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Update 2023

Hello, although you haven’t heard much new music from me in a while, I want to give you a quick update on the things I am working on.

Lately I have been working on some different music. The Analog Language label asked me to produce two remixes of early MvdK tracks, and I produced a track for a new Hotsound project.
Also I worked on a nice cover with my very talented niece Leanne Serena and that also inspired me to make some other vocal oriented tracks.
I made an 80s style remix with the vocals from Roxeanne Hazes (Spaceman) and I am working on some other vocal tracks as well. This will be produced in a new spacesynth / house crossover style. A preview from this has been played at Radio Stad Den Haag: The Opus III – It’s A Fine Day 80s style synthesizer cover.

People seem to enjoy that kind of music and for me this is an opportunity to reach a bigger audience. I am researching if it’s worth to make it an official release or if I will just make it a YouTube Only release. I won’t claim any royalties from this because I made it just for fun.

So keep an eye on my YouTube channel because that’s where my new work will be posted soon ?

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Interview Space Dance Radio

I did an interview for Space Dance Radio, here you can read the transcript of the interview.
A link to the interview on Mixcloud is provided below.

Interviewer: Alan Makarov

1. How would you describe spacesynth style to someone who never heard of it?

I would say that it is a mix between Italo disco and more modern trance maybe.. It is an instrumental and very melodic version of Italodisco, with driving basslines and heavy Linndrum beats.

2. Why did u choose to create this type of music?

When I was young I listened to some illegal radio stations in the Netherlands (Radio Stad Den Haag was one of them). They played all the nice music that wasn’t played on the normal radio stations. And so they also played lots of import music from Hotsound Records, a small music shop in Rotterdam. Erik van Vliet was the owner of Hotsound Records, and he also was the executive producer of Laserdance, and of course the radio stations loved to play this new and exotic style of music they made!

In the nineties I made house music, but I stopped making music when I got my first house and daytime job. About ten years ago (after changing jobs) I had more free time on my hands and decided to make music again. And so I choose to make the music of my youth.

3. How did u choose name for your space project Neospace?

People already knew me as Chris van Buren of course, but as I learned to make better Spacesynth music, I wanted people to know that the project had changed into a new and better style. It is Spacesynth music but new, and NEO means new in Latin, so NEW SPACE MUSIC resulted in Neospace.

4. What are your future plans for this music and music in general?

My new Neospace album “Flying to the Stars” will be released in February and so I hope the Spacesynth fans will like it again. I don’t really know what comes next yet, but I like to produce music in the spirit of different artists. I have made music for Syntech and also for the new Powermachine project by Erik van Vliet, so maybe I will produce music for other renewed Spacesynth projects as well.
I would also have loved to participate in the Koto – Return of the Dragon project, but unfortunately I didn’t got asked for that.

5. What do you use of hardware and software for creating music and why?

Well I use an Apple iMac computer with Logic Pro X, and I love to use old synthesizers.
Together with Anton Eriksson (Spacehawk) we always try to find the sounds that were used in the old Spacesynth productions from the nineties. We look into old interviews and articles, and study pictures from the old studios that the old producers used. And then we try to find the same synthesizers as they used.
Sometimes I am lucky and find it for cheap, or sometimes I buy a broken one and repair it myself. Lots of guys produce music with only a computer nowadays, and although it is perfectly possible to do that, I find lots of inspiration in old hardware synthesizers and I need them to get the old analog sound we all love.
There is a list of the gear I use on my website for the people who are interested in the exact brands and models I own.

6. What are your opinion on new generation spacesynth and do you have favorite space projects?

I think it is very nice that new artists still choose to make this music. I love this music-style and I am pleased that new producers keep the music alive. Michiel van der Kuy is also making new music again, so of course he is my favorite artist. I have been in his studio and we talk quite often, so yeah…
Other new music projects I like are Spacehawk by Anton Eriksson, Cosmix by Corbyn Lowers, and from the last Space Holidays compilation I liked Mindvision, Asteryon and Cyberman very much.

7. For the end do u like science fiction movies and what are your favourites?

Oh yes, I like science fiction movies very much. The old movies like Terminator, Oblivion, The Abyss and The Matrix are my favorites. But I also like some new series on Netflix like Lost in Space and Salvation. I have never really liked the Star Wars and Star Trek movies though, I am sorry.

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New Neospace Releases

Today two new Neospace tracks where released on the 2021 Summer in Space compilation by Spacesound Records: Neospace – Neverland, and a very nice remix from SoulyaID – All my Life.

Neverland is a brand new track that will appear in a slightly different version on my new album which is planned for this autumn. It has some very nice melodies and cool vocoders, also there are some nice voices which I sampled from a video where Morgan Freeman is reading his favorite poem “Invictus”. It’s a very powerful lyric that fits the music very well.

