Please note that this is an automated translation and it will not be perfect All articles have been written in English and if anything appears to not make sense We talk with the British bike brand about the love for design and functionality … and 154-page white papers A humble sticker taped to a glass door that reads "Fairlight" is the only indication you’ve arrived at the HQ of one of the UK’s most quietly respected bike brands tucked inside North London’s Florentia Village There’s no large signage or even bikes on show – an entrance that feels almost deliberately on-brand The wall behind his iMac is plastered with sketches and geometry charts A dog bed and boxes of frame parts line the floor Fairlight is a name that doesn't need much of an introduction in the industry – it’s the bike of choice for many UK-based cycling journalists Other metal bike makers exist across the UK but Fairlight has earned a devoted following Founded a decade ago by Dom Thomas and Jon Reid Fairlight produces around 2,000 frames annually – too many to be a custom builder The steel frames all feature external cable routing and are intentionally more utilitarian than chasing the most recent tech trends.  Thomas led the design at another British brand That experience – combining engineering with aesthetics – now anchors Fairlight's approach as well as the first prototypes for disc brake mounts as much as that utilitarian mindset underpins the brand Reid was deeply embedded in the realities of selling bikes to real riders with real bodies – and increasingly frustrated by the lack of options that actually fit those riders Fairlight's emphasis on sizing – with both Regular and Tall geometries – stems directly from those years on the shop floor.  The founders' industry backgrounds didn’t guarantee success Thomas was clear to emphasise that growth has come slowly through word of mouth and staying true to their design principles Fairlight employs a dozen staff and ships bikes across the globe it still feels like those early days sketching designs in a bedroom As we start to chat about what defines Fairlight as a brand But we obsess over every detail of why those bikes exist the way they do." routing configurations: Those are the details that set the bikes apart.  we're up against a huge amount of competition," Thomas explains "And many customers will only be looking at a few key facts: tube material You can have all of those and have a lousy bike You can have all those and have a great bike as well "We're very focused on the design of the products, making sure that they are genuinely as good as they can be. We use all the knowledge we have and collaborate with people like Reynolds and Bentley Components to constantly improve our product So the value is about making the best product we can and charging a fair price for it," Thomas continues.  "fair price" has very much become a subjective term in the bike industry Following the pandemic-induced boom and subsequent crash bike prices and value have become a much-discussed topic with top models retailing for five digits and even entry-level models being ever more costly Fairlight operates fully direct-to-consumer and framesets start at £1,500 (US$2,000) with complete builds from £2,650 (US$3,500) – figures that are competitive In order to fare well against the other metal bike brands Fairlight has to offer something else beyond just monetary value Thomas says that this is where care comes in Escape Collective is 100% membership-funded with no advertising and no affiliate links in our product reviews Our work is only possible through your support Our Member Purchase program offers discounts of 20% or more from participating brands like Velocio Hunt Wheels and more (we get no revenue from your purchases; this is purely a member benefit) Already have an account? Sign in Contribute to support the Manly Observer's independent local journalism Become a MO supporter hyperlocal news service covering the Northern Beaches in Sydney with a hyperfocus from Manly to Dee Why We have a fair and non-sensationalist approach to reporting It is run by locals for locals and we depend on your news tips and support to keep going We are a member of the Local Independent News Association News tips: editor@manlyobserver.com.au or text 0435741777 Advertising queries: advertising@manlyobserver.com.au General queries: editor@manlyobserver.com.au  © Manly Observer | All Rights Reserved Mar 13, 2025 | , A police pursuit that ended at Fairlight is shrouded in mysterious circumstances Shortly after midnight yesterday (Wednesday a blue 2024 Volvo XC60 was observed by officers from Northern Beaches Police Area Command driving at Victoria Parade It is understood police became suspicious of the vehicle based on the way it was being driven and three male occupants inside The Volvo was found abandoned near the intersection of Sydney Road on the wrong side of the road (main image) Up to six police units searched the surrounding streets The Volvo was subject to an initial search by police who taped up the driver side window to preserve evidence from the rain (image