Hi Everyone,

The last weeks I have been looking for a nice picture for the cover of my upcoming album OceanoGraphy. Eventually my friend Hans came up with this picture and I asked my designer Bart Auceps to negotiate the rights of this picture with the photographer. And we came to a deal. He then made this cover from it.

It is not the final version yet, but I like it a lot. I think it represents the theme of the album perfectly. And it is both abstract, artistic and still to the point. I'm still talking to the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) about the correct use of their logo. As I told you before they are officially endorsing this project and part of my revenue from this CD will be directly donated to the WWF.



Here is the preliminary back of the CD. Also still not final. There are even some mistakes still on it, but it will give you a nice idea. You can also see the track names on there already. They are still not all final either though. But most of them won't change I guess. We are still working on the rest of the artwork but I thought it was nice to share it with you in this stage. And I'll also use these preliminary images on my website. The planned release of this album is only a few months ahead and I have still a lot of work to do. So I hope I'll make the deadline. If I want to release on the 17th of October as planned I'll have to finish my work by the end of September. Well as promised I'll update you on the progress. Well I hope you like the artwork so far :)

Michel, Synth.nl
 

Hi Everyone,

I have some nice news :)

I was asked to produce some new music for a Planetarium Show that is going to be featured in the Beisbroek Observatory in Brugge (B) the coming 6 months. The show had is premiere on the 3th of July 2009. The total show lasts 45 minutes but they needed music for the first 13:30 minutes of the show. So I made this music especially for this project. The music had to be in the background and therefore I couldn't use much beats or leads. I tried to create more atmospherically and spacey music for this project that would fit nicely under the voice over and also with the video. Unfortunately I didn't get the video so I had to work with the voice over track only. Actually this is my first documentary and I liked doing it. I hope to do more projects like this in the future.

I will release the music I made somewhere in the future by the way. I made four tracks in total called Eclipse, Meteor, Hubble and Nebula. They are mixed together to form the soundtrack for this show. The video is projected on a special dome by the projector you see in the picture on the right. It is able to create a nice image of how the sky looks like at a certain place on Earth at a certain time. Together with some video they produce a very nice image over your head that is 360 degrees around you. Just like you would be outside. I haven't seen the show myself, but I'm looking forward to it. And of course you can go and see the show yourself as well if you like. Here is more information on the Beisbroek Observatory:

http://www.beisbroek.be/

You should ask them when this show is playing though. I don't know that myself at the moment.

I did place a copy of the audio track on my own website so you can listen to it. And even though the voice over is in Dutch I'm sure you will get the picture if you don't understand Dutch. I used a picture of the 'Whale Galaxy' with kind permission of NASA to stay in the theme of my current OceanoGraphy Project by the way. You can find it here:

http://www.synth.nl/project_detail.php?id=12

Please do enjoy it and let me know what you think of it :)

Michel, Synth.nl

Hi Everyone,

Bruce Gall from the popular UK radio show Sunday Synth did a very nice one hour special on my music last Sunday including an interview. It was broadcasted on AR FM radio and also through their web stream.

I made a recording from that do that in case you missed it you can listen to it anyway. (sorry for the sound quality) For you convenience I cut some of the commercials out, so it is a bit shorter now.

I hope you will enjoy it. You can find a copy here:

http://www.synth.nl/interviews.php

Michel, Synth.nl

Hi Everyone,

I just uploaded some pictures that my friend Chris made last week in my Apollo Studio. He made quite a few of them and last night I sorted out the ones I liked the best and put them in different categories. He used a special wide angle lens to get the most on the pictures. Some pictures can be a bit distorted on the sides because of that. I also photo-shopped myself out of two pictures. I'm curious if you can find them. I'm not that good at it so you should be able to tell ;) We also made some video's by the way. I hope to upload them soon as well. You can find the pictures in my albums on MySpace and also on this URL:

http://www.synth.nl/studio.php

Well I hope you enjoy the pictures and if you have any question do ask me. I'd be happy to answer them.

Michel, Synth.nl

Hi Everyone,

I have some exciting news for you. My next album 'OceanoGraphy' will be officially endorsed by the WWF (World Wildlife Fund). I'm allowed to use their name and logo on this project since they support the idea behind the concept of the album which is of course about the Earth's Oceans and the creatures living in it. This is quite an honor for me.

In return I decided that a part of my revenue from this album will be donated to the WWF. I'm very excited about all of this, because I think this gives the project a lot more body all together from the start. So if you buy this album later you will in fact also support the WWF!

I'm currently still working with my designer Bart Auceps on the artwork of the album. I hope you will like it later. I would like to thank the Dutch brand of the WWF (WNF and especially Marlou) for making this possible!

Michel, Synth.nl

Hi Everyone,

I have released my previous two albums during the E-live festival that is organised yearly by my record label Groove Unlimited. And my upcoming album OceanoGraphy will again be released during this festival. This time it will be held in Oirschot instead of Eindhoven in the Netherlands on the 17th of October.

On this event I will be present with a stall and you could pick up the album there personally if you like and be among the first persons to have it. You will also be able to pre-order it from Groove Unlimited and get it send to you on the day of release. More details will follow soon. You can read more about the E-live festival on this URL:

http://e-live.groove.nl.

I'm working at the moment on the artwork of the album with my designer. I hope to show you some results soon.

Michel, Synth.nl

Synth.nl meets Jean Michel Jarre

Hi everyone!