SoulyaID – All my Life remix

I came across SoulyaID’s Instagram account where she posted the original version of her track: All my Life. I thought it was a very nice old school italo track, but it missed some energy in my opinion. So I send her a message and asked: Can I make a remix of this track?

She was very enthusiastic and told me to go ahead. The original track is composed by Rey David Diaz from Mexico City, and the lyrics are by Junior Paes from Lissabon.

It turned out to be a very nice vocal / Spacesynth crossover, and I hope you like it as much as I did creating it ?

Both tracks are/will be available for free download at Spacesoundrecords.com , get it while it’s fresh!

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Studio Rebuild

In the last couple of months it has been a bit quiet with new music releases, I know, I am aware of that. Let me tell you what happened.

In the last couple of years I tried to create a very tidy studio, and decided to reduce the amount of equipment I needed to create my music with. I mixed everything “in the box” and sold all my external effects. Also the mixing of the tracks was done all digital, and although the sound was good I missed that analog feel. So I decided that I wanted to be able to mix all my synths and other gear in an analog way. But to be able to do that I needed a big mixing panel.

So I bought a Soundcraft Series Two 32 channel mixing desk. But of course it was way to big to fit my room so I needed to change some things to find a place for it… This resulted in a total rebuild of my studio room. Because my studio is very small I couldn’t fit the standard 19 inch racks and keyboard stands, so I build my own closets. Due to the Coronacrisis the stores are closed and I had to order the materials that I needed online. Turns out I wasn’t the only person ordering online… so I had to wait a month for my order to be delivered.

After I finally received my building materials I started to build the new studio. All this time my equipment was laying around everywhere and I wasn’t able to make music. After building the basic setup I needed to reconnected everything of course; all power cables, audio cables and midi cables and put in all equipment again. A nice job to do, but takes a while.

New equipment

In the time that I wasn’t able to make any music I sold some equipment that I wasn’t using anymore and also bought some new equipment. I decided that I “needed” a cool sampler and came across an Ensoniq EPS 16+ for a decent price and bought it. Shortly after that I saw an E-MU Emax II sampler for sale, it was ‘assumed to be broken’ and so I bought it, repaired it and retrofitted it with a cool OLED display and a Gotek USB Floppy emulator to bring it into the 21st century. The cool thing about samplers is that there are libraries of samples available for it, and that they can give you lots of inspiration. Last week I came across an Akai CD3000XL sampler and bought that as well. Now I have literally tons of samples to browse through, so I’m sure that will keep me busy for a couple of weeks 😉

New album

I am working on a new album as well; I have about 5 new tracks that are more or less finished. I hope you can hear the more analog approach that I use now for recording. I expect the new album to be finished around June 2021.

I will keep you posted!

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Released today: Neospace – Revelation Tour

Today the new Spacesynth album Neospace – Revelation Tour has officially been released, and is now available as download on Bandcamp and CDBaby.com and is also available on Spotify, Apple Music, Yandex Music, Deezer, Amazon and all other streaming platforms.

The limited edition CD album (100 pieces made) is available in my shop and comes with an unique number and autograph, and a four page booklet with extra information, vocoder lyrics and ‘thank you’ notes.

On this album I tried to recreate the classic nineties Spacesynth sound, and I think it worked out pretty well 🙂
If you love the old-school Spacesynth music I am pretty sure that you will like this album as well.

GET YOUR COPY NOW!

Neospace limited edition album
Neospace – Revelation Tour, Limited Edition
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Neospace – Revelation Tour

It is almost here… my long awaited new album is in production as we speak. This album is heavily inspired on the old-school Spacesynth albums. I tried to recreate an authentic early nineties sound, and I think it worked out pretty well. I have taken more time to produce this album, and I am absolutely positive that you will like it 🙂

This new album Neospace – Revelation Tour is a limited edition, limited to 100 pieces world wide! You will get a numbered and signed factory made CDr Pro, with a 4 page booklet with vocoder lyrics and extra information.

Make sure to order your copy as soon as possible! YOU KNOW YOU WANT IT!

Pre-sale will start from February the first on Bandcamp and here in the new ChrisvanBuren.com Shop!
(orders will be backordered and distributed from the first of March).

PRE-ORDER NOW!

From the first of March the album will also be available as a digital release on iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, Yandex etc etc…

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A piece of history

Computers always had my interest, it was an amazing new technology and I was fascinated by all the possibilities that layed ahead in the future. 

At the age of 12, in 1983, my first computer was an old IBS (Inter Business Systems) 80086 AT computer with two giant 5 1/4 inch floppy drives. My dad had replaced this computer at his company, and decided I could have it. With high expectations I turned it on to see what it could do, but to my deception it just sits there and said “A:” with a blinking cursor on the screen. It had no harddrive so I was supposed to load everything into the (very small) memory from one of the floppy drives to be able to run it. I got some obsolete company software on 5 1/4” floppy disks, but it couldn’t do much more then very basic text processing and a spreadsheet program. It came with a book about DOS and that’s when I learned my first things in writing batch scripts and simple DOS commands. The computer was very limited in it’s capabilities; with it’s small memory and monochrome display it was designed for text processing and that was what it does. I couldn’t get it to do very much more then that.

