G.N.L. Music News

I’m back and this time with a short six-track Synthwave album because I felt like doing some as always so sure why not? I used my trusted AKAI MPK Mini and plugins from Arturia the V Collection as I love to use them a lot in all my synth stuff including Synthwave which I make when I’m in the mood like all the genres I make. I called it Destiny Awaits as I feel all our destinies are awaiting and to be fulfilled only we are all stuck in this cycle of self-doubt and unsureness that we can’t rise above the tomb and conquer what our destiny is whatever that is. I have to keep telling myself that I will get there with the right nudge push and fall but now isn’t the time for me with my illness, which I’m recovering from and what I think is a spine injury and some other complications from my mental health which is in the brain. I believe the medicine is doing good and doing what it’s meant to be doing which is stopping the bad side effects of a mental illness. But it’s true all our destiny awaits and not in the fate way cos some people are mixed up in that goth life aka death and corrosion lifestyle and need to see a brighter day but of course be careful of getting destiny mixed up with fate. Fate is death and a negative whilst destiny is a mission to fulfil and for example marry your childhood sweetheart or get that job you so hard practised for or associated with, that’s my definition of fate and destiny but each to their own. There was a post by none other than Jack Jumping Frost a well-known English Producer, DJ and MC who was one of the originals who DJ’d Jungle and Drum and Bass and has been going for quite some time now. Anyway long story short he had this statement where he said you must be willing to fail to win and how it will teach a lesson and it’s true. Your destiny isn’t to say it wasn’t my time or destiny but keep pushing and making baby steps as you go something I think Kelly Rowland and the famous Ciara said if you know you know lol, oh yeah and that lady with the fan action. It’s easy to give up and let the haters eat away at you but what they seem to fail to understand and contemplate is you have good and bad days it is swings and roundabouts so don’t feel like you failed or no one cares it probably was the wrong time or not something they are interested in unless you suck at your craft. The point is a couple of points actually but number one never listen to a naysayer they are diseased and are past their bedtime, number two believe in your craft or know with enough time and effort you will conquer whatever it is you are doing and get better. Number three never chase the dragon yeah you got a few likes and comments on your last whatever it is but it is swings and roundabouts and you are competing with other people but walk away if it’s past your quote of what you find acceptable but only if you have a backup plan or you believe in thirst mites shall we call them, stay hydrated people. I think it’s unfair to sell unsalable dreams but they sell you them anyway all to get your money and basically scam you or get you into debt with the lifestyle you will acquire once those stocks go up which reminds me of how to do those YouTube ads about BitCoin and shares get passed it seems a bit Pyramid Scheme where the little man is sold dreams and gets nothing but pips and ash from the fat cat’s cigars “please sir can I have some more.”  Moving on to the tracks I made the first track Eat This is a synthy Synthwave track and is one of my favourites on the album. I like the synths and I like the nighttime feel to it it feels late night and a bit mysterious and something about it. The bass is nice and chilled and sounds like a Sine to me over the other synths which I think I was using the Prophet stuff from Arturia and there are a couple of them so I’m unsure what model it is but it’s one of them. I liked the feel of those synths quite a lot and were quite popular in the 80s by 80s pop bands. The next track Has The Nightmare Started is a surreal and dark track and again one of my favourites on the album. It has my favourite bass rhythms which resemble the Progressive Rock bass and are quite melodic. I also like the synths to this and add to the dark and surreal feel to it. There is a remix to this song that will be out soon on the 6 Pack remixes where I make six remixes of the old stuff I mostly put out on Spotify etc that will be out in a few weeks. The next track Backstop is another dark and mysterious track I also made a remix to and will be out on my 6 Pack Remixes album in the next couple of weeks. I used to like using the sequencer quite a lot so it was good to use one again after a long break from using them. They all have them on there and good ones so I might actually make a sequencer EP or album sometime. I also like the strings on this one which makes it sound heavenly but dark heavenly with that sequencer in the background and awful bass. The next track Remember You is a melodic happy church vibe song which I like and makes me happy. It has more sequencer vibes on and I like that and the bass which gives it a jolly awake track if you know what I mean. It does have a touch of darkness but is mostly a pleasant happy track. The next track Let Go (Inside Fear) is my overall favourite on the album and I like the bass and the claps over the melodic synths which like all the others on this album I used the Prophet from the V Collection from Arturia. I also like its mysteriousness and the tinge of darkness it has to it and I like to use it quite a lot in my music, especially my synthy stuff. I like to keep clear of generic even though sometimes I make generic tracks but I tend to stay away from those kinds of sounds. The last track Search For Me is another favourite on the album it has a bright synth and dark once again Progressive Rock bass which I love to use a lot and like to play that way as I like the melodic bass feel to it. I also like the strings to it and the bits that are repeated after the first synth pattern. It has that nighttime feel too which I like and also appeals to the daytime too. The bit in the middle that repeats reminds me of the melody to Three Blind Mice which I didn’t do on purpose it just happened so don’t sue me lol.  

