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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 release 2018!

Guys! I am very proud to announce my new 2018 album release on the 15th of June!

The new album is called “Tierra Del Fuego” and is in Spacesynth style with a touch of modern additions 😉

Twelve tracks which some of them have been released on Space Holidays and/or Space Odyssey compilation albums. On this album you will find remastered versions of those tracks, and of course brand new unpublished tracks!
I am pretty sure you will like it!

Official release-date is June 15 2018, and is available on Spotify, Deezer and all those other streaming services and download sites now!

Download at CDBaby.com

Hardware copies, as in physical CD’s, are available and can be ordered at: Discogs and the Shop-page on this website (Paypal only).

All CD’s will be autographed by me of course 🙂

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did creating it!

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New ‘end of year’ releases

Hi guys!

The year has come to an end, and I hope you all had a wonderfull christmas! I also hope you noticed my new end-of-year releases on the annual holiday compilations: Space Holidays and Space Odyssey 🙂

It became a tradition for Spacesynth producers to give away some free music at the end of the year, and try to participate in the well known and much appreciated holiday compilations Space Holidays (USA) and/or Space Odyssey (RU).

This year the Space Holidays compilation consist of 3 CD’s and is available for free at Spacesound Records. I am represented with two tracks on the American Spacesynth compilation and with one track at the Russian compilation.

Space Holidays

  • Drifting into Hyperspace
  • Future Forecast

Space Odyssey

  • Cosmified

All three tracks will also be available on my next album in a special album-version 🙂

You can download the Space Holidays compilation at Spacesoundrecords.com and you can download the Space Odyssey compilation at Spacesynth.ru

I hope you all have a wonderfull 2018! and please follow my social media accounts for news on my 2018 album of which I expect it to be released around June this year.

Thanks again for all your support! and Happy New Year!

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When summer ends

Summer is drawing to an end, and so it’s time to start producing some music again! Actually I am working on a brand new Spacesynth album which will be released maybe in the end of 2017 or at the beginning of 2018. In the past months I have been working on some tracks occasionally, and about 8 tracks are about 90% finished. These 8 tracks still need some attention and I need to make some more, which will happen as soon as I find some energy and inspiration again. On this album I try to produce a nice mix between old school Spacesynth and some more modern sounds. Although I like the 90’s sound very much we can’t keep living in the past, so let’s try to elevate this music into todays standards.

I want to expand my musical capabilities so now I am working on some other projects too. I have produced a more Italo kind of track, and I am thinking of asking a singer to sing on it. Actually I maybe could do it myself, but I am not that experienced with singing.. also I would have to practice my Italian accent to be convincing enough to be an Italo artist 😀

I am also working on some trance music, and because of that I ‘needed’ some other synthesizers to be able to produce the different sounds needed for that kind of music. So I bought a Roland JP8000 and and a nice Korg X5 which I stuffed with JayB’s soundsets. Together with my Yamaha AN1x and other vintage gear I can actually produce a very nice trance sound. As my studio grows I have been able to collect a nice versatile range of gear with which I can make a lot of different styles of music now. So it’s just a matter of learning ‘how it’s done’ and I am good to go.

Another project I got involved with was SynthOne. Rob van der Guy (Robert Gaj) asked me to join this project because Kenji Tanaka is still missing (since september 2016) and no one has heard of him ever since. As I have been working with Rob and the other members before, this should have worked well, but minor differences of opinion have resulted in a difficult cooperation. At the moment, I do not think the cooperation is viable at all, so I told them I will be working on my own music for the next few months instead.

Although I think collaborating in other projects can be fun, I need my energy and creativity for my own music. So that will always have my priority.

So, thats about it for now, I’ll keep you posted!