On Tuesday the 26th of May I had a memorable meeting with Jean Michel Jarre and his band members after his concert in the Heineken Music Hall in Amsterdam. It was a very good concert in my opinion. One of the best I have seem from him. He played a lot of older material from Oxygene, Equinoxe etc. So great music, but the sound was very good too and I loved the laser show. Also it was obvious that he enjoyed himself. After the concert we went with a little group of people backstage and had to wait a while. We heard that he had a meeting with Armin van Buuren first who was sitting two rows behind me in the audience actually :)

When Jean Michel walked in his manager Fiona said right away that he had only 4 minutes, but luckily he stayed much longer than that. I think more like 30 minutes or so, though I didn't keep track of the time. I thanked him for the great concert and then I gave him my latest CD AtmoSphere as a present. He was very happy about this I could tell from his reaction and I asked him if he was actually going to listen to it and he promised me that he would do that for sure. So I really hope that he is going to keep this promise that fact alone would be a great honor for me.

Even nicer of course would be to hear back from him, but I don't expect much from that to be honest. But you never know :) When he does I'll surely let you know!! Here you see another picture of him holding my CD. Doesn't this look just great? :) Well after that we chatted about some other stuff, but I can't even remember what. I was in such a rush of adrenaline that I hope I didn't say anything stupid ;) Well it was a big honor for me to finally meet the man that put my to buying my first synthesizer and inspired me to start composing and producing my own music. It will be a long life memory for me for sure.

After that his band members walked in. Here you see a picture of me with Francis Rimbert. I met Francis before on E-live in Eindhoven when my first album was released there. Back then I did give him a copy as well. It was nice that he recognized me immediately and we had a nice chat. I gave him my AtmoSphere album as well and he asked if this was me new one. So he did remember the first one. I was happy to hear. I also heard that they had looked on my website at several occasions. Francis is really a very nice guy and has worked with Jean Michel Jarre for a long time.

Also Dominique Perrier was there. I never met him before. So I introduced myself by saying my name and pointing at the 'Synth.nl' on my T-shirt. His reaction was nice. He recognized it so he probably saw my website as well :) He is not a big talker but we did chat a bit. And I also gave him a CD. So I guess probably one of them will listen to it and hopefully tell the other ones to do the same :) Dominique Perrier has played with Jean Michel Jarre also from the beginning and is the guy that introduced him to the Eminent 310, a Dutch build organ that produces the famous phased string sound on the Oxygene album and is generally seen as the 'typical Jarre sound'.

Well here is another picture of me talking to Jean Michel Jarre to close this report. I had a really great time. And I would like to thank Remy Stroomer for organizing this meeting. Remy is a very good musician himself, but he also distributes the music from Francis Rimbert through his label AKH record. He got in touch with Jarre's Aero Management to set this up. I would also like to thank Michel Voorn from the Dutch Jarre Forum who also helped to organize this meeting. Thanks guys :) I have much more pictures and probably will get more since more people were there with camera's. So let me know if you would like to see the rest too. I hope you enjoyed it. I certainly did :)

Michel, Synth.nl

Hi everyone,

Facebook seems to get more and more popular. So I have a profile there now as well. This is my personal page where you can add me as a friend:

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=691558611&ref=profile

And here is my music page where you can become a fan if you like.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Synthnl/70315782298?created

I just don't understand why they don't make these URL's easier. Well maybe see you there soon. I still need to upload some music on there, but I do update my status there more regurlary. Less spam on it, it seems so far.

Michel, Synth.nl

Hi Everyone,

I'm happy to inform you all about a very nice radio show that is online for you to enjoy on the Tangerine Dream Fan Zone Radio hosted by Chris Newman. The show is called the 'Dream of Peace' special and it is all about promoting the peace and how music unites all of us in that. I made a contribution to this show with two nice surprises. Chris plays a very unusual track from me called 'WarGames'. I made this track just for fun in the past and it won't be released anywhere I guess, but it fitted in this show. I announce it myself in this show and tell a bit about the movie that this track was inspired me on. This movie has been very important for me and you can read in my biography why that is. The other surprise is the music that is played behind the announcement. This is actually some rough material from a track I'm working on for my new 'OceanoGraphy' abum. So be sure to check this out. The show can be found on this website:

http://www.soundfuturesdirect.com/blog/

The show is in two parts since it is quite long. I'm in the first part by the way. Here are the direct download links for the two parts:

Part 1: http://soundfuturesdirect.com/TDFZ_Podcasts/TDFZ_Dream_Of_Peace_Special_Part_One.mp3

Part 2: http://soundfuturesdirect.com/TDFZ_Podcasts/TDFZ_Dream_Of_Peace_Special_Part_Two.mp3

Have fun! I hope you like it.

Michel, Synth.nl

Hi everyone,

MySpace recently upgraded the amount of tracks that an artist can put online from 6 to 10. So I immediately put some tracks back online that I had to remove before to make room for newer ones. There are now 10 tracks in total for you to enjoy.

Even my Synthology track is back online that I made for the Analogy 3 compilation album of Groove Unlimited (my record label). I know some of you enjoyed that track in the past. I heared by the way last weekend that this album is almost sold out so if you still want a copy you should be quick. You can find the sales links on my main website as usual -> http://www.synth.nl/. Just click the albums for more info.

Enjoy the tracks!

Michel, Synth.nl