Top 10 Music Chart from Noir du'Soleil.

http://myspace.com/noirdusoleil

Note: This DJ Chart is not confined to a particular genre. A wide variety of musical styles are covered here.

01 : Coil - Tainted Love
02 : Ummet Ozcan - Timewave Zero (Detune, Exit & Sequence Remix)
03 : Martin Dupont - Just Because
04 : Oppenheimer Analysis - Radiance
05 : Sied Van Riel - Mongoosed (Original Mix)
06 : Placebo - English Summer Rain
07 : Simon Patterson - Taxi
08 : W&W - Mainstage (Original Mix)
09 : Maarten de Jong - Mono (J.O.C. Remix)
10 : Katastroslavia - Completely Normal



For those of you who don't know; Noir du'Soleil has an official home on Facebook.
You can find it here:

http://facebook.com/NoirduSoleil

As of Febraury 2010 Eris has left Noir du'Soleil to focus his attention on other projects besides music.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank him for his time and support as a live member of Noir du'Soleil and I wish him the best of luck in his future!

I recently purchased this little synth from DOEPFER Musikelektronik and thought I would give a run down of my initial thoughts on it.

The DOEPFER Dark Energy is a 100% analogue semi-modular monophonic synthesizer. What is very handy about this little unit is that is also has a MIDI/CV converter built right into it! The MIDI/CV converter can also run over USB, so essentially we have a completely analogue synth the can be controlled dircetly from your PC or Mac.

At first glance this is a fairly simple synth. 1 oscillator, 1 low-pass filter, 2 LFO's, 1 ADSR envelope, and ofcourse the VCA. However it has a few little tricks up it's sleeve that you might not expect. For example, the LFO's have a "Low/Medium/High" switch for LFO frequencies that extend right up into the audio range and right down to over a minute at their lowest setting.

While some might be put off by the fact that this synth only has one oscillator, let me assure you it sounds HUGE. Not only that, but the pluse width modulation on this synth sounds great. By modulating the pulse width on the oscillator you can achive a much richer sound characteristic, similer to a unison type effect.

Another little trick is that by turning the filter resonance up completely (into self oscillation) you can achive a sine wave oscillator. It takes some careful tuning of the filter cutoff frecquency, but thanks to the included note tracking it is possible to use this a lovely tonaly playable sine wave sound.

One feature I would really have liked to see on this synth however is portamento. It is possible that by patching the CV2 output (MIDI pitch bend) into the VCO F front panel socket pitch bending can be achieved. However in most cases this is not an entirely workable substitue for portamento.

Overall this is a great sounding synthesiser for it's price (398 EU). The single oscillator (and the PWM) sounds great, the filter is amazing, and extra features like filter FM, ultra fast/long LFO and envelope settings, and external audio input make this a worthwhile and unique synth.

Here is a short little track I made using the Dark Engery. All tracks are raw Dark Energy - Except the kick drum (it's a sample) and one of the synth lines has a slight ammount of delay on it. No compression or EQ was used.

 NA (Dark Energy) by Noir du'Soleil

Trentemoller - Always Something Better (Trentemoller Remix)

To me this is the perfect Dark Electro sound, a somber track that also seems to drag you onto the dancefloor. That is a very difficult balance to master and Trentemoller does it perfectly in this remix. His one-of-a-kind soundscapes carried out with pristine production skills are awe inspiring. However it's the brilliant melodic and lyrical content that connect with something deeper. "We're not going anywhere like this, so would you rather clench your fists and fight it out?"

Virgin Prunes - Pagan Lovesong (Vibeakimbo)

This is an excellent extended mix of the Virgin Prunes' classic track. I've been giving this version quite a bit of attention in PA speakers around the city recently. Great dancey post-punk!

Fever Ray - Triangle Walks (Rex The Dog Remix)

I absolutely love The Knife/Fever Ray and am convinced that they are this era's Skinny Puppy (you know, back when Skinny Puppy were good... '84 - '92). The original mix of this track has a really strong Japan/Sylvian/Sakamoto vibe and I love how this mix keeps part of that feeling through the lead synth line but turns it into a great modern dance track. As always, Karin's voice is stunning.

Moonbootica feat. IAMX - Pretty Little Angel

Even though I'm a great fan of IAMX's new sound, I do find I miss the synth-pop/electro flavour of 2004's Kiss+Swallow. Hence I was really happy when I recently found this solid little electro track with Chris' vocals. It makes me eager to hear some good remixes from Kingdom of Welcome Addiction.

The Chameleons - In Shreds

I was introduced to The Chameleons by a DJ I met in Paris, when I first heard them I couldn't believe how they remained such an obscure band. They deserve much more attention. This is by far the most aggressive track I have heard of theirs and really shows their diversity. Somebody made an interesting comment about this on the youtube page saying the end of the track sounds like the birth of grunge. I had never thought about it that way but it really does! This band were certainly ahead of their time.

01 : Moonbootica feat. IAMX - Pretty Little Angel
02 : DJ Scot Project - Sueno (Maximum Solar Mix)
03 : Eskimo - New One
04 : Noir du'Soleil feat. Selia - Tranceperent Sky (BLAM HONEY cover)
05 : Sam Sharp - Roundabout (Simon Patterson Remix)
06 : Sex Beat - Sex Beat
07 : The Ravonettes - She's Lost Control (Trentemoller Edit)
08 : Megaband - MTV (Hello Moto)
09 : Plastikman - Blue Monday (Richie Hawtin Mix)
10 : Japan - Despair

Much has happened during my online absence. I've spent some amazing nights in Berlin (Lots of love to all the wonderful friends I made there: Tara, Sophia, Chris from Blutengel, etc. xx). I've come near death under the unforgiving Australian sun. I've started my own club night (Isolation). And I have been working hard on the next Noir du'Soleil record.

This time I want to give you an inside look on the creation of this record. I intend to do so via semi-regular updates on this blog under the Studio Diary title (and tag).

So, let's get this underway with Studio Diary #1.

As some of you may know, another passion of mine is vegan cooking. I'm not terribly good at it, but it is something I enjoy immensely. On this particular morning I was in a cooking mood, thus I enlisted the help of Cabaret Voltaire and The Birthday Party (R.I.P. Rowland) to help me out with breakfast.

The end result: Mexican-inspired Tofu Scramble with Homemade Hashbrowns.

After breakfast I was very excited to start work in the studio. I had written down an idea in bed the night before that I wanted to try out in one of the new dance-focused songs I was working on.

Musically, the intention of this particular track is to blend a melodic EBM/Futurepop sound with strong influences from Tech-Trance and Psytrance. I knew that at some point in this track I wanted a huge build dropping to a solid kick and bassline. The idea scrawled in my book was perfect for this. I was going to use the Korg DS-10 (a music app based off the Korg MS-10 for Nintendo DS) and the inbuilt delay effect in order to create a rushing, out of time, delay-driven drum build.

The DS-10 has a very dinky little drum sound which was perfect as it would sit out as being different from the pounding drums of the main track. To accentuate this difference I programmed a beat that was not a 4/4 dance beat. I ran the beat through the internal delay effect on the DS-10, set feedback to near-full, delay mix to 100%, ran the beat with the track and gradulay brought up the delay time until it became a wall of sound. The effect was exactly what I was looking for!

It has been a few days of solid work now. The track still has a long way to go - but so far it is sounding great. At the moment I am very optimistic and I feel like the new songs, although they are young, are starting to sound like a new + much more sophisticated Noir du'Soleil.

Lots of love,
Koe. xoxo