Pour some port, find a comfy spot on the couch, and fire up the YouTubes. A surprisingly-rich raft of terrific documentary video for synth and electronic music enthusiasts has been making the rounds.

In our queue: Analog Suicide interviews a legendary vintage synth spot in Berlin, an hourlong documentary features not only Richie Hawtin but a range of techno pioneers, as well as other shorts from T-Mobile (yes, the phone company), and the BBC scores more history of the British side of the synth revolution in music. Sit down and get ready, because here we go.

From Detroit to Berlin and Back: In-depth Interviews with Pioneering Artists

At top: an hour-plus documentary produced for T-Mobile’s Electronic Beats series follows the rise of techno legend Richie Hawtin, including some terrific Detroit footage with artists like Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson, and of course Magda. Love him or hate him, Richie’s impact on electronic music is formidable, and it’s great to see coverage finally return to a tale of his roots. It seems the perfect way to get ready for Detroit’s Movement Festival, starting May 28. Via the astute music coverage on the XLR8R blog, here by Ken Taylor.

There’s quite a lot more Electronic Beats TV on the YouTube page:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ElectronicBeatsVideo

Here are a few of my favorites. Kangding Ray of Raster-Noton is framed by signature, hypnotic minimal visuals. He has some wonderful things to say about the beauty of materials in sampling. Then there’s some beautiful footage of TESSEL, a morphing architectural form which really deserves some separate coverage here. Have a look:

Thomas Heckmann looks at machines, vintage and circuit bent, and talks about working with their idiosyncrasies in musical production.

From the role of machines to the role of humans, Moderat talk about collaboration as therapy, and what it does for them … and then go parachute jumping. I think people falling from a plane makes the perfect soundtrack.

Conversations for Synth Lovers, via AnalogSuicide

AnalogSuicide’s Tara Busch is one of our favorite journalists covering synthesis, and a great artist to boot. This week, she visits the legendary vintage synth destination Schneiders Beuro in Berlin. Via Synthtopia, who, like MatrixSynth, I think has an alarm that goes off when videos hit YouTube with certain keywords – incredible.

On the producer side, massively-accomplished producer Gareth Jones (Depeche Mode, Wire, Erasure) makes an appearance, too:

Lots more where that came from:
http://www.youtube.com/user/tarabusch

Synth Brittania

Via our friend and Chicago producer/nerd fashionista/writer Liz McLean Knight comes a BBC Four documentary that covers British synth artists in the late 70s and early 80s, including Joy Division, Human League, Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, and Gary Numan.

There’s just too much goodness here. I want to sit down with the past and present staff of Keyboard and watch this one. Watch it while the Beeb lets you.

I’m personally gratified in that I believe technically and artistically, we’re entering another of these sorts of ages. Who knows what the cultural impact may be, but at least for those passionate artists and technologists who are involved, something’s happening. And these videos are a great place to begin for inspiration.

So, now that you have those to watch, I guess I really need not write until Monday! See you then! (joke … sort of.)

It’s beginning to look a lot like Kraftwerk. December 1, you should be able to look forward to a simulated Stylophone app for iPhone and iPod touch. The Stylophone, for those of you unfamiliar with this classic, was a wonderful late-60s invention and a high-water mark for electronic instrument simplicity. Run a stylus across a simple metal keyboard, get sound. It’s a no-brainer to bring this to Apple mobiles, with their touch and sonic capabilities. And while the Stylophone was used on many, many songs, I anticipate quite a few “Pocket Calculator” covers showing up on YouTube in the days after release. Now we just need a good effects program on the platform, and you can have one person playing Stylophone while someone adjusts effects on their machine.

Lots more pictures here, and yes, they’re pulling out all the stops, with classic, bass, and treble versions:

iStylophone 2008 Gallery

Incidentally, the Stylophone itself has returned in a remaked form. (You can also buy used originals, which some people prefer – link originally swapped; thanks, Michael Moncur, for the catch.) I’m curious if anyone has used the remakes? I have to admit, fun as the iPhone idea is, I wouldn’t mind holding a replica of the actual object.

Sing along:

BLOGG.
INTERNET.
GLOBALISERING.
PIRATKOPIA.

