I’ve only ever owned the original EPS. I remember lusting after the EPS 16+ when it came out. I had a friend who owned one (the late Devin Fleenor of Zeta and Mr. Meeble), and he worked magic with that thing.
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Yeah, I had the feeling that might be it 
I don’t know if we knew each other back in the day, I was doing industrial-ish stuff in the late 80’s to mid 90’s and knew a lot of people in the Pacific Northwest in the IDM scene back then. Then I gave all that up, moved and started producing D&B.
I was never close with LPD but we opened up for them and it was cool just being in their presence, Ka-Spel was like a god to me. They were one of the few bands that I don’t regret meeting in fact, just super down-to-earth and chill.
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I was quite close with them for a very long time, trading phone calls and music, opening for them for one (disastrous) gig, and hanging out every time they toured from the late-1980’s through the next decade or so. We spent a lovely day and evening at the Grand Canyon together during the Shadow Weaver Pt. 2 tour. They were a massive influence on me over the years. We lost touch in the 2000s, though it was during that time that I did art for them (through BLRR) and even fulfilled a longtime dream of working on a record with Edward (Armchair Migraine Journey’s Cosmic Space Drone We didn’t work on it together, alas, it was all arranged by the label owner). A couple of years back, my wife, son, and I all went up to Kansas City to see them after many years. It was great to hang out with them again.
I was in Phoenix and Colorado during the late 80s/90s/2000s. I’ve never been to Portland, though I have friends/ex label-mates there.
Good to run into another LPD fan/friend here!
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Looks like we’ve been consigned to our own thread. EPS forever!
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Ummm, that’s fucking awesome. Looking that up now.
Hey, our own thread… thanks mods, definitely was getting way off topic
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Alas, there is one major issue with that record - my favorite bit - a Kyma+modular remix of the track Edward are on together was not mastered for the CD, so is much, much lower in volume than the rest of the album. Still, crank it up and enjoy it!
(also, you might wanna go iTunes or Amazon for it, as I don’t know if the label is actually around to fulfill orders, despite the fact that their site is still up)
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This feels like a gentleman’s club where we sip scotch and smoke cigars.
Hey Scott do you have a signal chain when recording EPS to DAW?
I max out the volume on the EPS and add gain on my rodec restyler to Apollo soundcard. Then I HPF the mud out to keep the ensoniq sound without sounding too muddy on the low end.
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I’ve only had this EPS for a few months. During that time, it’s been plumbed through a Chandler Limited TG-2. Now that you mention the mud, I am thinking it might be wise to send it through a pair of Warm Audio Pultec knock-offs I have in the rack. I am also wondering about sticking it down the throat of a Manley Nu Mu.
I might also scoop out the low-end build up (when/if necessary) using Alchemy - depending on the length of the samples (if I recall, there is a limitation).
I forgot how many freakin’ floppies this burns through. My current EPS has a 4x memory expander, and that makes it even hungrier. I will likely do something about this floppy drive sooner than later…
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Listening to this… I dig it. Reminds me of Godspeed You Black Emperor without the guitars
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I think that was Chris McBeth and Ty Hodson. I never played live with AMJ (I’m just a guest on many of the records), much to my regret. It could happen someday though. I built Chris’ modular synth for him from the ground up, using YuSynth designs, as well as some others (my son’t awesome one-off analog sampler module). He’s coming to my place in a month or so to do another record with me.
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Ahh OK. Were you involved with this? Similar vibes.
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Nope, that one wasn’t me. However, I have been involved with Un Festin Sagital at some point… I think (it’s kinda laughable to say that, but I’ve done a lot of stuff with various BLRR artists, and I’ve lost track). One of them has a project called Thanatoloop, and and my bandmate/guitarist (Har) did an album called El Retratowith him - I may have contributed too. I was in frequent contact with them for some length of time.
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That’s a lot of projects that I’m unfamiliar with, will def check out.
My frequent collaborator Mike Miller has music on SoundCloud as Distressor… he uses a lot of Kyma too.
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My fascination with Kyma began with ads in which it was compared to “TurboSynth falling into the hands of a race of super-intelligent alien beings”. I had used and loved Turbosynth in the 90s with an Ensoniq Mirage and a Casio FZ1, so that quote always intrigued me. It was years before I could afford a Kyma system, though, so I used to listen to the demo CD incessantly and dream.
I still love it - and TurboSynth for that matter. I’ve never tried TurboSynth with the EPS - I will, though, now that the old G3 has been pulled out of retirement…
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That’s cool. I remember getting into Alchemy when I first got a Mac, but mostly I’m a “resample through a Rat pedal” kind of guy. I did go through the audio mangling VST rabbit hole a while ago, but now I prefer to keep things more stripped down and simple.
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My “day job” (writer for Computer Music magazine) assures that software will always be a part of my world - however, it’s also why I sometimes just want to fire up the Octatrack/Digitakt, grab a couple of cables and get on it.
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Had one of those as well back in the day. Loved the sound but never really jived with the interface.
What’s your favorite sampler of all time? For me it’s the E-Mu Emax with analog filters, sort of a poor-man’s EIII. Velocity to filter cutoff was magic for Front 242/Depeche Mode sounds.
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That’s really hard to say! For interactive fun, Octatrack, maybe? It sometimes isn’t easy and it often isn’t quick, but it can be what I need it to be at any given time. Yeah, really, it’s probably the Octatrack, though I use other things for specific purposes.
For fidelity, probably the Akai Z4 with an fx board. 24-bit multisampling with all the trimmings in a 2U rack.
For in-fidelity, the Mirage. I still keep a Mirage rack around for that sound.
For “doing it the hard way”, the PPG Waveterm A/Wave 2.2 combo. I love how it sounds, and I love getting stuck in that old-time interface, though I tend to use it more to create custom wavetables.
I never owned an E-max, but I wanted to! I had a couple of ESI-32s which I loved for the Z-plane filters.
Having said that (which was utterly non-committal, I know!), the thing I most often use for samples is Kyma, with the Digitakt a close second, due to its speed and ease of use. Although now, having the EPS back in my life, I am enjoying it immensely. I am still so familiar with it, that it could be very easy for me to make it my main sampler when i am in a hurry.
But still, the Octatrack was a real game-changer for me, putting many of the things I was doing with other, more difficult process into an easier interface (yeah, I just said that about the Octatrack. Weird). It got me back into hardware sampling. Despite its limitations, I’d take the Octatrack over anything else on my list, with the exception of Kyma.
PPG = baller status. Always wanted one, but I’m sure it’s quite a process to use and keep up and running.
Always wanted a Mirage too for that “aliased Skinny Puppy vocal sample” sound. Maybe I’ll get the rack someday.
Had the Z8 and Octatrack but could never really get my head around them. These days I do fine with just the Digitakt. It was initially frustrating because of the limitations (spoiled by using E-Mu Ultras for years) but those make you have to think creatively to come up with solutions. Like when I used to sample everything into the EPS an octave higher to double the sampling time, haha.
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I was just thinking pretty much the same thing. I’d like to hang out in person with this bunch here.
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