Minimonsta’s cohmpetition first submission

There are some fast triggers out there: first submission has just arrived! It’s a nice song made by Olaf Krautwurst, with some futuristic landscapes, some IDM flavors, well…  here and judge by yourself..

The real story about “Why Ohm Force has never sold some Ohm T-Shirts”

We have found in an old 20GB hard disk the original post written by Grey Force some years ago in our old Melohman blog, where he tells the real story about “Why Ohm Force have never sold some Ohm T-Shirts?”, a question that drops in our mailboxes several times each month. Here’s why:

“Funny story to tell, the Ohm Force T-Shirts …
It somehow represents the thought process and decision-making at Ohm Force, yet not in its best light.

The initial idea

Hanging around at NAMM, we’ve had a few people asking for an Ohm Force T-Shirt. While we enjoyed that kind of moment, we secretly knew that would happen … Such a great logo representing such a great company, people would fight for it. So we toyed with the idea a few month (at least a year).

Deciding on the road

Moving all the OhmMen to Messe in 2006 was a good moment. We piled in a minivan, and off to Frankfurt. During the road trip, we held many meetings, one of them would be to decide on the tshirts. We had several points of view :

* Ivory Force : “They have to be the coolest tshirts ever” (he has the coolest collection of shirts)

* Grey Force : “Let’s rip the hell out of them and make profit” (yeah I can be a greedy bastard)

* Plum Force : “Let’s post on the website hi-res files for users to download and do their own” (Let’s not make a profit at all)

* Orange Force : “I’ll do the code” (he wrote most of the code of the store)

* Yellow Force : “Don’t spend too much time on this non-essential thing that won’t bring any money back” (The clever greedy bastard of project management)

* Red Force : had a very specific idea which led to a troll about international relations

Other points of view were expressed from other OhmMen, but basically you get the camps.

Finally we decided that :

* they have to be eco-friendly (grown and done in France at best, in Europe at least, and no cotton)

* they had to be ethical

* they had be of great quality, very thick

* we would sell them with no profit, basically just enough overhead to make the pictures, adapt the store and manage handling (by Mauve Force, of course)

Executing the plan

Last year, we had an intern, France, whose mission was in part to actually bring the tshirts into existence and hopefully into sales.

The website code was ready sometimes before, Orange Force having suffered from insomnia.

She had to find the best tshirts given the requirements during her three month internship. Which she did. TShirts from Germany, half cotton, half hemp, the printer for the logo was near our office, France could go fetch the test batch using the subway.

We needed Fuschia Force to do the pictures (he is a very talented photographer, with expert gear), and put the process in place.

That’s basically where the story stops.

A year later

You did not buy your t-shirt did you ?

The plan failed. I did ask several times Fuschia Force about the pictures, but he cleverly tackled me by using technical photographer speak.

Ivory Force did not like the t-shirts and found the cut not to be fit enough.

The price even stopped us. We bought each tshirts 50 Euros ($65), so we could not sell them for less than 60 Euros. Kind of steep, for carrying a brand on your nicely proportionned torso.

The code was finally not finished anyway, Orange Force was on leave for a while, and I did not want to delve into his code.

The tshirts have been stashed in the office kitchen for a year. Finally after a meeting we decided to keep them to ourselves. (Perks google-style !)

I am wearing one of those ethical and expensive tshirts right one, funneling the idea of this blog post.

Conclusion

It is sad that those tshirts did not make it. Maybe it was a bad idea. Or a good idea, but the compromise was not good enough. I like to think that bad ideas die by themselves at Ohm Force. However I am sure we did kill a few good ideas with this thought process.

Usually a project finishes when one of the OhmMen gets motivated enough to whip the others into actually doing something on a specific project. That’s a very loose organisation and it kinda works. I’ll tell you someday about our previous decision making. You’ll enjoy it.”

A gift from GMedia guys

Friendship’s tenderness. Isn’t it a beautiful thing? “To: Vincent Birebent and the Clueless Morons”, that’s what we could read in the front of the mysterious pack “from Uk” that the postman have just brought. Vincent Birebent aka Mauve Force immediately had the insight: such as love must be something from our GMedia friends, with who we have the GForce joint venture. Three seconds later, envelope opened, the confirmation: a copy of their Virtual String Machine and - Yeaah! - their brand new M-Tron Pro! We were craving to put our hands on it.. (thanks guys!)

New Ohm Force COHMPETITION !!!

Everybody knows that GForce’s Minimonsta:Melohman is the best Minimoog reincarnation ever, a kind of “Minimoog on steroids” evolution from the classic instrument. But could you imagine that it would powerful enough to save the world from this decade end’s darkness?