above) The vehicle was then seized and taken to a holding yard for forensic examination The circumstances surrounding the incident remain clouded in mystery The vehicle is registered and was not reported as stolen and police do not appear to have been able to identify who may have been driving the vehicle The Law Enforcement Act 2002 allows NSW Police to compel the occupants of a vehicle to disclose the identity of the driver if there are sufficient grounds under the Act The circumstances surrounding the initiation of the pursuit would determine this if one of the men questioned has an ownership connection to the vehicle they may be compelled to identify the driver under the Road Transport Act 2013 Failure to comply could result in a fine of up to $2,200 A NSW Police spokesperson confirmed the incident remains under investigation and has urged anyone who may have information, including dashcam or mobile phone footage, to contact Dee Why Police Station on 02 9971 3399 or Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 NSW Police are seeking public assistance in relation to this matter. If you have any information that may assist them with their inquiries, please contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 Join us as we go 100% electric and be part of the future of green driving Designed by Elegant Themes | Powered by WordPress Fairlight has unveiled an updated version of its Strael the 4.0 version coming with a new variant Reynolds 853 steel tubeset and clearance for 39mm tyres and more versatile than previously with its designer Dom Thomas saying it “sets a new benchmark for steel all-road bikes” The Fairlight Strael 3.0 was introduced four years ago and promptly got a 10/10 review here on road.cc. Our team made it the road.cc Recommends Bike of the Year 2021/22 We summed it up as “a high-end endurance machine when it comes to comfort but not the price,” and barely had anything negative to say so we’re intrigued to hear about the new version with every tube (except the head tube) redesigned from scratch,” says Dom Thomas Dom Thomas is a designer with an eye for detail Nothing happens without a focus on practicalities and a huge amount of consideration “Each tube required a completely new toolset or mould (in the case of the rear end tubes) representing a substantial investment in R&D and tooling,” says Dom “The fork has also been completely redesigned with a new mould opened.” First of all, Fairlight collaborated with Reynolds Technology to create a new variant of 853 steel specifically designed for all-road riding: Reynolds 853 Road DZB This tubeset is designed to add strength while reducing weight but you can find out all about it in this video: The chainstays are similar to those on the Strael 3.0 but the moulds/tooling have been remade to create greater tyre clearance and to allow the use of wider rims Fairlight moving from a 14mm stay to a 16mm stay for increased resistance against leverage forces from the rider Fairlight says it has flat-ovalized those seatstays to ensure there is no loss of compliance at the rear end of the frame The frame is fully welded with a threadless bottom bracket shell in place but each frame is then fixed into a CNC lathe the BB threads are cut and the shell is relieved – the wall thickness is reduced in a single machining process that takes 30 minutes Fairlight says that this provides a significant weight saving Fairlight says that a Strael 4.0 in a 54R geometry (each size is available in R/Regular and T/Tall geometries) weighs 1.64kg without bolts The Strael 3.0 in the same size weighed 1.92 kg The frame is ISO-certified having apparently passed all the fatigue tests on its first attempt One of the biggest changes this time around is to tyre clearance Whereas the Strael 3.0 could take tyres up to 700c x 36mm the 4.0 is now compatible with tyres up to 700c (as measured) Fairlight certainly doesn’t see the Strael 4.0 as a gravel bike but as a model designed for year-round riding in all conditions “It’s a bike built for tarmac - whether that’s the smooth roads of Mallorca or the potholed moss-covered back lanes of the British countryside,” says Fairlight “With generous tyre clearance (up to 39mm measured) the Strael lets you ride comfortably on wet if you want to link two of your favourite lanes with a stretch of hard-packed farm track this is exactly the kind of riding road cyclists have been doing for years.” and that’s obvious when you take a closer look at the Strael 4.0 the Fairlight x Bentley Mk3 dropouts feature a removable cable stop so whether you’re using mechanical the frame looks like it was designed specifically for that groupset there’s an all-new 3D-printed bottom bracket cable guide “We have made one part do several jobs; as well as guiding the front and rear derailleur cables it also acts as a guide for the brake hose and for the dynamo rear light wire,” says Dom Thomas “Ultra utility – everything in its place.” There’s a specific 3D-printed bottom bracket guide for Di2 and AXS setups which guides the brake hose and dynamo rear light wire There’s also a new 3D-printed down tube cable