboard mixer to melt it all together.
His melodic electronica went down well. The audience was pleased with Wisdom Water’s music, Ivan rocked it! Some people in the audience said, “Good luck following that up”…
…(spoiler alert), no need to worry because the next act on stage were masters of their craft. More rocking ahead, keep reading.
Ian Boddy and Nigel Mullaney
The excellent synergy between Ian and Nigel delighted the audience with expressive synth voices and room-shaking beats.
Their setup was eclectic and included, on Nigel Mullaney’s side: several Elektron devices where each box takes care of different rhythmic elements plus voices from the Analogue Four
More rhythmic building blocks in the three rows of Eurorack with a few drum-voice modules and, of course, some more synth voices, filters, etc
Nigel’s Control section with keys and eurorack VC control modules. Mixing section between both performers
On Ian Boddy’s side: a lovely French Connection Ondes Martenot keyboard controller, one more Elektron box, a Make Noise 0-Coast and a Doepfer Base case with Eurorack sequencing and other modules.
Finished off with a 9U Doepfer case including a couple of Make Noise Maths and Cwejman modules among others.
Ian playing the Ondes Martenot keyboard live, among other things, and Nigel playing keys and an OP-1 while controlling the rest of his hardware. Great duo. Great performance.
Mylar Melodies
Next on stage was Mylar Melodies performing for the first time live. His setup is contained within four rows of Eurorack Modules and he explains his workflow in a few videos on his YouTube channel.
Mylar Melodies performed very hands-on live improv techno. Being his first live performance, before starting, he joked… ‘things could go wrong’. He didn’t need to worry, he did great. The audience enjoyed it and it sounded good. Looking forward to hearing him live again.
His kick sounded particularly good and when later on I had a chance to meet the guy and exchange a few words with him, he said his main kick was from the Audio Damage Boomtschak module.
Good going Mylar Melodies. You Rocked!
Martin Dubka
Finally, it was time to come on stage for well-known DJ, composer and record producer Martin Dubka.
What a way to end the evening. Martin Dubka started playing his live brand of improvised house/minimal techno music and we were all very quickly sucked in. Martin Dubka nailed it right from the start and, hard to believe, it kept getting better!
Martin’s performance was hands-on, playing around with melodic lines, bass lines and rhythmic elements on the fly.
The audience was bobbing heads up and down but we all went silent as if we didn’t want to miss any nuance of Martin’s music. There was not much chatting under the music… Only some rhythmic body movement and exchanges of positive looks between us, the audience, nodding in approval of a masterful performance.
Martin Dubka’s carefully crafted patches sounded particularly good in the venue. He didn’t rock the house, Martin Dubka brought the house down!
Cymru Beats 2017
The event, from the afternoon synth meet to the end of the evening’s live synth performances, was a positive and enjoyable experience. A big thank you to Simon Jones (Cymru Beats) for organising such a great Synthesizer Live Event in Cardiff.
You can find Part 1 of Cymru Beats 2017 HERE, Cymru Beats Part 1: Afternoon Synth Meet
If you find this post useful I would appreciate it if you could SHARE it (Forums, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc…). It would help me a lot. And sharing will also tell me these reviews are being of some use to the readers which in turn pushes me to produce more reviews. Feel free to comment, ask questions below or leave comments under the video review and Subscribe to SonicVoltage YouTube Channel, I’ll do my best to reply.
Ok, people! Thank you for stopping by and/or watching the video review.
Until next time… Happy Euroracking, Have Fun!
