Way back in 1983 two young men by the names of "Paul Barrett" & "Stephen Skipper" formed a Band of their very own... If my memory serves me correctly, Stephen came up with the name, a sort of 'play-on words'
'Facial Arts' into 'Fayshalarts'... quite clever.

We both had a common interest in the electronic music of that time,
influenced by the likes of Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk, Bill Nelson, The Human League and FadGadget to name but a small few,
so the direction that our music was going to take was already set,
we purchased some instruments and started making music...

In the beginning (1983) our setup was extremely basic,
the kit list comprising of just a Casio MT20, Jen SX1000, Siel Mono, Soundmaster SR88 Beat Box, Realistic 6 Channel mixer, sansui D90 Cassette Deck and an Akai 4000DS Reel to Reel.

Learning as we went along, the first few tracks sound quite comical now,
bum notes here and there with Stephens vocals sounding a bit on the rough side. One of the tracks from that era "Man In Grey" was actually played on a local Radio Station (Chiltern Radio) in a slot called "Hear The Music",
not bad for a couple of 16 year old amateurs eh!

Things changed for the better in 1985 with the purchase of a Roland SH101.
I remember getting my Dad to drive me down to Tottenham Court Road in London to buy this awesome machine.

With the newly aquired SH101 we were now able to sequence notes using the onboard 100 note sequencer, this in turn was clocked with the SR88 Drum Machine keeping everything in perfect timing. One of my favourite tracks from that time was 'You Must Go', this was also the very first track we used a WEM Copycat tape echo machine to enhance Stephens vocals... they sounded great!

In the January of 1985 we had sent a demo tape off to a music magazine called 'Electronic Soundmaker & Computer Music', they used to run a section within the mag for readers demos, and if you were succsessful you got your music published on their magazine cover cassette, with a track or ours called 'The Clown' we achieved demo of the month for February 1985, there was a small section written about us to.

July of 1985 we had taken a trip to a local recording studio, 'Thatched Cottage' at Thurleigh Bedfordshire, we had an additional member for that day... a charming young lady by the name of Christine Knight, Christine was to sing on one of the tracks with Stephen, it was a remake of an earlier track we had done called 'Like Loving You', it came out quite well I think... although I do still prefer the original.

Moving forward to 1987-90 with some new equipment: Roland Juno6, MC202, MXR/TR707/TR808 Drum Machines and a Vestafire MR10B PortaStudio. At this point in time we were very compitent around the keyboards, sequencers and drum programming techniques, we also had a good ear for sound production, creation and final mixing. With tracks such as 'Nothing Changes' ' Dream Street' and 'Push' all emerging from that era. We continued to make our music up untill 1990 (ish) when sadly things went a bit wrong (Women!) and our music making grinded to an abrupt halt. All the equipment was sold off and that was that. I have bumped into Stephen once or twice since then but have never discussed our music making times.

For the next three years I never touched a keyboard, simply had no interest... that was until 1993. I purchased an Amiga 500 computer and discovered the wonderful world of trackers (Pro tracker 2.0). Tracks from this era included: 'Tequila' 'Terminator6' 'Sadness7' 'Mega Blasting' and 'Spell Bound'. I quickly discovered that making music using a computer was a huge step-up from what I had been used to, I was turning out new tunes on a weekly basis. I purchased a casio VZ-1 (Early Multi-Timbral Synth),
a Midi interface and a sofware package called Music-X, although I never got on with that software so just ended up using the casio as a Midi controller for the Pro-Tracker 2.0 software.

Moving on a couple of years to 1995, still got the Amiga and a host of new toys... Akai X7000, Casio CZ101, Casio CZ3000, Boss DR550 Mk2, Juno 106, Yamaha MT4x and a few FX units. I'd got the bug again!

I decided towards the end of 1999 to make some serious changes to my set-up, I purchased the following: Roland JP8000, MC303, MC505, korg N5EX (Amazing Keyboard), Tascam 488 MK2 , Yamaha SU10 plus loads of outboard gear and a new computer (PC).I then chose a name for myself... 'KV5', purchased the 'kv5.co.uk' domain name, taught myself how to build
websites and learnt some marketing skills.... and the rest is history!

To date I have sold in excess of 4,000 cd albums world wide, achieved a staggering 700,000+ Mp3 downloads from my kv5 site, mp3.com, mp3charts.com, peoplesound website and BT's get-out-there site, I have achieved a No2 position in the peoplesound charts, No1 in the mp3charts (Global & Dance), No6 on the USA'a mp3.com site and No1 on BT's get-out-there site. I have also been featured in music magazines and various internet music review sites. Tracks from what I would call my "Golden Era" are: 'The Fly' 'Still Thinking' 'Storm Chaser' 'Egypt' 'Virus' 'Lara's Theme'... the list goes on.

Additional equipment I have purchased up to 2006: Roland JX3P, Korg Micro, K-Station, Korg NS5R, Yamaha RM1x, Zoom sampler and a Fostex FD-8.

However, towards the end of 2007 I realised that I could have a complete 'Computer Based Setup' A friend of mine introduced me to VSTi's (Virtual Studio Instruments) I made a decision to sell all of my equipment (again!) and give the virtual synth world a go. I am currently running a 'Quad Core PC' using a sequencing/recording program called 'RENOISE' with various VSTi's at my disposal (MiniMoog, FM7, Jupiter8, Nostagia, FM8 etc etc) and a much smaller electricity bill! I'm still making music and some of the new tracks can be found on this site. I will always post new tracks as and when i do them, it's a continuing journey for me, no! it's an obsession, and I love it!

Paul.