All you guys participating in the Remix Cohmpetition 2010 and all progressive house fans out there should take a listen to our ohmfriend Faskil’s. He’s a belgium DJ & music producer, based here in Paris, delivering some of the most refined progressive sets nowadays. If it wasn’t already enough to catch our attention, he also produces his own pearls – all of them powered by the Ohm Force plug-ins – releasing on prog labels such as Silk Sofa Music, Jetleg Digital, Panda Recordings and Frisky Records. By the way, talking about Frisky, you can tune in Faskil’s weekly “Silly Waffles” show on Frisky Radio, or try to catch his mixes on his website some weeks later. He quite often puts online as well his sets from when he’s on tour,  he’s recently came back from a gig in Russia (where he’s proudly wore an Ohm Force tee despite the -30°C outside!) and we’re already waiting the set to be put online at his site. While we wait, we listen to the 23th edition of his Silly Waffle radio show already available to download , almost two hours of pure progressive gold.

Our friend Matt Walker and his band theMDR have just put a new song in their MySpace profile, called “The Great Melt”, go there take a liste! Some shoegaze guitars, punchy bass and drums, great melodies… A big cheer from the Ohm Force for the good work

A big shout to our ohmfriend Stuart Price, who has been recently mentioned among the “Best 19 music producers working today” feature from Music Radar! You may already know this Ohm Force heavy user because Madonna’s “Confessions of a Dance Floor” or The Killers’ “Day and Age”, but be aware to listen to some Ohm sounds in the albums he produced for New Order, Scissor Sisters, Keane, Seal, Zoot Woman, Frankmusik, Innerpartysystem… well… this post would be too long if we transcript his whole file. This guy is a monster.

These are the 3 winners of our recent studio pic contest powered by Sample Magic ! Three great pics so a shout out for these guys, respectively (in the photo order) “Samplaire”, “Shmoe” and “Vester”. Each one of them will be able to choose 3 Sample Magic libraries entirely for free, Christmas before time ! (click on the pics to see them bigger, when available)

Former Smashing Pumpkins drummer, currently Morrissey’s one, Ohmicide:Melohman addict and ohmfriend Matt Walker recently spent some time in Paris due Morrissey’s concert. He benefited from the moment to come visit our Ohm Force headquarter and have some off-the-spotlight lunch time at L’Escalier just in front of the Ohm cave. Really really nice to meet him live and realize that despite being rockstar he’s just a cool guy like me and you (ahn?)  - what made him deserve an actual Ohmforcian title: Drum Force ! The Ohm Force team make a big roll to this guy, and you can benefit from the moment to some weird french color names…

This time the Melohman vibes come from Austria, land of the wild – yet highly domesticable – Oinky Poinky specimens. The Oinky Poinky Demixed track was done using only the Symptohm:Melohman synth and fried sugar’n'nutella toasts. The chilled melodies tells the blurred visions through a Vienna’s subway window during a 5 minute ride in an Autumn afternoon in direction of LoFi Records office…(picture below)

Denis Klutch is an ohmfriend from Saint-Petersburg, Russia. He’s a former chiptune/tracker composer, but there’s a piece of gear that made him come to the DAW+plugin side of the force. Beside kick and snare sounds, which have been created with his Waldorf Attack, all his tracks were made with Symptohm:Melohman Performer Edition. There’s a remix for Sasha’s Mongoose and another for Beastie Boys’ Body Movin’ – among some other lo-tek tunes..

Zombies have always been excellent company for a weekend. A point of view that our ohmfriend John H. Van Eaton very probably shares, specially after his recent work on the FX and soundtrack for new Urbanchillers’ horror comedy movie “E-Discordia Dating for Zombies & the Undead” trailer. A lot of Symptohm:Melohman, several Ohmicide:Melohman spices, some Quad Frohmage sugar and a loads and loads of blood!