Wow. I suddenly feel really depressed. I think. Actually, maybe I’d better watch that again with my Swedish-English dictionary handy this time.

The YouTube community in general seems to be all about Kraftwerk. Where else would you find people sharing video evidence that Kraftwerk’s “Pocket Calculator” employed a bleepy portable music toy called the Bee Gees Rhythm Mach– wait a second. Forget about Kraftwerk for a second. There’s a Bee Gees Rhythm Machine? Now that’s a beautiful thing. Have a look:

From the author:

Further adventures in extreme music geekdom. This is me playing Kraftwerk’s “Pocket Calculator” on a Mattel Bee Gees Rhythm Machine keyboard, followed by Kraftwerk’s Ralf Hutter playing the song live on their Mattel Bee Gees Rhythm Machine. Except theirs has all the Bee Gees decals removed so that the audience won’t mistake them for the Bee Gees. You can also see this keyboard on the “Computer World” LP jacket. The other hand-held noisemakers are a Stylophone, TI Language Translator (same sound chip as the Speak & Spell), and a home-made electronic percussion trigger.

For you trainspotters out there, this was not the first time Kraftwerk used a Mattel-derived instrument. The choir and string sounds on their mid-late 70s albums were played on a Vako Orchestron, which was an offshoot of the Mattel Optigan, which those sounds were originally created for. More info at my website, www.optigan.com

Optigan.com is a fantastic website, incidentally, with lots of resources for lovers of Mattel’s obscure, celluloid disc-playing “sampling” musical machine. There’s further commentary on YouTube about the Casio VL-Tone, Stylophone, and even a DIY instrument also being incorporated into the song. (maybe just the album version, I gather?)

Now, I dare someone to make a new version of Pocket Calculator:

• Featuring the TI-81. (Or whatever you kids are using now; I haven’t done my maths in a while. I expect real pocket calculators are now capable of hosting VSTs.)
• In Finnish.

Go.

Musical activists are opposing a Japanese nuclear reprocessing plant. What’s in it for you: free musical downloads opposing contamination by nuclear radiation. (Any pro-radiation readers will have to look elsewhere.) Nuclear reprocessing is a way of reclaiming spent nuclear fuels. Sounds great, right — recycling and whatnot? Unfortunately, there are serious risks involved. The plant, Rokkasho-mura reprocessing plant in Japan’s Aomori Prefecture, is under fire because:

1. Just two weeks into testing, after the plant opened last year, radioactive water containing plutonium and uranium spilled inside the plant.
2. According to a recent report, this particular plant has a design flaw that makes it susceptible to Japan’s frequent earthquakes — and the plant maker is alleged to have kept this flaw secret for eleven years.
3. Reprocessing in general has been criticized for increasing the risk of global nuclear terrorism.
4. Using nuclear energy as a power source poses numerous risks throughout the fuel cycle both in terms of the environment and terror targets.
5. Personally, they had me at the radioactive water.

Stop Rokkasho.org: Hear [Music downloads]
Via the good peoples of Synthtopia

Music with political agendas has been controversial among readers of this site. But when high-profile musicians like Ryuichi Sakamoto are organizing musical protests, and the likes of Kraftwerk contribute songs, there’s no question these events have an impact. In this case, you can listen to a podcast, learn about the issues involved, and download a huge string of music. And maybe that’s not forcing anything — music has the power to evoke strong emotions and deep attachments. All around the world, it’s been employed on various sides of political issues. Agree or not, there’s no keeping musicians out of debates — little surprise, given our vocation is literally making noise.

As for this issue in question, I find every time I open my mouth on an issue, there’s an expert lurking in the wings to speak up. So please do. When I was working on behalf of international human rights and more transparent global trade policy (really; I’ve had some unusual hobbies), a staffer once joked that [unnamed organization] was opposed to energy in all its forms. Indeed, whereas nuclear power was once hailed for being environmentally friendly, its tendency to produce massively dangerous waste that’s nearly impossible to get rid of has now made it arguably one of the worst forms of energy. In this case, if nothing else, this campaign is likely to increase oversight of such projects in Japan.

But regardless of how you feel, I hope you enjoy the tunes.