3 New releases!

Three new releases on Strange Life Records to get you through the summer are out now!


Its a dark rainy morning in The Hague


F.Mavelli - Special Brigade CD (SLR030)



Florenza Mavelli's Special Brigade soundtrack first surfaced on the legendary CBS blog late 2007, only to fade into obscurity again after the old CBS's foreclosure. Now its back, remastered from vintage reel to reel tape, 14 tracks with lots of never before heard material on a CD album! The soundtrack of Special Brigade (aka Uomini Brigata Specialle) an obscure italian tv-series from yesteryear tells the story of an elite special goverment police unit formed to counter terrorism and organised crime. Ultra dramatic Italian cop soundtracks...Check out all the soundbytes here on the strangelife site.


Mono-Poly - Atlantic Storm CD (SLR031)


Monopoly's second album after releasing the ZOND3 CD on the Japanese Doppelganger records in 2008. Think of the great rural ambient sounds of Brian Eno's On Land mixed with dark isolationist dronescapes from the 1980s. Using rare modular synthesizers such as ancient EMS synthi's, Buchla's, Serge's etc. Atlantic Storm is the perfect music for a cold rainy day on the outer hebrides' atlantic shores...and that is ofcourse, just the way we like it. Probably one of the most essential rural ambient albums on strange life records so far!
Comes in a DVD box with a Monopoly postcard. Check out the soundbytes here.


Legowelt - Amiga Railroad Adventures CD (SLR032)


From the romantic days of Amiga computing cosyness come 16 fresh new Legowelt tracks in the style of Beyond the Congo and Venom 18. Music about golf courses in the Bermuda Triangle (oh no the ball went into a dimensional hole!), Night driving through 16 bit Amiga Pine Forests (Deluxe Paint sprites!), British railroad romantics (dedication to the trainspotters), Dr. Loomis' adventures in Haddonfield and much, much more! Made on the mighty Amiga 1200 running the Octamed sequencer, a TR808, a couple of Korg modulars and some old effects boxes.
Check out all the soundbytes here at the strangelife records site.

You can order the albums at the strangelife shop, shipping worldwide.

Sweatercat plays the Casio SK1

Sweatercat is back! After his debut demonstrating the Korg Kaosillator a few months ago he returned to show us the wonders of the Casio SK1 sampling keyboard. He seems to have lost his cool hat, I hope he finds it back! Anyways...the casio SK1 was a marvel of technology that appeared in 1986, aimed at the extreme lowbudget segment of the sampling market i.e. kids and nerdy weirdos (in those days it was not cool to be a gadget freak). When its respective owner would sample "hello" for the 100th time this musical toy must have annoyed the hell out of many parents or the nerdy weirdos girlfriends (but it was the 80s they probably didn't have any back then really).

But that aside the Casio SK1 actually sported some advanced stuff for a toy: It was not only a polyphonic mini sampler with 1.4 seconds of sampling time, it also had a keyboard section with 5 PCM tones (including a pretty shabby but characterfull piano), an envelope generator, a polyphonic step sequencer(!!!), a build-in rhythm box (with fills!), a chord accompany-thing and an additive synthesizer!!! When you press the synthesize button you can add different frequencies of sinewaves to eachother using the keyboard and thus build your own additive synth sound. Whatever the result was it pretty much sounded like a decent organ sound. Everything is 4 voice polyphonic and there is also a vibrato and portamento function (and yes you can set the keyboard monophonic for some funky leads...ehm well close to that)...we could say this was the first mini workstation of its time.



Sweatercat just loves this mini workstation concept and recorded some (pretty shabby) tracks using only the Casio SK1 (and a delay effect).

The Japanese Cat Anthem mp3

Cat Beat mp3

Cat Mieuw mp3

P.S This music is highly annoying to humans it was especially composed for cats, please let us know if your cat likes it.



If you want to know more about the Casio SK1 check out this site

Pacific Dreams

Some preview of stuff that will be released next week, keep tuned in...

