Cybernation – The Dark Plane (Full Album)
Cybernation was my first album, I was 21 when I made it, it was just an experiment to see if I could produce something that sounded halfway decent out of my home studio at the time. This was 1987 and we were just at the beginnings of the ‘home studio’ trend and so the gear was nowhere near what is available now, but I had an Akai MG1214 recording console which was pretty much the Cadillac of home ‘all in one’ studios at that time, it was 12 tracks, analog half inch tape in a cassette based format that was made exclusively for that machine. I also had an Akai sampler, some out board effects, guitars, a bass, a Korg DW8000 synthesizer and a sequencer.
I recorded the album playing all the instruments myself in a period of about a month and then it was mixed and mastered to 2 track analog tape at Century 21 studios here in Winnipeg in one 4 hour mixing session. I was just teaching myself to write songs, as well as, how to sing at the time. It sounds pretty dated, but that is part of it’s charm, I was really into Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno at the time and I think that influence definitely shows. All in all, 30 years later, I’m glad I made it and I do ponder the idea of revisiting the old multitracks and reworking the album to make it sound like what I had in my head but was unable to achieve at the time with my limited resources and experience."
- James Rewucki