Revel in New York
A look at the city through its people
Experimental Products
A Short History.......
Experimental Products was basically a "garage band" who used synthesizers and drum machine instead of guitars and drums. The founding members were Mark Wilde and Michael Gross both from northern Delaware, USA.
I met Mark in 1979 when I joined his band The Snots...later changed to Twilight People....power/punk/pop. Mark played guitar, sang and wrote most of the music... Marilyn played bass...Richard played drums....I played MS-20. Twilight People released a self produced a 4 song 7" EP in 1980. This 7" spawned Prototype and Glowing in the Dark.
After Twilight People disbanded Mark and I joined seperate band's for brief spells... Channel 13...Rat at Rat R...
<<<< yawn......! boring...huh...? >>>>
By 1982 Mark and I drifted together again...Mark had gotten the synthesizer bug and we found ourselves jamming with my Korg MS-20, Korg Micro-Preset......and Mark's Korg 55B drum machine and Casio MT-30... Experimental Products was born. Our first album "Prototype" was a result of.....a friend's 8-track recording studio... This informal (cheap) atmosphere allowed us to slowly work on and record songs with the synths we had...Short Curcuit records ( me... ) payed for the mastering and pressing 300 records...It was an imperfect record.....Low single levels...and a noisy pressing.... ( compared to "pro" pressings ).
"Prototype" did however capture our passion of sythesizer music.
A Sequential Circuits Pro-One, Roland CR-8000 drum machine, Roland SH-101 and a Korg Poly-Six were incorporated as main synths in 1983..... Experimental Products would perform occassionally after Prototype was released.... but I must say... We were'nt very good.... ;)~ Time was needed in between each song to program synth sequences and sounds. (sometimes we would play a Kitaro cassette tape to fill the dead air).... All the tech distractions made our playing suffer... We had no greart chops on keyboards to begin with... Mark could play a mean guitar... I knew the MS-20 pretty well.... but.... Multiple synths...drum-machine sync..singing ect.... proved to be a handfull on stage...
I have a well recorded tape from 1983.... House system recording of our live performance at CBGB's. (cringe).... With defined sonic clarity.... It captures every mistake we could make... between song dead air... synth, drum machine miss-cues... questionable/distracted vocals...ect. Some live shows went better than others.... The challenge of live performances was a buzzz.... but.... It made me appreciate the safe and secure recording studio.
Mark moved to Philadelphia and we met Bill Mutchler.... a graphics guy and a good friend... We made him a band member. He provided slide projectors for our live shows.... It helped hide our synth flaws...LOL Bill also did the graphics for the Glowing in the Dark E.P. Again working slowly on an 8-track, Glowing was recorded and released in 1984. The Pro-One provided bass sequences... The SH-101 high end sequences... both triggered by a Roland drum machine.. The Poly-Six provided most other sounds on the E.P...... lead-synth, strings, voices...ect... To prove our "garage" status.... ..... The first master tape of the "Glowing " EP.... was flagged by the mastering/pressing plant as being miss-EQed... No high end......!
Chip Marcoccia a DJ friend from Philly helped us with the record's 2nd and final mix.... His efforts proved fruitfull. Glowing in the Dark was our most successfull record. Due to DJ record pool distrubition....Club DJs though-out the country had the choice to play our record and many did.
.......more to come. M.G.
Take a look at the MW interview section for the interview with Michael Gross, here.
SOURCE: Minimal Wave.org
RAM... aka "Work the Beat"
Glowing in the Dark
