website for Espen Gulbrandsen

News

January 23rd, 2012:

Upcoming releases are planned on labels, but I won't reveal their names yet. I've also uploaded a couple more tracks to my soundcloud site so please check those out :)

December 10th, 2009:

"Perfect Sky" has been released on S107 Recordings and has entered the Beatport trance top100 list. I have also finished a track with Susana that will hopefully be released on her album on Armada early next year! Whoopa!

November 17th, 2009:

My single collaboration with Raz Nitzan featuring Maria Nayler - "Perfect Skyt is coming out on Armada soon. So far there's an excellent remix by renown producer and dj Max Graham - more remixes will follow. Check out some clips on Youtube if you wanna hear what it sounds like on the Universal Religion 4 compilation or in the mix on the radio.

Welcome back!

E-mail me if you have any thoughts on the content on this site or some music you heard somewhere :)

The Butter and Parsley alias made its first appearance on Silk Textures earlier this year with the track "Dryer". The next release will be on one of the Mystique labels. There is even a chance that there will be a follow-up to "Perfect Sky" next year, at least there is a sketch for a sequel under way! That would certainly mean a lot to me :)

Massive soundset

For a long time now I've been planning on releasing my own soundset for Native Instruments Massive. I have sounds from most of my productions going back to 2008, as well as a lot of sounds that have never made it to the finished release stage, but that are still decent sounds. Download would of course be free of charge.

Here's a list of some of the stuff I use in my studio:

  • Mac Pro 8core, early 2008 model
  • Yamaha P-140 electronic piano
  • Uad-1 PCI Express
  • TC Powercore PCI Express
  • Acoustic Energy 8" nearfield monitors and subwoofer
  • Arturia Arp2600 and Arturia MiniMoog software synths
  • Native Instrumens: Battery 3, Massive, Fm8, Reaktor 5, Pro-53, Razore and Absynth 4
  • Logic Studio 9 + Ableton Live (occasionally)
  • Fxpansion Geist for drum programming outsite of the Logic world
  • Microtonic
  • For visual monitoring I use Inspector XL, Voxengo Span, and Waves Paz.
  • Waves Gold
  • Fabfilter Volcano 2, Timeless 2, and Twin 2.
  • Avid mbox audio interface
  • Fxpansion DCam
  • SPL Transient Designer for treating my poor drums

Some older hardware synths include: Novation Drumstation, Novation Nova.

Native Instruments Massive:

I've been using Massive and custom built Reaktor ensembles for my music since 2006. Massive is very flexible, and despite the fact that it's been so extremely popular and widely used, Massive is not just for making ugly dubstep. The interface is easy to grasp, and the sound is crisp and clear

Mixing to mastering plugins?

Some producers mix to their mastering chain, meaning they have compressors, limiters and/or eq set up when they start the project. Why? It certainly lets you get an idea of what your track will sound like after mastering, so that you can compare your track with whatever you think sounds good in the first place. I've been using this technique myself quite a lot. Among other things, it lets me monitor how loud my fx chains will sound after everything is compressed and limited. Without this treatment, I sometimes find it difficult to determine how loud my fx busses should be.

Downloads, sounds and more

NI Massive

I'm putting together some free patches for Native Instruments Massive. Some of the sounds are based on factory presets, so you may recognize some of the macro attribute names. Let me know if you find these useful!

Fantasy on mp3.com

Where it all started

Several years ago I had a project on mp3.com under the guise Fantasy. It was melodic trance made with only hardware gear. The computer was only helping out with the MIDI sequencing. The melodies were in focus. The Fantasy project was quiet a success, with over 500.000 plays/downloads.