guide available in 1x (no front derailleur) and 2x versions The brake hose now routes through this part “for a more elegant aesthetic” The down tube brake hose clips are now CNC-machined modular parts that were designed in-house to be as elegant and light as Fairlight could make them They feature a bevelled cut-out that matches the new cut-out details on the disc side dropout washer The updated Strael comes fitted with a brand new Anraed 4.0 fork. Fairlight reckons that the new leg shape and lay-up combine to provide around 10% more compliance (in specific test conditions) than the Anraed 3.0 The fork length remains at 381mm axle to crown and the tyre clearance matches that of the frame Fairlight has made some small tweaks… but we really are talking small The chainstay length has increased from 418mm to 419mm to add a little more tyre space and head angles now match on Regular and Tall variants Stack and reach figures remain largely unchanged although Fairlight says it has taken the opportunity to address any outliers a R/regular geometry is lower at the front end and longer in terms of reach while a T/Tall geometry is higher at the front and shorter in reach designed for people with longer legs and a shorter back and for those who want a more upright riding position – but you’d probably have worked that out for yourself The Fairlight Strael 4.0 is available in three colours: Ochre Complete bike builds start at the following prices Fairlight says that the first drop of Strael 4.0s has already arrived, although it already has a backlog of orders. Full availability dates for each size are shown in the configurator on the Fairlight website please consider subscribing to the site to support us directly As a subscriber you can read road.cc ad-free The revenue from adverts helps to fund our site then please consider subscribing to road.cc from as little as £1.99 Our mission is to bring you all the news that’s relevant to you as a cyclist and he has been editor of 220 Triathlon and Cycling Plus Mat has been road.cc technical editor for over a decade and trying out the most up-to-the-minute clothing He has won his category in Ironman UK 70.3 and finished on the podium in both marathons he has run Mat is a Cambridge graduate who did a post-grad in magazine journalism and he is a winner of the Cycling Media Award for Specialist Online Writer he's riding road and gravel bikes most days for fun and fitness rather than training for competitions I've just bought a second hand Mason but that 105 mechanical Strael looks a seriously good deal Deeply pretty bike and I love the company ethos I have one of each (both humble 105 mechanical spec) Now to decide if they're sufficiently different to keep both.. Would an average MAMIL notice the difference between either model if equipment and tyres the same Anyone done decent mileage on both care to share thoughts please No personal experience either but you can check out Will's article as well. He loves both bikes. https://www.cyclingnews.com/reviews/fairlight-secan-review/ What a fabulous looking bike; it's what I think a road bike should look like the design notes are another example of a manufacturer getting it so right I was planning for this year to be the one I pull the trigger so I'm really excited about the new version although I do miss the Irridescent Purple colourway I spent a while yesterday morning reading all the design notes that they put together I love the effort that they go into to explain the resoning for why they've done things makes it really feel like the effort has been put into thinking about how it's going to be a bike to live with every day I almost bought a Strael 2.00 about five years ago but really couldn't justify the expenditure at that point I would have had the orange that's now on the Secan I seem to be the only person not keen on the irridescent plum so the 3.00 I ordered a couple of weeks ago would have been monochrome as the safe choice Really pleased I got the option to have ochre on the 4.00 they'll deliver The design notes took up far too much of my day yesterday Is there another manufacturer who gives so much information about how and why they make their design choices and what their goals are for the new iteration It's been part of the reason I picked a Strael over the alternatives it's a very clever way to get some intellectual and emotional investment in the product from prospective customers NICE but: this is exactly why we need more silver groupsets and rims I'm an old fogey and I like steel as a material On seeing photo I thought the steel was Columbus Spirit as it is a similar shape to the top tube as the Condor Fratello but lacking the dynamo lighting cable routing which is a nice touch on the Strael Its not showing as orderable on the Fairlight website as yet though.. I ordered a Strael 3.00 just over 2 weeks ago and 4 days later got an email telling me I'll be getting a 4.0 so I've had some sight of what's coming since then I also got to swap to the new ochre colour I haven't been this excited about getting a new bike since I was 13 Probably content mgt systems