Being a Celldweller fan. It’s the kind of thing we think that happens only at other people’s families, until the day we surprisingly see it happening within our own kingdom. And what should we do, then? Well, if you think we’re going to lock a friend in one of Ohm Force cave’s abandoned dark rooms and feed him with a defrosted pizza, you’re completely mistaken! We’re open minded people and we do accept – and respect – our friends as they are. The proof is that we’re even sponsoring FIXT’s current Celldweller remix contest, which offers prizes from Ohm Force, Fabfilter and Cakewalk: if you appreciate his electronic-and-almost-trance-metal-rock, don’t miss this opportunity to have fun, show your skills and grab some gear. Nevertheless, Klayton/Celdweller is a first-time Ohmicide:Melohman user, what shows that he’s indeed a clever guy. And it’s true that he sculpted some very nice distorted landscapes in his tunes, which fits very well with his…. euh… we better stop here, otherwise you’ll start to think that there’s more than one fan here. Not at all, everything is under control!

Onili is cool girl from Tel-Aviv, Israel, who makes a sound that mixes electronica, rock and a bit of punk. She’s a superstar there, and year after year the european audience is being aware of this pink girly live act. Which parisians will be able to see in 2 days, in her concert at Le Reservoir. Have we mentioned she’s a longtime ohmfriend, having already tweaked every knob and parameter of all Ohm Force’s plug-ins? If you’re in Paris don’t miss it, all info in the flyer below. If you’re far away from here, you can at least grab this free to download Mp3 she’s offering to the Ohm community…

The day after his concert in Paris our ohmfriend Jordan Rudess from Dream Theater came pay us a visit at the Ohm headquarter. Good organic coffee, plugins interface’s drafts on the wall, a wonderful view to a decadent square and a nice Ohm shirt. Thanks to him you’ll be able to take a look of some ohmies’ faces and we’ve been able to – during yet another afternoon – not be complicit in the inhuman productivity.

When we talk about ’soundsystem culture’, many will immediately think on Jamaica’s ones pumping (very) loud reggae or dancehall; while connected guys will also remember those big Kuduro’s sound systems (Portugal and Angola) or even these huge Baile Funk’s wall of speakers at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. But the sound system culture is more spread out than one could imagine: in Cartagena, Colombia, there are also some of these resistance heros that work hard to bring good music – and culture, and attitude – to popular crowds for who music’s role goes far beyond the simple leisure. There they called the sound systems “piko’s” and the coolest one is undoubtedly the Systema Solar’s.

This colombian solar system is a collective composed by people coming from a variety of music traditions, mixing caribbean vibes to african influences and southern-american roots. Not only they’re a great music act and tough party starters, this crew also focus in social insertion throught music, by their NGO “Intermundos”, offering DJ and music production courses to local youngsters. “Cumbias, bullerengue, champeta, laptop, drums and vinyl records, all spinning in global orbits of stereo laser flavor”, it’s their table of contents. Actually used to be, as they can now add “Ohm Force plug-ins” in their studio gear list and also their students’ music lab. We’re glad to send the OhmBoyz and the Ohm Force to join/support these great colombian music activists – vamos todos bailar con el Systema Solar! If you want to dive in their spicy sound universe, take a look at this video presentation or their “Mi Colombia” song’s video clip – or even better, download for free their full album… (more pictures following)

Dream Theater’s keyboardist Jordan Rudess has recently announced JR Hexatone Pro (it’s an App Store link) for the iPhone, which is a kind of “next-generation” hexagonal loop generation tool that uses artificial intelligence and advanced randomization algorithms to produce constantly evolving sound structures. He has teamed with Amidio for developing the App and has been himself responsible for designing all the sounds/samples that comes with it. And guess what plugins he’s used to shape everything? His own words:

Once again Ohm Force plug-ins came to my rescue with my latest sonic adventure. While creating the sounds for my first official Iphone/Ipod touch app-JR Hexatone Pro, my most valued sonic resources were the extraordinary effects from these frenchies. Whenever I need an effect that is truly unique and incredibly cool, I go there first!

The app is a 6-directional drum machine/rhythm sequencer where each sequence can set to be totally chaotic, random, or strict and controlled. It’s also possible to load your own samples and there’s a way to export the audio to a external computer based DAW. Take a look at Jordan’s demo + tutorial and will understand it better…

Some time ago Fedor Thonnessen has reached the second place in Delamar’s music production contest (with the nice track “Power Walk in The Park”, that you can listen here) and since that we’ve been following his musical moves, specially the MySpace profile of his duo Fedido, with his mate Guido. If before being at the contest podium their production already used to be powered by the Symptohm:Melohman’s sounds and Quad Fromage’s filtering, next album’s tracks (they’re now in studio recording it) are being tweaked with their brand new Ohmicide:Melohman and Hematohm. Fedido’s last album is called “Improclima” and it’s free, released under a creative commons license. We’ve benefited from the moment to know a little bit more about them…

