Time passes quickly...

...not just since my last Blog, but also since buying my first ever album, back in 1985 (or was it '86?) - Paul Hardcastle's, self-named LP.

I remember this having a huge influence on my at the time - from the revolutionary Synclavier sampling & time stretching (put to amazing effect on the classic track '19'), to the high-tech circuit board front cover. I pretty much wore out the cassette (chrome tape, with Dolby B if I remember rightly!) listening to this over and over again (it was my only album at the time after all)!

25 years, and almost a 1000 CD purchases later this album is still not available to buy on CD - something I've never understood. So, today when I found it for MP3 download at Amazon I couldn't flex my Amex fast enough. OK - ideally I'd like a lossless FLAC format, but listening to the album now as I type this, the quality is good enough, and so much better than the original cassette!

Finally, Paul Hardcastle inspired me to want to become an electronic music producer. Not something I ever did professionally, but I dabbled with various software on my Spectrum (yes, really) Amiga, and later Windows PCs. This week I've decided to build a new mini studio, based around my Vista laptop, an M-Audio Oxygen 8 V2 keyboard, and Cakewalk Sonar Studio 8. The Sonar software is still on its way from Amazon, but the rest is here ready to go. If I can bash out anything good, I might put it online - you have been warned!

Thanks for reading,
Nick.