refreshing.. I was in the same boat but chose to stick with the 3.0 because it was already a 10/10 bike and (most importantly!) I desperately wanted the old purple Might have to avoid the first ride reviews though in case they tell me it's a total game-changer.. I've got the purple 3.0 - bought it as an all year round bike and it is so nice it's actually become my summer bike with carbon deeps I think really the only tangible difference is 280g but really I cannot see you will be disappointed with the 3.0 Been riding it for two years and it is just such a great bike road.cc's audience Report an advert on road.cc Privacy policy Subscribe All material © Farrelly Atkinson (F-At) Limited, Unit 7b Green Park Station BA11JB. Tel 01225 588855. © 2008–present unless otherwise stated. Terms and conditions of use Stunning ride quality; all-day comfort; well thought-out fixtures and fittings; custom build options High top tube and reserved geometry make the Holt nervous on technical trails The Holt is Fairlight’s first mountain bike with the brand already offering a range of drop-bar bikes With Fairlight founder Dom Thomas having ridden a range of mountain bikes being able to make the most of his local trails The Holt is a popular choice for long-distance XC racing with a number of notable riders and results hinting at the bike’s natural home The Holt is constructed predominantly from Reynolds 853 steel at the front The bike is comfortable and well-equipped to take on adventures smoothing out tiring trail chatter while providing a comfortable position for long rides in the middle of nowhere Fairlight has clearly put a lot of time and effort into the design of the Holt with a bucket load of neat touches bringing a classy flourish to the frame with swaging and ovalising done to add comfort or stiffness in the right places but it’s there to boost comfort when a rigid post is inserted There are a number of 27.2mm dropper posts on the market (my test bike had a PNW one) Fairlight says if you want a really deep-drop dropper The seat tube is offset forward by 8mm over the centre of the large-diameter T47 bottom bracket shell and is done so to ensure there’s space for 2.6in tyres The frame has plenty of bag and accessory mounts, as well as external routing for Shimano Di2 cables and dynamo lights The bolt-on dropouts are a work of art and enable you to pick between Flat Mount and Post Mount brake mounts while the Large and XL frames also have one at the top tube/head tube junction Cables run externally to ensure maintenance is easy while the bosses have spacers so you can attach cages without interfering with the cable runs Holt's online Design Notes page gives a fascinating insight into the detail Holt goes into with its frame design The shape of the bike is in line with other cross-country bikes of this ilk These numbers are with a 120mm fork fitted although Fairlight says forks from 100-120mm are suitable The bike's geometry chart provides figures for 100 110 and 120mm forks (angles quoted are different from mine because Fairlight shows angles with the fork sagged) Four sizes of bike are offered, built to suit riders from 160-195cm tall. Larger frames get correspondingly longer stems with the brand recommending from 40-80mm on S to XL bikes At the front of the bike, a RockShox SID Ultimate fork offers up 120mm travel although Fairlight lists the standard bikes with a 110mm fork Hunt’s Trail Wide wheels give a broad bed to the Vittoria Barzo (front) and Mezcal (rear) tyres Finishing kit includes an upgraded Chris King headset and Hope seat clamp combo including wheel choices and bottle/adventure cages The price of £3,299 feels very fair for this bike with a host of excellent design features contributing towards it being one of the nicest framesets I’ve reviewed top-end fork and mid-upper range finishing kit and the price is impressive Setting up a hardtail mountain bike is generally an easy affair I've typically found RockShox SID forks easy to set up well with the air-pressure chart on the rear of the fork a great baseline from which to tune the spring and the Holt is an impressively comfortable place to be on climbs the 75-degree seat angle and moderately roomy front end feel natural and comfortable not placing too much weight on either my wrists or sit bones The relaxed seated position doesn’t feel unnecessarily aggressive, leaving you free to take in your surroundings, while the internal dimensions of the frame maximise potential frame bag carrying capacity and while it might not have the directness of a super-stiff pure-bred race bike there’s a fine blend of pedalling performance and forgiveness while the smooth-riding nature helps the rear wheel cling on to slippy surfaces far better than you might imagine The Vittoria Mezcal rear tyre rolls along really nicely – its low-height closely treaded blocks buzz nicely on smooth surfaces helping keep the bike feeling eager to pick up and maintain speed Shimano’s XT drivetrain is a lesson in smooth mechanical shifting Fairlight isn’t shy about the cross-country intentions of the Holt and that shows in the bike’s ride