In June 2017 I went on holiday to Lizard in Cornwall here in the UK. Before that, I had never been on holiday since the early 2000s. I had such a nice time so much so that I felt inspired and made a whole album about my holiday to Cornwall. This is an old album and I made it also in 2017 as soon as I came home I felt like I couldn’t wait and had so many ideas of what to put in the album. It does feature some actual recordings taken from my video camera and I converted them into WAV files and made tracks out of them which I think makes the album more of a holiday album. I say I made the album back in 2017 but there are five remixes which are at the end of the album I made in 2020 to 2021 when I was trying to make a cassette tape version but things didn’t go to plan. I kept running out of tape and the tape recorder was damaged so it didn’t come out that well but it was only for personal use. I won’t go into too much detail in this post as I already made an eBook with all the details and some other things I’ll leave a link below in case you are interested it’s an interactive eBook. I will say this though it was nice to get away for a bit and be by the sea and sand. They had the clearest water and the beaches were okay most of them were stoney and not good for your bare feet but some were over nice and somewhere I wish I lived by or could get away for a bit but I’m a city boy, to be honest. All the songs are inspired by real events or conversations I had with my friend whom I went on holiday with and are mostly real events and memories I had internally also looking back at the video footage we filmed. Looking back makes me sad as it was when I still had my dog Patch and she was still here I had her put down in 2019 due to old age if you haven’t read that already but she had the best last two years and we went on holiday to the Isle Of Wight the following year in 2018 before she started losing her back legs. I knew she wouldn’t last as long as me I just wasn’t ready for the fall out which is why I haven’t got another dog so quickly on top of the other reasons like being woken up in the night and the cold in the winter. The highlights were going to the beach every day to this little cobbly beach which I will explain later on but also I loved going to the Lizard Lighthouse and the surrounding areas it was the most scenic area and as I said before the sea was tropical it looked good enough to drink. The weather was hot all week apart from the last day which was cloudy but still warm my mate got sun burnt on the head mostly on the third or fourth day and he had to buy suncream it was that hot. I love the heat and made the holiday special or more like a holiday we were lucky to have the weather so nice as it could have been raining all the week we were there. The first track and the intro were recorded on Kennack Sands East Beach and were on the first day and the first beach we went on just an hour from landing so to speak. It was quite misty and as you can hear it was quite creepy and like out of a film. I really thought we were to have horrible weather that week with the cloudy skies and the mist surrounding the landscape. Kennack Sands East Beach is a dog-friendly beach and the main beach Kennack Sands isn’t. We spent a lot of time there mainly in the afternoon and the early evening before the tide came in or so we didn’t want to risk it so we retired for the evening. I would say the next track Mist is a Progressive Rock song and has a heavy bass and also heavy synthesizers which is dark and also has sound clips from what I recorded with the video camera in the intro. The next song Pulse (Blouse & Big Girls Mix) is another video sound bite I got from my video camera. First of all, we were on cliffs and there were gaps in the missing pavement one bit you had to jump across. Anyway I have a fear of heights and there was my friend nilly willy dancing in the moonlight and skipping and breakdancing (okay not actually real events) but he was getting close to the edge and I had a funny feeling. Luckily nothing happened but he was asking for it in a sad way. Pulse (Blouse & Big Girls Mix) is an edgy synthy track and a favourite on the album as I like the synth sounds and the arpeggio pattern I played with my MIDI keyboard. I also like the vocals which are me pooping myself and having some sort of light panic attack. So if you like to hear me cry for my supper please check this track out. The next track Working At The Serpentine is another favourite on the album and I like the synthy sharpness to it with the drum pattern I believe I was using the Roland 808 drum machine at the time and used that for a little while before I started doing them the other way by sample base. There was this lovely disused Serpentine factory that was around until the 1900s when it got closed down. It also where the fisherman sorted and brought in the fish so it was good to be by something so old and unique. It was on a cove called Carleon Cove and