Tell us more about Fedido…

Our trumpet & keyboards duett FEDIDO exists since 2003. My friend and I met in a jazz band where we both felt the urge to widen the horizon. We record a lot and then spend a lot of time in post production. My friend has started using effects from an old PC version of Logic on his portable computer with amazing results. Sometimes we use home made or royalty-free loops (rythms, pads etc.) Even though we never set ourselves a style, our music has been called « relaxing », soothing… It’s true we don’t venture into « savage » sounds – or, in my view, what *we* percieve as savage is still calm by general standards ;-) Until now, we have played exclusively for the pleasure we get out of it – and for the absolute artistic freedom we enjoy as long as there’s no money involved. Anyone can listen to our albums (two until now, working on a third) on www.myspace.com/fedido , and we apreciate any feedback !

What’s your studio setup?

My main computer is a Powermac G5 QUAD (4x 2.5 Ghz), bought with still 6 months of warantee to go, when the Intel Macs started to come out. I also use a PowerBook G4 1Ghz, as well as a modest PC Intel Dual Core 1.6Ghz, which is more than enough for running well crafted Adobe Audition and Steinberg Wavelab (both quite old versions, but entirely sufficient for my needs).

On the Macs, I use Logic Pro 7. I started to use Macs so I could go on using Logic. (Having both worlds is a bonus as far as I’m concerned !) Pro 6 has been working perfectly fine for a while now; a stable setup is a setup I want to keep – so no urge to upgrade to Pro 8 right now.

I’m very fond of the proprietary plugins in Logic; I especially like the ES2 (a great and extremely versatile substractive synth.) The SPACE DESIGNER is a convolution reverb that sounds just amazing with sheer infinite presets from ultra-realistic to ultra weird ;-) Finally, there’s the no-fuss and still very flexible EXS 24 sampler, which accepts Akai and Giga format, which, again, is all I need.

My audio interface has been the Presonus FIREPOD for years; it has 8 channels all with mic preamplifiers, a very decent sound and a simple design that suits me well. Also a lot of outputs allowing for pretty much anything to be sent anywhere. I have done live recordings with it (8 channels come in handy!). I don’t know if an optical out has been added on the new version, I know people complained about “only” SPDF output on this unit…

I don’t want to sound too flattering, but my Ohm Force plugins ARE the ONLY non-Logic-native plugins I paid for! I started by falling in love with… was it Frohmage ? Ohmygod ? Anyway, i felt at ease with it instantly. Sometime later, there was a group buy, and I got myself the « All Filter » bundle, which included the both gorgeous QuadFrohmage and Symptohm:Melohman.

Now I’m exploring  my newly won Hematohm and Ohmicide (you gotta love them just for the NAMES, right ?)

What have been the concept and the starting ideas for making your contest track?

I essentially let myself being guided by the loops offered for the contest. To have sort of a background, I started with a homemade, pad-like loop (made with the ES2, a Logic synth), nicely distorted with Frohmage. I then let the synth loop (with lots of reverb to keep it distant, discrete) play along with my own loop. I then let both the rythm and bass loops kick in, as they played really nice together.

When I heard the organ loop, I instantly wanted to « trash » it, so it would feel like someone talking (that was the idea, anyway !) So I sent it through « BitCrusher » from Logic. I then stopped the rythm section and made the organ loop resonate / « sing » through Frohmage in a kind of midway-through « solo ». Rythm section kicks back in, organ solo ends, and I let my own loop have the « final singing », resonating through Frohmage as well. That’s it.

What kind of music your listen to?  What are your major influences and favorite artists?

I’ll try to be brief, because there would be so many names to mention… As a pianist, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea and… Vladimir Horowitz (classical) have had a huge impact on me. The Pat Metheny Group has been in my life since about 1978. I stopped listening to new albums for some years now, but his music – and, of course, the magical touch of his keyboardist and co-writer of most songs, lyle Mays – feels like home to me. I just have to add Radiohead… and Kate Bush ( !) to name the uttermost important ones…

My buddy and I both enjoy Pink Floyd, Miles Davis (especially what he did since « We want Miles »)… and lots more !

