By Keith Walsh
Rodney Cromwell’s “Opus Three” is the latest single from his soon-to-be-released LP Memory Box, an awesome set that brings the past and the future of synth pop together. Cromwell employs vintage gear to create forward looking electronica with a positive twist. Gear can be inspiring, and Opus 3 is in fact inspired by a Moog synthesizer from the early 80s as well as a British novel, Ice by Anna Kavan. Fans of Goldfrapp, Kraftwerk, New Order and The Pet Shop Boys will love this song, with its chorus of “won’t let it be catastrophe.”
Cromwell tells me: “The song ‘Opus Three’ is named after the Moog Opus 3 synth that I wrote the main riff on. That particular synth had been languishing in the back of various cupboards and loft spaces for many years and I decided time was right to dig it up for this new record and I’m glad I did so. It’s a great synth because unlike my other Moog (The Rogue) it is polyphonic and you can create an almighty racket with it.”
The designation lo-fi is used often used for music using vintage drum machines and Moog analog synthesizers from the 1980s. Turns out Cromwell shares the Moog Mania that’s swept across synthpop since the beginning. “I’ve been such a lover of Moog sounds for so long,” he tells me in an email exchange. “I can’t even remember what I it was that first attracted me to them. I guess the Moog sound is in my DNA. Probably the initial attraction was that it’s both a futuristic sound, but also a retro one. I’ve got a fairly large stack of ‘Moog’ vinyl LPs in the exotica section of my collection, by artists like Jean-Jacques Perrey, Gershon Kingsley, John Keating Wendy Carlos.”
Maybe I was being confrontational when I suggested that the Stylophone used on the track could be considered a novelty. Cromwell set me straight. “I don’t think you can dismiss any instrument that was used by David Bowie, Kraftwerk and Sparks as just a novelty,” he writes, “but it’s true to say that it’s a lot of fun to use. We’ve got one track ‘Technocrats’ which when we play it live we use three Stylophones which is a total blast – as long as they work though.”
Vintage Gear
Cromwell continues: “I should give a shout-out to the guys at the Stylophone company who are the people that build the new models. When my ancient old Stylophone broke right before I was due to go on tour, they responded to my feeble cries on Twitter and sent me out a new one in time for the first show which was a total lifesaver. It was the first time in my life I felt like some sort of (very minor) celebrity.”
I asked Cromwell how he incorporates the vintage gear into a recording setup. “Actually most of the sequencing was done on the computer,” he tells me. “Some arpeggios were built up on the MicroKorg, which I still think of as my new synth although it’s almost 20 years old itself. I do use an old DR-55 drum machine; it’s the drum machine on Speak and Spell, Movement and The Cure and Sisters of Mercy used it on early stuff too. I sometimes put down a basic pattern on that, write around it and then I generally re-build the pattern on the computer using DR-55 samples, just so I can add a bit more detail to it.”
The role that vintage gear plays in inspiring Cromwell can almost not be overstated. And that’s not just down to the hardware synths. It turns out that most of his sequencing is done on a “really old version of Garageband.” Of the hardware synths, Cromwell writes: “The main part of my gear-arsenal is really the Moog Rogue and the Moog Opus 3, a vintage Korg MS-10, an original MicroKorg, and an ARP Quartet. Then the Boss DR-55, about 3 Stylophones and I don’t know how many melodicas. I’m more addicted to buying effects pedals these days; I have to sneak them into the house without my wife noticing.”
“Opus 3” and the upcoming Memory Box which is coming March 18, are on Happy Robots Records. The disc is mixed by Richard Bennett at Acme Hall Studios and mastered by Pete Maher (U2, Goldfrapp, Paul Weller, Pixies). Cromwell will be performing this month and in the coming months in the UK, with Spray, A Flock Of Seagulls, Factory Acts, and Circuit 3.
(Featured photo by Alison Ahern.)
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