not so far to walk from the campsite and even if it was it was sure worth it, there wasn’t anyone there one or two people the whole week we were there. The next track Beneath The Surface is an upbeat track that reminds me of dipping in the water and getting a bit wet which is what the track is about and why there are submarine noises in the track. I like the melodic tone to it with the bass which I like that bass and think goes well with the track. The next track Washed Up is another sound bite I got off my video camera and was taken on Cadgwith Cove. There were lots of washed-up fish and it kind of stunk a bit rotten in the air but still a nice place to be and was a little village of fishermen and women. It was rocky terrain and not any sand but it was scenic and something that was nice to see. The next song Max is about a sheep we saw on a lead and I think was a pet for the meantime. I was lucky enough to get a picture his name was Max which is why it’s called Max and has sheep baaing on the track. The next track Flambards (Skit) was recorded at Flambards an old Victorian village which was quite creepy looking back at it. It had shop fronts of shops of the Victorian era and also other things like a World War 1 exhibition and lots of other items it was nice to see all the old stuff and is quite fascinating. The next track Lighthouse (Alternative Version) is about an old lighthouse we visited on the Lizard coast. We didn’t go to the top of the lighthouse as we had my dog but we did take lots of pictures and also saw the exhibition inside one of the buildings. It’s another favourite on the album and I like the synthy sounds I played with the 808 drum machine I used in all of these tracks. The next track Friendly Locals is about how friendly the locals were. There were quite a few nice people actually but there were two I remember one was a taxi driver and ex fisherman and the other one was a nice man also a fisherman who gave us a lift to Cadgwith Cove after we underestimated how long it was going to take to get there. The track is yet another favourite on the album and I like the melodic and the synthy sounds, I do like all the synthesizers I used on this album and I think I used mostly Repro and Diva from Uhe but I’m not sure now. The next track Pandemic (Chernobyl Alternative Version) is my overall favourite on the album. We watched a lot of pandemic movies on the Horror Channel it was pandemic month or something like that and one of them was Chernobyl Diaries I can’t remember all the movies we watched but they were all about getting a virus or contacting something from someone. This was before COVID-19 so it was like they were telling us something but that’s deep dish FM AKA down the rabbit hole AKA too close to the truth so to speak. I like the Repro bass and the other chilled elements which I think go well together it’s a nice relaxing track which isn’t in your face and good for sleep music if you are into your synthesizer sleep music and trust me there is such a thing. The next track Mediterranean Pasty is another overall favourite and is about the beautiful landscape that was all around us especially Lizard Point on the coast. I don’t know what it is about the track but I think there is something about it maybe it’s the way it’s played with the synthesizer sounds who knows but I do love it and this is also my overall, overall favourite track on the album. The next track Fortune (Pound Up Alternative Version) is about me winning a pound on the slot machines and also playing the two-pence slot machines and winning some on that before putting it all back in where it came from. This is another favourite on the album and I like the brightness and also the jolly happy feeling it gives I like the chorus a lot which I think makes the song and also it’s quite catchy and upbeat which is the feeling I get when gambling dangerous patterns lol. The next track Sea Goddess (Alternative Version) is another overall favourite on the album and I like the catchy feel to it and what the synthesizers produce. We found a statue right by the sea cliffs it was on a small plot of grass over a gate. We don’t know what the statue was there for but we guessed it was a sea relative thing which is why I called it Sea Goddess. The next track Sad To Go Outro is another recording from my video camera. I was so excited when I was going and waiting so when the week was up I didn’t want to leave and felt sad but saying that I was looking forward to getting back but I didn’t want to go at the same time. The five remixes are variations of the original tracks I made in 2019 – 2020 and are all upbeat synthy tracks and something different from the original tracks. My favourites are Pandemic (Gore Box Remix) and Pulse (No Dramatics Remix.) The last song was a bit of an experiment and I thought I wonder what it would be like if I reversed the track so I did I liked it so I put it on the album as the last track for something different and weird.

