Syonix is the solo electronic music project of British musician Martin Ley. The project combines ambient, downtempo, electronica, and electronic dance music with an emphasis on the evolving relationship between music and technology.
Cryosphere was composed, performed, and recorded in 2009 by Syonix in collaboration with the artist, DJ, and producer Coco Varma. Its origins, however, stretch back more than three decades.
The journey began in 1979, when Martin found himself alone in a studio at the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS), armed with an ARP Odyssey synthesizer, a pair of reel-to-reel tape recorders, and a Neve mixing desk. During that session he created the original composition, establishing the core musical dialogue that still defines the track today: the distinctive bass "call" followed by the answering melody.
Almost ten years later, in the late 1980s, Martin revisited the piece and transformed it into a synth-rock composition. The new arrangement featured a conventional rock drum kit, a Roland Jupiter-6 performing the bass line, sampled acoustic guitar accompaniment, and the melody played on a Greengate DS:4 sampler using layered vocal "ahh" samples.
Nearly twenty years after that, Martin rebuilt the track in the Propellerhead Reason digital audio workstation. Although the composition had evolved considerably, the rock-based rhythm still didn't feel like the right fit for the music.
Having already collaborated with Asian-influenced Coco Varma on several projects—including One Earth One Tribe: Earthtribe Volume 1 and a performance at WOMAD—Martin invited Coco to help reimagine the rhythm. Together they replaced the original drum programming with an entirely new arrangement, creating the distinctive groove heard on this release.
Back in 1979, the term cryosphere was virtually unknown outside scientific circles. Decades later, the shimmering, icicle-like quality of the melody, combined with Coco's evocative, melting ice-drop rhythm, inspired the track's new identity. The result is a composition that spans thirty years of musical evolution, blending vintage analogue origins with modern production while finding its true voice in a soundscape inspired by the frozen world.
This track was composed, performed and recorded in 1990 by Syonix. Inspired by the Roland TR808 Rhythm Composer (Beat Box) and the music at the time, led to the creation of this track "BeatBox". Additional instruments used were the Roland Jupiter 6 for the bass and various other keyboards including the Korg Wavestation for the pads, chords on the Juno 60 and Kawai K5m on the sequencing.
This track was composed, performed and recorded in 1993 by Syonix. Commissioned by Digidesign in Japan to provide multiple 2 bar samples for their product Samplecell. This track is the combination of all the samples into this song arrangement.