Reel to Reel in Movies

A Revox B77mk2 in Steven Spielberts Munich (which is wrong because it didn't exist yet in the films timeframe)

Reel to Reel recorders are supposed to be a manly sign of technical professionalism. Movie art directors love to place them randomly in the background so we know we are on a psuedo scientific level or at least have a vague notion of that whatever happens is going to be recorded.
Favorite user groups of reel-to-reels in films include paranormal investigation teams, marine biologists, spies, cops, nuclear submarine crews and last but not least sophisticated rich people.

A certain Juanjo Rodriguez made a great webpage about all this. It doesn't seem to be updated since 2006 but you can mail him if you know any movies or tv series with reels which aren't on the site yet.
I already think I know a few, I am pretty sure there is one in ALF.


A pioneer RT-909 is a sign of avant gardistic sophistication in Knight Rider's "Soul Survivor" (one of the greatest Knight Rider episodes ever, it not only does have a reel-to-reel but also a computer hacker and cosmic-esque hypno-music to overwhelm David Hasselhof !). Reel action starting at around 2:14m, check it out, here is the clip:



smackos, esquire

Special Astro Unicorn Radio live with Monopoly this friday

Friday 29th of May 21:00 C.E.T (15:00 L.A / 16:00 NYC / 20:00 London time) on IFM 4.
Smackos' Astro Unicorn Radio live from scheveningen The Hague beach with special guest Monopoly. Monopoly makes ambient drone music with his collection of Buchla's, Serges and other hi-end modular closet synthesizers. He released his first album ZOND3 on the Japanese cult label doppelganger records last year. Mono will bring a strange modular synthesizer called the Blippoo box (made in The Hague) and talk about life, the universe etc.

All this on internet hottest radiostation Intergalactic FM channel 4 you can also tune in on the flash player here on the right.


One of the synths that will be featured is Rob Hordijk's very strange
Blippoobox synthesizer.

Here's some of his music:

The haunting cold atlantic U-Boat huntdown:

[Noodle]Mono-Poly - U-Boat Huntdown by mono-poly

Apparently made with

Wiard Sequantizer, Classic VCO, Waveform City, Borg 1 Filters, 2x NoiseRing
Klee Sequencer
Plan B Model 13 LPG
Serge Phaser, Voltage Controlled Stereo Mixer
Blippoo Box

Deer of darkness

An encounter with a spooky Roe deer in a clearing in the northern dune wilderniss near The Hague, early sunday morning.

The adventures of Daniel Jackson in Asturias

We recieved some great rural video material from our Asturias agent Vagon Brei:





Asturias, birthplace of many myths and mysteries, is a dark and remote province on the shores of the Cantabrian sea in northern spain. Far from the usual costa Brava's and crowded tourist Benidorm spain atmospheres Asturias is pretty much the oposite of that. The sun is replaced by rain and snow, the La Mancha windmills by castle ruins and forgotten caves, the Andalucian plaines by forested mountains roaming with wolfs and bears.
Investigating the myth of Carballo the vampire our Asturian agent Vagon Brei aka Daniel Jackson went into the mountains and filmed some of the colour locale. The music from Vagon Brei will be available soon on Strangelife records on CD.

W.T records launched into the world

I am forced to write a review about this so I get some free copies:



William T.Burnett , hailing from the borough of Brooklyn N.Y started a new record label aptly called "W.T. records", W.T. which stands for William Theodore, also known as DJ Speculator or Grackle.
WT01 is a curious split 12" with the established american techno artist $tinkworx on one side and the lesser known Kinoeye on the other. The freaks might know Kinoeye also as Datahata who did a pretty good EP called Initerant craft on the North Carolinian FrequeNC records last year. The $tinkworx song mysteriously titled "MKB" is a meandering deep jazzy piano house song which reminds me a littlebit of Polygon Window's "If it really is me" in a far and distant way. Evoking rainy day atmospheres in New York this is pure $tinki melancholy for more then 10 minutes. On the b side we find the Kinoeye track called "its a mean old world" and what a track that is! An absolutely unresistable piece of sleazy simple technoblues. Retarded synth riffs keep on going over dirty claps and dusty kickdrums while a sample proclaims "Its a mean old world...you gotta fight to stay in it..." and some other stuff. Excellent deep stuff in the vein of DJ Jus Ed and maybe even a little bit Theo Parrish-esque. Listen and judge for yourself here are mp3 samples from Kinoeye - Its a mean old world
and the $tinkworx - MKB.

