No Island Media, a digital media production company producing a video about synth pioneer Dave Smith, has announced that it is producing a documentary on Benjamin Fargen and Fargen Amplification, to be released July 2006.

“There is a lot of talk about ‘tubes’ in selling music products to musicians”, says No Island’s Executive Director Trevor Andrews, “but the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of tubes is something that still seems arcane to most players. We all have the sense that tube amplification sounds better than solid state or digital modeling. What we are doing with Ben Fargen is looking at what goes into the making of a world-class boutique amplifier, and how he merges the best of the old processes with the best of the new.

“It is the dedicated, individual visionary that pushes culture forward – by preserving the best of a tradition and playfully experimenting with that formula to create something new. You see that in people like Dave Smith, Emmett Chapman, Leo Fender, Les Paul. Ben is that sort of genius and we are honoured to feature his work in our documentary series.

“The exploration of craft is what television and digital media should be about. It is my hope that we can inspire emerging musicians to seek out the best quality, to interact with rich traditions and to learn how to hear the key, subtle and important differences in musical tools that are too often wiped out through today’s practice of homogenization of sound through over-production.”

Free edits of the documentary will be made available via the web. Full length versions of the video will be available for digital download in mutliple formats and in DVD form.

More information is available at the No Island site.