Nervous Gender


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFg3vxSySHo

Nervous Gender is a Synthpunk band from Los Angeles that kick offed their madness in 1979. I love these guys. Listen closely to the lyrics from the song Cardinal Newman (video above). Who can beat a chorus that screams, “Catholic school with prison bars! Catholic school with prison bars!”. All their recordings are fuzzy taped real analog synth detuned greatness. Go search the net for bits and pieces of what you can find and shoot them a few messages because they are still around.

“The group was confrontational and experimental, mystifying audiences of the day. Phranc’s androgynous appearance was the embodiment of the group’s name and added to their mystique, garnering them much press in zines such as Slash. Despite their somewhat high profile, the groups’ habit of provoking the audience, obscene material and harsh erotics guaranteed they would never gain commercial acceptance.” – Last.fm

For more info: www.myspace.com/nervousxgender

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This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on October 1, 2009 at 4:32 am, filed under music and tagged , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.



The great synthpunk keyboard: Korg 700s MiniKorg

Korg MiniKorg

Long before the hipster Microkorg hit Williamsburg there was the Korg 700s Minikorg. It was one of Korg’s first synths and to this day it’s one of my favorites. Every time I hear one of its raspy detuned aggressive sounds it makes my brain jump to it’s evil side. Daniel Miller used a 700 to create one of my all time favorite records TVOD/Warm Letherette by The Normal (iTunes link). Daniel soon went on to found Mute Records and sign Depeche Mode.

“It has three ring modulators for some strange sounds and noises. Sometimes a decent bass sound for techno music can be achieved using the MiniKorg’s hi-pass and low-pass filters. The two oscillators can be de-tuned and they offer triangle, sawtooth and square waveforms. There are some strange analog effects built-in as well such as portamento, a rudimentary repeat-delay, auto-bend (bender), vibrato and Chorus and Noise waveforms.” – vintagesynth.org

You can find the Korg 700s MiniKorg on eBay from time to time for a decent price. It’s on my wishlist!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbCHQyEJL7w


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8thf7TpZYs

photo credit: drsquidd

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This entry was written by Oliver Chesler, posted on July 7, 2009 at 4:47 am, filed under hardware, synthesizer and tagged , , , , , , , . Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.