Read the comic novel made by Red Force, show your production/composition skills and maybe you gonna win some free nice plug-ins! Ready to go? So click here…

Cause4Concern is back with a new album, now under Ohmicide:Melohman influence

After a few years of inactivity, Cause4Concern is back again! Drum’n'Bass fans certainly know who we’re talking about, and good-music fans in general should take a minute to listen to their productions. This ohmfriend trio from UK used to be one of the perls of the seminal Moving Shadow label, before creating their own imprint, since 1999 helping define D’n'B boundaries. It’s been already some years since they started to use huge amounts of Ohm Force plug-ins when sharpening their sound, and we prefer to believe that there’s a mysterious relationship between their Ohm plug-ins use and their ever growing success. As they’re launching a new album, called Pandemic, with an even better polished production and even more creative beats and riffs, we’ll never know if we’re being presumptuous or not. :-)  Releases on respected labels Tru Playaz, Renegade Hardware, Timeless Recordings and again at Moving Shadow were to follow, and left little doubt that this was one crew to keep an eye on. Promoters right across the planet couldn’t help but pay attention, and consequently there aren’t many places C4C haven’t performed.

When we listen to Pandemic (to be released in December 1st) we realize that there was evolution, but their theatrical/entertainment side remains intact. They still sequence on Cubase, and Ohmicide:Melohman have contributed to distort several tracks on most songs (they sent us a nice screenshot, thanks guys!). Their sonic landscapes will transport you far away (song preview here) and their Dream Killer video will scare you. Cool !

An Ohm Force group buy is arriving…

If you like purchasing great plug-ins at reduced price, you better stay tuned in the mighty ProTooler Blog during next days. We’re glad to announce an imminent Ohm Force Group Buy in partnership with one of the the nicest computer music production blogs out there. The concept? Union is strength! The more people subscribes to participate and commits to buy, the bigger the discount - up to phat 50% off. You know that pimp your production setup at a half price will always be a good idea, so don’t loose this opportunity and spread the words to your friends: if they come, they can help increase your and everybody’s discount! Early participants of the Group Buy will even have an additional reward: those who subscribe during the 7 first days (aka “Happy First Week”) will get two additional discount levels at the end.

Despite being focused on what works on ProTools, most of the news/reviews on ProTooler Blog talks about softwares that are multiplatform, and that’s it became a reference blog also for people on Live, Logic or Cubase. If you’ve never been there yet, check it out right now, no matter sequencer you work with.

Brazilian Girls and Ohm Force @ Remix Mag

Don’t you know Brazilian Girls yet? This new-yorker band is almost an ONU meeting: the singer Sabina is from Italy, Aaron the drummer is american, and Didi at the synths is from Venezuela (the “Brazil” thing in the name is only to make it even more cosmopolitan and cooler). Their sound is far away from any indie NY rock cliché: they flirt (a lot) with electronica, folk, and many other sonic trips. They’re experimental without being boring, which is a nice thing. Even nicer was their mighty producer Hector Castillo, who has mentioned the use of “ample doses” of several Ohm Force plugins in his recent interview for Remix Mag. Hector is the guy behind Thirsty Dog Productions (David Bowie, Björk, Roger Waters, among other big names) and came to the Ohm side of the Force last year. It seems he’s having some fun with his new plugs, so check his sound out and try to figure out what plugin he used in each track…

Ohm Force @ Paris Technoparade 2008

Ten days ago several streets of Paris were taken by a HUGE dancing crowd. Technoparade 2008, as always produced by the technopol collective, once again have shown the world as popular and important the electronic music is - and despite parade’s name, virtually every electronic style have been represented, not only techno. Our ohmfriend DJ Franck De Villleneuve was there, at the pick-ups of the first truck, opening the path with a soulful electro set - in wich he was able to play several of his own tracks, all of them made with heavy doses of OhmBoyz, QuadFrohmage and Symptohm:Melohman. Such a great time: blue sky, good music for the masses, and an ohmfriend leading the way…

 

What about an Egg synth?

In this life we’ve already seen a lot of bizarre things - and you know we love them! - but this EGG “synth” has really surprised us. Craig Dorety made it with a 1000 years old (!!!) easter egg made of paper that used to belong to his grandmother, putting in it a white noise generator and a FM radio transmitter. The outside surface has two metalic touchpoints and some light-sensitive captors that enable someone to “play” the white noise as music notes… (and we thought *our* stuff was weird… how naif we’ve been…)

Planet Pootwaddle internet radio show

Sometimes is hard to find nice internet radio shows in internet’s ocean of options, specially when all we want is to listen to some good music and, why not, laugh a little in order to forget all this world bitterness. That’s why you must check out “Planet Pootwaddle”, a music/humour broadcast made by our ohmfriend Michael Sheehy, with the help of a kind of crazy crew. In their own words, the show is “an oasis of ear candy, where we celebrate music simply for the love of music … Without commercials or other cheesy distractions. We provide our own cheesy distractions thank you! If it ain’t fun, what’s the point? Planet Pootwaddle is an extensive collection of both familiar and eclectic music coupled with a healthy dose of  12 year old boy humor and all seamlessly bound together with our unique blend of production, or as we like to call it jingle magic“…