Who in this piece owns a VOCODER???

I used to 0\/\/|\| a Roland "Vocoder Plus" which was quite nice.

are you talking about absinthe?

if indeed this is what you are talking about, I have more stories about this stuff than I care to admit. Montreal will never be the same again...

Yes, Mr. Taylor, if you have had the real deal, tell me what it was like, in brief if you wish.

The stuff I've drank (Absente, substituting "Southern Wormwood" for actual Wormwood in the distilling process) is pretty righteous, I'm wondering how badass the stuff available in Portugal and Czech Republic is.

And Pashima:

Why do you not still own this Roland Tool-Of-The-Gods?

This confuses and saddens me.

Czech Absinthe is absolutely brilliant. I highly recommend getting ahold of some. It was hands down the best drunk of my life. I have gotten a few highly debauched and entertaining stories from my encounters with it.

I will post more tomorrow, I have to hit the road.

Are you in the US by any chance? Because if so, tell me how to get the real deal, becaues I wanna know. All I've been able to get is the non-real-wormwood stuff.

I had some in Spain, but I couldn't stomach enough of it to get the advertised effect. I suppose there's a procedure for making it more palatable (i just stirred some table sugar into it).

I had a good time getting drunk on Absente, but my friend who got drunk with me remembers it as one of the most terrifying & disturbing drunks of his life

Czech absinthe is marvellous, French not so much. Still good times though.

HeLLTiMe SeZ:
And Pashima:

Why do you not still own this Roland Tool-Of-The-Gods?

This confuses and saddens me.

Just so we know we're on thee same wavelength, it was the VP330 "Vocoder Plus Keyboard".

http://www.jarrelook.fsnet.co.uk/KitRolVoc.html

I sold it because my sampler got ripped off, and I needed another one. Someone paid me 750 uk pounds for it. w/that money, i bought a peavey DPMsp sampler and an e-mu vintage keys. I recorded the distinctive choir sounds to DAT tape before I sold it.

The VP330 is actually not that good an instrument,. It's an interesting curio, basically, that has one unique sound (the choir sound). It's not worth the inflated price you'd pay for one now. I have a korg lambda string machine which I would never sell, because it's fantastic, and much more versatile. Sonically, it kills the VP330 IMO.

code404.com/synths/images/ korg_lambda.jpg

(btw code 404.com is the site of this very cool individual, and part of it is a big archive of synth pics)

If you have access to a Peavey DPM-SP sample module, and a SCSI zip drive, mail me, and I'll reply w/an address you can send a blank zip disc to. I'll copy my sets of vocoder plus samples (im DPMsp format) and some mellotron samples as well if you like.

A friend of mine, the friend I went to Montreal with, really got a taste for it. I am not sure how he got it, but he got a hold of some exporter from the eastern block and had it shipped to him.

When I was out there in September( what is going on in Montreal this week? )we spent the entire week looking for Absinthe because we heard it was legal out there. We could not find it anywhere in the city, and then on the very last night we went on a serious 24 hour bender and went to this crappy metal bar on St Catherine?s (I think, the evening is still a little hazy...) we drank a couple of pitchers and started talking to the bartender. He told us about this Polish bar called Billy Kuns that had it, and that it was the only place in Montreal that had it. Needless to say, we finished our beer and walked for 20 minutes to get to the place.

While we were walking we were expecting the place to be like an ethnic bar, something along the lines of what you might find in Hamtramck (the former Polish area of Detroit). When we got there, we received the most pleasant surprise of the trip. Billy Kuns was actually this super hip bar that played the most interesting German Microhouse that I had heard in awhile. It was filled with beautiful women who found us strange and alluring because of our mean and nasty Detroit style. While we were there were downing shot after shot of this Czech Absinthe and getting more and more out of it. I decided to talk to the Dj because the records were so on the money. It turns out that he was a French expat who helped take care of the financial end of the Mutek Festival, and he ran an experimental microlabel called Oral Records. We talked for a long time about America, Montreal, and France.

Eventually closing time came around and we had to hit the road. We walked back to the youth hostel totally out of our heads and loving it. It was not like the walls were melting or anything, it was just smooth and pleasant. We were just giddy and energetic. Everything was extremely clear and crisp, and my body felt wonderful.

Later on in the night, We broke into the grave yard at the top of Mt. Montreal, scared a bunch of commuters because we looked so strung out on the metro, and Ruest managed to knock down about 5 professional looking white collar workers when the metro was packed during morning rush because he could not get a hold of anything when the train started moving. We were really looking rough by that point in the night, and we were loving it. We smelled bad, we were covered in mud, and we looked like we had been drinking instead of sleeping for the last 24 hours. We hit our train back to Windsor at 11am and slept for a few hours on the train.

The Detroit Absinthe stories are much much worse. I would rather not get into them, I never overdid it so I have a fairly clear memory of the goings on, but most of my friends have absolutely no idea what happened. Things got very crazy on more than a few occasions. My advice would be that it is not a good idea to split a 5th of 140 proof absinthe between two people. It really does make people go mad.