Baseline and Bassline

I've got a 4 CD backup of my system with all programs installed and running correctly, and a 1 CD backup of just Windows 2000, Service Pack 4, Internet Explorer 6, and the various security fixes. So now, if it all goes disasterously wrong, I can go back to one or the other.
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Nick and I spoke on IRC for nearly two hours. The upshot is that
(1) We are now in positions to start writing more material but without pressuring ourselves with deadlines.
(2) The idea is to produce music mastered to professional level, not just demo tracks. In (1) and (2), the intent is to produce quality over quantity.
(3) We aim to perform live at a music festival in June.

He described our target musical feel as 'Electronica with soul'. I could add 'Synthpop with intelligence'.
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I've dug out my old SK5 sampler - amazing that after nearly two decades, my seminal toy synthesiser works perfectly. I'm halfway through sampling it's onboard sounds - I want to submit them to the wonderful Hollow Sun site.

They've already got SK1 samples, and a whole raft of sounds from classic and obscure analog synths.

I made music with that keyboard for about a decade, with it's 8-bit sampling and 6 predefined ADSR envelopes. It seems incredible now. But it also seems incredible that I paid £400 for a drum machine (the Kawai R50 - also at Hollow Sun) in 1990, and upgraded to a Gravis Ultrasound soundcard on a 200MHz machine.

But now, guided by horrible old cassette recordings of music made with this stuff, I can recreate the best of it, and make it like it was supposed to be. The strange thing is, when I was pottering around with a Tascam 244, a Casio SK1 and a Kawai R50, I knew that I was creating demo versions of tracks that wouldn't exist for years to come, maybe even decades.