Interactive Cornwall eBook

Lizard Cornwall Interactive eBook – GasNoLight.co.uk

It’s been a while since I made a Synthwave album so I thought I’d make one and this one is a nine-track album with a couple of remixes at the end of the album. I enjoy making Synthwave and have a good collection of synthesizer plugins which I use quite a lot. There’s a lot from the Arturia Collection and a couple from Korg which I heavily use a lot in all my synthesizer stuff and also some of my rave tracks. I got the drum kits from Zenhieser the 80’s Retro Drummer, 80s Drums which is a well-put-together drum kit of one-shots which make it sound so authentic and make it sound like it was from the ’80s, with the patterns I make from the one-shots which again I enjoy doing. If you make Synthwave it’s one for your collection and I use it on all my Synthwave stuff as I love the drums and is what I look for kind of old 80s Hip Hop drums and 80s Pop drum kits so I was happy with my purchase and have made some great tracks with them. I’m happy with how the album turned out and like all the tracks I kind of did them back to back bit over two days as I was keen to finish off the album as that’s the thing there are not a lot of tracks, singles, EPS or albums I haven’t finished there’s a few but most of them I have finished and are out on all major platforms or they are unreleased and are on Soundcloud which is where all my unreleased stuff goes like remixes of other people’s tracks and the stuff I won’t put out for whatever reason.  I called it Brain Freeze as my mind is kind of hazy and I can barely remember what happened last decade and all the good stuff I’ve done which as I said before seems like a distant dream but was all real and a good point in my life but sadly all came crashing down when the world stopped for a moment and also my mental health was getting worse and I couldn’t keep up with the demands of the jobs I was doing. Everything just seems like a blur and a distant memory and some of the things I’ve done sound like I’m running up for clout and are all lies but I know I did all those things it’s hard to believe. As I said a few times now it was a different time and there were fewer laws and more importantly restrictions and the world was a good place to be with things like the invention of House music and all that came after that, which opened many doors for people and new ones it was also a good chance to socialize and do something adventurous and local business was always in on the game. The point is now with all these new laws and the way we are nannied it’s harder to think back on the good times that were had and makes it harder for people especially younger people to understand how the earth should be run and how it was which is a million light years away now and something that will never happen again but we can hope for a comeback of some sort I’ll be there in a flash. Also, Brain Freeze means some people have brain freeze and are dead inside I don’t know what’s gotten into people but for some reason, it’s cool or acceptable to bring down someone cos they are so icy well “You so icy you so icy why don’t you pay me on time” hmmm. It is ridiculous though and I’m tired of it just cos you woke up in a bad mood you spew your mess around and make everyone unhappy or so you think as BITCH you won’t kill my vibe. It’s sad really and something I don’t talk a lot about but one thing for sure I won’t let it bring me down and make me into something I try hard not to be a See you next Tuesday as much as I have vented back at them lol.  The first track Olive In The Glass is a middle BPM Boogie track which I enjoyed playing. It’s quite an upbeat track and reminds me more of older Boogie styles which were in the 1950s with Rockabilly and Rock ‘n’ Roll also emerging around that time. The next track Days & Nights is one of my favourites on the album as I like the drums and the synthy sounds I played over the beat. I also like the bass which is a simple bass just a one-note pattern but it works with the track and gives off that Electro Funk feel to it with the drum kit which as I said before I love that drum kit so handy. I love claps on some of my Synthwave tracks I used to use them a lot in my House tracks but I notice not a lot of people use claps in House no more so I made up for it by putting them on some of my Synthwave tracks like the second track Days & Nights which I think makes the song and makes it sound again more Electro Funk or 80s Hip Hop. The next track Just A Sec is another favourite on the album and again I like the drums, synths and also the bass. I messed around with the filters on the snare to make this cool-sounding 80s pattern which is like something out of Michael Jackson’s Bad album. I played all the melodies using my MIDI keyboard and I like this one quite a lot it’s something you can have on in the background at a nice volume and relax to it or so for me.  The next track Kingdom is a slow-paced track that is nice gentle and soothing. I love the bass on this one and think it goes well with the synth stuff I put on top of that it’s kind of like express music and something I enjoy listening to in my spare time when I have the chance and feel like Synthwave. Again it’s one of my favourites on the album and I like the darkish tone to it but the drum kit especially and I like these drums a lot as there are a lot of variations in drums and sounds in the sample pack. The next track Chambers is another slow-paced track and yet another favourite on the album I think it’s safe to say I like all of them and think they are all good but I like the synths, bass and drums as always and think again makes the track. I love the dark synth bit as the main feature of the track and is part of what I call the chorus which I think makes the track also my overall favourite on the album as I love that synth sound and the melodics. The next track Sound Of The Sirens was inspired by the sound of sirens always going off in the background as I live near an ambulance station not to mention the other services that fly by.  I was making it and came across a synth sound which I thought when I played it sounded like a siren so I thought I made a whole track with it. The next track is Kingdom (80s House Remix) which I like as I like the bass and again something to have in the background while you do your stuff. I like the synths I used the M1 from Korg and some samples I got from Loopmasters a long time ago which was the bongo drum pattern that goes throughout the track. The next track Days & Nights (80s House Remix) is a fast-paced rave track that again I got the drum pattern from an old sample pack and used most of the synths I used in the original track swapping only some of the instruments as I like to make variations of tracks as I mentioned before. It has this Electro Funk feel to it which I like and reminds me of doing the robot on a film or something. The last track Chambers (80s House Remix is another fast-paced song and the last couple are the fastest as they are House songs and around 120 -125 BPM. Since it was my overall favourite I thought I remix it and see what it would sound like as a House track, I like it but not better than the original track but it’s okay I suppose I do like it just not better than the original.