Listmaker “Insynk” – Original Demo Tape Discovered In Ayrshire Attic!

Last night (Wednesday 10th April, 2013) at around 9PM I received a link on the Flyin’ Saucepan Facebook page from an old friend from Ayrshire. He’d been down in Ayr visiting his parent’s house, and had taken the time to rummage through all of his old music tapes and CDs.

Amongst the collection lay an original copy of [PANAIR 002] Listmaker “Insynk” on cassette tape! There were only ever a handful of these tapes given out, back in 1998. As you can imagine, I was REALLY happy to get this message. He took some photos of the object in question:

Listmaker “Insynk” – Original Copy Discovered

Listmaker “Insynk” – Inside Sleeve

The images are courtesy of Neil MacDonald, a prominent music journalist based in Glasgow and originally from Ayr. Neil conducts and transcribes music interviews for cult UK skateboarding magazine Sidewalk. You can read all of his interviews over on his BiteMyWire blog page:

Neil MacDonald’s music blog: Bite My Wire

Listmaker – Insynk Influences [Beatport Chart]

Anybody interested in the type of sounds contained within the latest Flyin’ Saucepan Potcast can get some further inspiration from Listmaker’s debut Beatport chart:

This selection of tracks which I’m charting for April 2013 aren’t the latest dance floor killers, and probably don’t pop up very frequently in the current charts on Beatport. Instead, they are works of timeless electronic wizardry…

The tracks selected were directly influential to my early musical endeavours as Listmaker. More accurately, they were the tracks which I remember listening to the most whilst discovering the complexities and technicalities of producing electronic music, years before working on my “Insynk” EP, originally produced back in 1998.

I hope that you look upon this selection with a wide nostalgic smile.

Listmaker – Insynk Influences Chart (April 2013)

[PANAIR 002]

[PANAIR 002]

DESCRIPTION

Originally recorded directly to two-track analogue tape in 1997 and then minidisc in 1998, these four tracks were the first Listmaker demos to be sequenced using a Commodore Amiga 1200 running Bars & Pipes software, with real hardware synths and drum machines.

Prior to this, all Listmaker music had been sequenced using ProTracker software and consisted solely of internal samples created on the Amiga, with a brief period of experimentation using a Yamaha RY30 drum machine manually synchronized alongside it. Several live gigs at student unions around Glasgow back in ’96 were performed this way, and also featured a borrowed Roland SH101.

The tracks were inspired by the progressive and psychedelic electronic sounds from labels such as Planet Dog, and the cold dark acid vibes emanating from the Sheffield warehouse scene.

Equipment consisted of a Yamaha CS1x synthesiser with SU10 sampler, Yamaha RY30 drum machine, Control Synthesis “Deep Bass Nine” and Korg MS10, running through a Spirit mixer. Later additions of a Korg M1 and Novation Bass Station can be heard on “JoMol 1”.

BONUS

BONUS ITEMS!!!
Download of the complete digital release comes with the following bonus items:
05 – TARPLAINS (ORIGINAL MIX) – 6:56
06 – MOBILE PHONE RINGTONE
07 – MOBILE PHONE TEXT ALERT SOUND
+ MOBILE PHONE SLEEVE ART WALLPAPER
+ FLYIN’ SAUCEPAN DESKTOP WALLPAPER
+ PANFRIED 002 “INSECTILE FOOL” RECIPE

BUY IT HERE FOR £1

Remembering Listmaker [Part One]

By 1997, I had already been performing live as Listmaker in various bars and student unions around Glasgow.

I had been using an Amiga 1200 running ProTracker, which I thought was great. ProTracker v3.10B came on the cover diskette of Amiga Format magazine (along with a second diskette featuring a demo of the absolutely awesome game Syndicate). That particular issue of the magazine was really inspirational as it focused on creating music and animations, with several tutorials. Obviously I couldn’t wait to get started, and after a year or two of using ProTracker I had hundreds of tracks made.

Click on the disc to read about the software:

Christmas 1996, I received an amazing gift of a Yamaha RY30 drum machine. Programming the machine was second nature after spending such a long time with ProTracker, and it wasn’t long before I realised that I could write tracks using the drum machine and ProTracker together. My only limitation was that I had no way of automatically synchronising the two machines, as the Amiga had no MIDI interface. However, I found that by manually increasing and decreasing the tempo of the drum machine using the buttons on the front, I could keep the two machines in sync. This meant that I could use all four channels of Amiga audio for melodies and sound effects, whilst keeping the drum tracks on the Yamaha.

Click on the image to read about the equipment:

The Listmaker sound was becoming bigger! Whilst studying at the University of Glasgow, I was staying in student halls of residence. The drum machine and my Amiga kept me entertained. I didn’t have a TV or games console in my room, and I didn’t need one. I set about playing gigs around the city. I performed at the QMU on the same stage I’d seen Aphex Twin perform on, and I played gigs at Strathclyde and Caledonian University student unions…

After dropping out of university to earn money as a landscape gardener in Ayr in 1997, I lost the momentum that I’d built up whilst living in Glasgow. However, I had soon saved up enough money to buy my first synthesizer and sampler. The next additions to the Listmaker sound were a Yamaha CS1x synth, and a Yamaha SU10 sampler.

Click on the images to read about the equipment:

By this time, I’d also acquired Bars & Pipes Pro software and a decent MIDI interface. ProTracker was shelved and the Listmaker sound started to become much more professional. I was young and enthusiastic. I read copies of Future Music magazine and Sound On Sound magazine religiously. I had become an electronic music fanatic, and was happier at home in my studio producing than I was going out and socialising. The times that I did leave the house were either to work or to spend time at fellow electronic music producer Galaxis Quench’s studio in Ayr. It was through Quench that I managed to track down an original Korg MS10 synthesizer. At the same time, he found himself a Moog Rogue!

Click on the image to read about the equipment:

Up until this point I’d been storing everything on Amiga 1200 diskettes and recording my tracks to cassette tape, on my grandfather’s old TASCAM two-track. After several of my master recordings got chewed up and transformed into a garbled tapemess fit for nothing but the bin, I realised that I’d need to upgrade to storing digital masters in order to preserve my work. Unable to afford a DAT recorder or any other digital master format, I settled on a Sony MiniDisc recorder. Regrettably, the compression used to fit the audio onto the media wasn’t the best quality (MiniDisc uses lossy compression) but it was a thousand times more reliable than cassette tape!

I set about converting my good tape masters to MiniDisc, and began writing music fervently. Inspired by my developing studio, seemingly limitless audio possibilities (after squeezing as much as I could out of very little equipment prior to leaving Glasgow), I put together my first complete EP, entitled “insynk” as a celebratory reference to my progression from a couple of manually synchronised machines to a fully synchronised studio…

PRE-ORDER PANAIR 002 FOR £1 NOW!!!

RELEASED ON 1st APRIL 2013

Originally recorded directly to two-track analogue tape in 1997 and then minidisc in 1998, these four tracks were the first Listmaker demos to be sequenced using a Commodore Amiga 1200 running Bars & Pipes software, with real hardware synths and drum machines. Also comes with mobile phone ringtones, wallpapers, release info and an accompanying recipe for “Insectile Fool” – A weird tangy acid fruit fool!

to mark the release date of April Fool’s Day.

ALL THIS FOR £1

Listmaker – Insynk