Zaoxeln

+ my journey with music tech

My first synth was a Roland Juno 6. This was 1994. It was listed in the Buy & Sell for £150. I went to the phonebox & rang the number to find out the suss, got on the bus to somewhere like Donnycarney, haggled it to £130 and lugged it back on the bus to our flat in Mount Plesant Avenue. A Juno 6 is not something you want to be crossing the room with, never mind a city.

These “I got a 303 for £100 back in the day” stories are intensely annoying. Let me just pile it on to say I also got a Roland 808 from a guy in Liverpool for £300 a few years later. Back to 1994 - the Juno was pretty cool! I messed around with the arp and chorus and yeah, ok… wtf now? Time passed, a mate had a Korg Poly 800 so he gave me that. Another mate got a few quid from somewhere and bought an Alesis SR-16 drum machine. The SR-16 was dogshit. This was a big problem at the time, beyond the obvious (like the Juno) none of us really had a clue what kit was good or bad, you were relying on kitlists on record sleeves or interviews in Sound on Sound / Future Music.

So we (me & my mate Mick) had the Juno, the Poly 800 died, the SR-16 was no good and we were also given a Yamaha DX27. We proceeded to make some very bad tracks with this Juno/DX27 combo… the Juno has no midi and the DX27 is the least enjoyable editing experience known to man. I know that there are some serious records made using the DX27 but I didnt have access to the drugs or necessary Spock-like concentration and patience to get there. Also, we didnt have any effects.

A couple of years pass, raving & DJing was easier and way more fun than trying to eek something out of these machines. I was still interested in production & regularly read about it in FM/SOS + the now the internet has happened and sites like Vintage Synth Explorer and mail-lists like Analogue Heaven mean that you can find out about whats happening, how to do stuff, what kit is good & bad. In 1997 I pickup a Yamaha A3000 sampler, it was getting really good reviews but was very expensive… I found it “OK”. Then, finally! something good - An Oberheim Matrix 1000, again v cheap off the Buy and Sell… much easier to transport than the Juno. The M1000 was just deadly, it needed a midi controller but you could get some really cool shit from it. Over the next year-ish I also added a Waldorf Pulse and MPC2000 and finally was getting something going.

I made a bunch of tracks on that setup, some of which were released a few years later. They took years to come out because (a) I had no belief that they were worth releasing & (b) I didnt really know how to go about pimping them out.

Now, heres the classic trap with music gear → more/better kit = more/better music - i went head-first into that. It does work out OK at times, like the DSI Evolver which I picked up when it was released. The Evolver is hard to explain and Im not sure I ever really understood half of how it worked but its a great wee synth. I made an LP with only it and played loads of gigs at that time with it, a DX200 and a delay pedal. Unfortunatley though, I would say that I spent most of the 00s more being into researching and collecting music gear than actually using it.

At some point this became clear to me and I sold everything except the essentials, started Trensmat and began to collaborate. Nowdays to me the single most important facet in a piece of equipment or project (gig/collab/jam/etc..) is - is it an enjoyable experience?

Now more than ever there are unparalled choices for production. Gear that in the past was out of reach for nearly everyone is now faithfully cloned and affordable. It can be tricky to keep to a rule/mindset which is that I only own what I can fit on my desk and only keep what I enjoy using. At the moment that consists of a Torso S4, Behringer Syncussion SY1, Wirehead Basilisk, Korg Volca Drum & SQ1. Stuff gets swapped in & out all the time but not stockpiled.

Zaoxeln was developed from this setup.. the scapey element from the S4s material/granular processing, with the beats coming from the SY1 & Volca, again heavily FXd in the S4.

The release is, as the case is with all my solo stuff now, Bandcamp subscriber only to download. No limit on streaming. The SBS Subscription is a fiver for a year. Its not a money thing (€5 pa is the lowest that Bandcamp will allow), just a better way to connect outside of regular streaming noise. Since I started it in August 2025 there have been 14 releases.

No worries if the Bandcamp subscription doesnt suit, we’re all drowning in ‘content’, you can still subscribe to this mail-list and be able to read about, watch and stream my stuff for free. The mail-list posts will also contain embedded audio / video that wont be available elsewhere.

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