Dear Diary,

I cannot believe that it's been over two months since I opened you up last. Just shows how busy we've been here. And we have!

Several new releases...

The rare east German Vermona transistor organ from the 60s...

The Modular Toolkit with samples from the very wonderful Synthesizers Dot Com modular synth here in The Lab...

And more recently, Cognosphere...

We're particularly pleased with this last one combining as it does some nifty animation in the GUI as well as (more importantly) six irregular waveshape oscillators and a white noise generator taken from vintage valve equipment from the 40s and 50s. What's unique, however, is that cog - turn that and a new sound is generated at random. Though I say so myself, it'as a bit spiffy and provides access to a myriad of bonkers noises that could have emanated from some old VCS3 or somesuch. We're dead chuffed with it.

Mortimer has, quite frankly, been a pain in the arse. I don't know what's got into him recently but he has been most erratic of late.

Of course, bless him, he was keen to erect bunting on my birthday earlier in the month on the 5th and even laid on a modest little fireworks display just outside the arboretum ... which was nice ... and Mrs Featherlight laid on some very splendid burgers and hot dogs for the assembled chums (she thought venison might be appropriate but felt a nod towards modernity was in order ... and it was a nice touch ... and extremely delicious). Also, the local miniature train enthusiasts laid on some some fabulous displays for the occasion. It was all jolly nice. Molly took a shine to some young chap from the railway society and disappeared with him for a few hours but she later joined us for a nice G&T as Janet laid out doilies everywhere. It was all very splendid.

But I just don't know what's going on with Mortimer - he's been so grumpy since and I don't know why. Maybe it was something I said about Joanna Lovely... that I thought Delia Derbyshire sounded posher than her. Who can say?

On a more positive note, Mario, Hollow Sun's resident scriptmeister, got to see and meet and chat with Jean-Michel Jarre when he played in Zagreb. JMJ is a big fan of the HS MLMs and is using them so it was nice for them to meet up...

As for me, I shall be off to Berlin next week at the invitation of the Berlin Museum Of Technology to sample this weird synth beastie from communist East Germany from the 50s...

I can't say any more than that right now (because I don't now what to expect) but it's likely to be a mad and exciting project.

In the meantime, time for a wee snifter and a good shag in the briar!