Af the age of 14 my mother got me a used Texas Instruments game computer for Christmas. You connected it to the television, and you had to load cartridges in the back of the computer to load a game. I played Arkanoid for weeks! The computer didn’t have a diskdrive and used it’s own programming-language so I wasn’t able to do some more exploring on it.

At the age of 15 my neighbor was experimenting with computers and radio transmitters, that’s how I got interested in FM transmitters and pirate radio stations. He gave me a Spectrum Sinclair ZX computer which I could borrow. He also told me it was able to produce sounds,  that was amazing!  I didn’t have the right software to make something decent though.. I managed to get some beeps out of it, but that was it.

In 1990, at the age of 19, I was in the Dutch army. I met a guy called Dennis Meex, we became close friends. He was as crazy about computers and music as I was. He owned a Commodore Amiga 500 computer and showed me what it could do. I was amazed by it’s possibilities, so I saved up some money and bought one myself. 

Amiga 2000Octamed

Now we were able to share software and we started to make music together. We had a program called Fasttracker and we could make 4 track audio patterns on it, but the 4 tracks were very limited. Soon we upgraded to OctaMED and now we were able to make music on 8 different tracks. And now we started making our own experimental music. 

Soon I upgraded to a Commodore Amiga 2000 with harddisk, sampler and Audio Enhancer, and I bought a Roland W30 sampler workstation and a Boss DR660 drumcomputer. That’s when we made our first house tracks.

After a while we got demotivated because we didn’t have a clear plan in what kind of music we wanted to make. Dennis was into Hip Hop music and I tried to make house music. And after fulfilling my military duty I went back to school to study mechanical engineering. Music was not my priority anymore. After some time I decided to sell my Amiga and other gear.

Years past by… school was finished and I worked in the company of my dad. Dennis was working for IBM in Scotland. In March 2003 I received a call from his mother: Dennis had past away… just like that, probably a hart failure. The end of an era for me…

In 2007 I decided to leave the company of my dad after being miserably failed as an entrepreneur. I had some free time on my hands and started to make some music once again… At first with a PC and Fruityloops, but later I bought an Apple iMac computer and installed Logic. It reminded me of the Commodore Amiga…

And here we are.. producing music again 🙂

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Website updated

Hi there! If you visit my website on a more regular basis you have probably noticed some changes. I have tried to tidy up the design a bit.. You also might have noticed that my shop is gone. Physical CD’s are no longer for sale at this point, and next releases probably will be digital only. A new shop with merchandise and goodies is in development.

NeoSpace

I tried to come up with a new project-name for my future releases. I have chosen the name NeoSpace because it pretty much says what it is. I want to break free from predefined Spacesynth styles and produce a new and appealing sound for old and new generation space sound lovers. Of course I will be using old gear to produce my music, and maintain the old analog sound. Occasionally I already used the name on compilation albums.

Youtube

New video’s are coming up soon. I was working on a cover for Youtube but it has been delayed, because I want to explore the possibilities to actually release it first. Making video’s for Youtube is very time consuming (if done right) but as soon as I find some time I will upload some new stuff. So if you didn’t do it already subscribe to my channel and be the first to know.

New projects

I have been working on some tracks for a new retro spacesynth project by Spacesound Records, in cooperation with Eric van Vliet and some other producers. There is no release date yet… but I am sure it will be a very interesting project 😉

See you in space!

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New developments

It has almost been 4 months since my last post, so it’s time for an update.

For those of you who visited my Soundcloud profile lately, you might have wondered where all my tracks have gone. Well I decided to give up on Soundcloud because the amount of people following me there is not as big as I had hoped for. Also there is not a lot of interaction possible in the Soundcloud app, so basically I don’t think it is fun anymore.

Having that said.. I want my Youtube channel to be more successful, so I decided to upload more video’s on a regular basis. Not only covers, but my own music as well. I know CD Baby does upload my music to Youtube Music, but this is only available in USA region and not in Europe for some reason. My fanbase on Youtube is growing and I get a lot of nice responses there.

So if you want to be the first to know about new video’s, subscribe and turn on notifications on my channel 🙂

New projects
So, after summer it’s time to get into the studio again. I am working on some new music for a project with I am not allowed to tell much about. But it will be a nice remake of some iconic 80’s Spacesynth music. Especially for this project I bought a Casio FZ-1 sampler to be able to mimic the sound they used.

Also this year I will participate in the annual Space Holidays and Space Odyssey compilations, in fact I have some tracks already finished.

Some people might have noticed that I am also trying to produce some trance music lately, so expect me to produce some of that as well this winter.

So thanks for your attention 🙂 Follow and subscribe if you like, and see you next time.