We’ve written each name in same sized piece of papers and put them all in a supermarket plastic bag. It took only 40 seconds until one of our cats – who has a kind of paranormal power, some believe – shake the bag making the first three papers come out so, the three winners of a Groovemonkee midi pack are…… Thomas Leroux, Stephen Crane and Julian Rademacher ! Congratulations guys!

This is the newest theMDR video on the web, a live performance of their “Foreign Tongue” song. theMDR the current music projetc of our ohmfriend Matt Walker (former Smashing Pumpkins drummer and nowadays drummer in Morrissey’s band). This video was produced in Chicago by Flashpoint Acadamy of Media Arts and the editing is by Matt himself: you’ll find more details about it here, and also check out their brand new MySpace profile design…

Loads of distortion on vocals? Colombian gothic artist Elamorte explains how he uses the Ohmicide:Melohman distortion plug-in from Ohm Force to process his vocal tracks. He could have made this tutorial without showing his face, but it wouldn’t be scary enough. His track is called “Suicide” and you shouldn’t listen to it alone at home…

Part 1

Part 2

Our ears are still banging and echoing. Yesterday night 5 ohmen were at the Nine Inch Nails concert at the Zenith hall, in Paris. Great band, great concert. Statistically Trent Reznor and his NIN are maybe one of the biggest musical unanimities here at the Ohm headquarter. It was a special pleasure listening to what they’re are capable to do with two guitars and a piece of software you might know called Ohmicide:Melohman. Thanks for all band members for such powerful music and special thanks for Blumpy (a big nice guy from the from the NIN crew) for guiding us through the big nail side of the force. Will the band play at your town? Go for it.

Kasper T. Toeplitz is a french electronic experimental musician, who digs playing with noises, developing hybrid instruments with computers and all that stuff that many of you enjoy a lot. No need to say that he became crazy when he first saw the Cohmpost, and since that the plugin is present in some of his pieces. He’s very often making live presentations of his sonic perversions at festivals all around the world, and during last days he was in London, preparing his act, more precisely a track with 4 Cohmpost sessions, when he had a little surprise:

So our technical support has quickly answered this mail explaining that hmmmmm….. it would be better to wait for the end of the lunch break or….. finding some way to change the system’s clock. (below a video showing some Kasper’s music)..

Two years ago we interviewed musicians Julian Styles and Simon Collins – both endorsed by Ohm Force – but as it was the time when our website was experiencing his major upgrade and or old blog going slowly to the purgatory, this material ended to be lost in cosmos. But not anymore, as the duo has found it and recently posted it again at their website, so now you’ll be able to check it out.

We’ve just received a mail from a british Ohm Force user sharing some…. hmmm.. impressions about Nick Griffin’s recent european electoral victory. We’re sorry Aidan, but we’ll not be able answer your mail, as religion, soccer and politics are three subjects strictly forbidden here at the office, otherwise we’d need to install metal detectors in our front door. So no hard feelings between us, ok?

This time our german ohmfriend Colin Stark (you’ll probably remember him from our first video cohmpetition, one year ago) waited almost until the last minute to send us his most recent production. Now he shows how he personally uses his OhmBoyz, Ohmicide:Melohman and OhMyGod!. (Colin, you have indeed experienced some technical problem when rendering your video, as video speed is weird and there’s no sound at all. The HD version is not working neither. Please render/upload again and send us a new link as soon as possible!!!)

Third submission by Michael Hetrick is once again about our distortion beast Ohmicide:Melohman, this time showing a creative way to use the plug-in: using each band’s noise gate parameters to apply different kinds of distortion to each portion of the frequency spectrum, what gives – in Michael’s studio an acoustic drum loop – new personalities to the audio and spicy rhythmic enhancements to what used to be a ‘not that uncommon loop’. In addition he plugs in an OhmBoyz delay and – wow – we could make an entire track only playing along with parameters and cleverly exploring the variations of this delayed-gated-distortion setup.

Alberto Toribio was among last year’s video tutorial cohmpetition winners, and has recently released some new tracks, all of them made with Ohm Force plugins. His sound is quite interesting, take a listen and leave a comment…

Peter Morgan from the United Kingdom has made some ‘fresh breath’ experiments with Ohm Force Cohmpost (right after lunching, very probably), click to listen…