W.T records starts out with a brave excellent first record, releasing two tracks full with character that perfectly complement eachother. Rated 21 out 23 tonies.



Tony Eiyk, esquire

P.S you can buy the record directly from W.T records now, mail William Theodore at williamtburnett //a/t// gmail.com

Skywatcher and more soundtracks

A new joint Speculator - Strange Life movie project called "Skywatcher" can be seen at the IFM blog. In this small "documentary" we follow Dr. Albert Putnam, a pioneer in the emerging field of geo-engineering. He tells us about the phenomena of chemtrails and the danger it imposes on the world. The soundtrack was made by Speculator aka Grackle on a Sequential Circuits Pro One synthesizer through a Boss digital delay pedal and Roland TR808 drummachine.

And because we care , you can download it right here for free with a bunch of other assorted bits'n'bytes such as the entire Duneman soundtrack (Also a joint Speculator Strange Life production from 2007) and some more stuff, all compiled into a zip file called "Skywatcher Duneman Soundtracks" just like a gift basket.



Click here to download this zip file

Tracks are in 320kbs MP3, Tracklisting:

1. Grackle - Skywatcher Soundtrack
2. Grackle & Smackos - Sky Trek
3. Grackle & Smackos - Dune Man Main Titles
4. Grackle & Smackos - Parameters of the Secret Zone - The Sign
5. Grackle & Smackos - Security Jeep - Patrol
6. Grackle & Smackos - Swamp Force
7. Grackle & Smackos - The Birds Know the Truth
8. Skywatcher- Radio Trailer
9. Pacific Northwest Sasquatch Research - Radio Trailer

Moss Landing

Made on a Kawai K1 synthesizer, misty deep ambient sounds from Moss Landing. Picture taken on California Route 1.

Back to Music - Astro Unicorn special live broadcast

Tonight (Thursday 19 March, 20:00 C.E.T) on IFM1 its Back to Music & Astro Unicorn live from the IFMIX with TLR, Smackos and special guest Speculator

He's back the fozzy DJ from New York and again he will play the tunes that will be sought after all summer. Chaos and intrigue garantueed!!!

Twilight Moose - Idea from the North

Exciting news from the Twilight Moose front. If you don't remember, Twilight Moose - Embrace the Loneliness was released on CD last year. Many people were asking for a vinyl version and behold , your dreams come true as Twilight Moose's Embrace the Loneliness is licensed to the legendary US techno label Downlow music Its not going to be exactly the same, some tracks from the CD album are going to be on the double vinyl pack but there are also going to be some fresh-new never-heard unreleased tracks on it! To celebrate this exciting news you can download - the also never before released -Twilight Moose track "Idea of the North" on the Legowelt homepage in glorious 256 kbs MP3.

Legowelt - Equestrian 707 video

Here is a videoclip for Legowelt's Equestrian 707 track. Directed by Adam Larkin and created at the Weta digital offices in Wellington New Zealand (the guys that also did the digital effects in Lord of the Rings and King Kong etc.). It was actually already made in 2006 but for some reason the video was lost in the archives. But now it has surfaced again and thats a good thing because its a pretty awesome video. Its got horses, cats, zombies, a typical 70's green hill rural paraphysical research center, mellotrons and all kinds of strange stuff.

There are two versions on the master DVD, a TV version and an "adult" version. Ofcourse I uploaded the adult version which has more nudity and violence. So this probably also means we are going to see a full release of track somewhere this year, in the meantime enjoy this video.

Sweatercat plays the Korg Kaossilator

Introducing Sweatercat, a synthetic cat with a little hat which plays the Korg Kaosillator synthesizer. So far he made a couple of arragements on that machine using his tail, here are some mp3 excerpts:

Chief Inspector Frost
Macau Connection #2
Macau Connection #3
Aegis