The steel frame’s tubes are picked and then shaped for compliance and this is immediately obvious because the Holt has a beautifully smooth ride over lumpy ground where it deals deftly with harshness from below This makes the process of covering miles wonderfully composed and comfortable ensuring it's a fantastic option for riders looking to explore their local area Take the bike onto more challenging terrain and it’s not quite as at home longer stem and moderately tall seat tube leaving it feeling perched and a little nervous if you really tip it into a corner The frame’s feel helps mute jarring impacts Swapping to a shorter stem and wider bar than fitted on my test bike might unleash a little more trail tenacity especially given just how comfortable and forgiving the steel frame is Shimano’s two-piston brakes do an ample job on the Holt They offer good power and a snappy feel through the bar that I’m a fan of the addition of a slightly burlier front tyre gives the bike a little more bite in looser surfaces If you wanted to make it a real trail-ripper even chunkier tyres would further enhance the Holt’s descending credentials at the expense of the mile-munching performance I enjoyed with the standard build This bike was reviewed as part of a round-up of four do-it-all hardtail mountain bikes The bikes all had 120 to 130mm of fork travel with two internationally known brands – Merida and Yeti – providing carbon machines while two UK-based brands – Mason and Fairlight – supplied their steel frames with a custom build suited to the job Some might now call these downcountry bikes but the reality is they’re simply bikes built for getting on with the job of crossing off-road ground quickly and efficiently they were tested on a broad range of tracks and trails covered during both short blasts and long laps The Holt isn’t a bike that’ll thrive on those sneaky trails kids built in the woods during lockdown feeling a little more tentative than some of the more aggressively shaped ‘downcountry’ hardtails But, if those long drawn-out days inspired you to explore forgotten paths and bridleways, and you’d rather enjoy the control of flat bars and suspension than the skinny rubber and curly bars of a gravel bike the Holt will keep those adventures alive – even if you don't have so long to explore them these days there’s nothing to suggest the Holt couldn’t make the most of those cheeky lines through the woods The Fairlight CMI is a legendary machine which really took sampling into the modern world. Here we have 100 Things I Do working on restoring a Fairlight CMI IIx and in this section he works on getting the computer to boot the operating system and focusing on refurbishing the keyboard Great to have the skills to take on a mammoth task like this Sorry this took so long to get finished but there was many many hours of video to shrink down into something that is hopefully inetersting to watch.  We mostly concerntrate on getting the computer section to boot the operating system and refurbishing the music keyboard in this clip lightpen and hopefully some sound in the next Fairlight clip!  More from 100 Things I Do Om Unit on the enduring influence of the TB-303 Analogue Designs with Unusual Oscillator Shapes Film shown at 20 global film festivals used DaVinci Resolve Studio for every stage of post production Blackmagic Design announced that The Ninth Order a supernatural film by father/son filmmaking duo Nick and Jess Ahern has completed a global film festival circuit which included being shown at 20 festivals and winning more than a dozen awards The film was shot entirely using various Blackmagic Design cameras with post production completed using DaVinci Resolve Studio for colour correction The film features Wolf Creek star John Jarratt and was shot entirely in the Blue Mountains of Australia The supernatural drama follows the journey of Jada an ordinary teenager who is thrust into the mystical world of a centuries old group following the death of her estranged father With her friends held hostage by the supernatural cult a young man who could help her understand her father’s death As the film began to attract the attention of film festivals around the world both Nick and Jesse were faced with finalising the film as well as adjusting formats to meet the different standards needed by each festival Nick explained: “All the tight integration of camera grade and audio mix within the Blackmagic family of cameras and software meant The Ninth Order was possible for a ridiculously lean budget The creative flow was never frustrated by the toolset and the look and sound of the final film is a wonderful showcase for Blackmagic The awards for Cinematography and Editing that this film has already won against films with a hundred times the budget Shooting for the film with a small crew of three over five days began in 2023 with Nick using Blackmagic URSA Mini Pro 4.6K digital cinema cameras He then added additional Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro digital digital cinema camera as they became available Nick explained his path to becoming a DP and editor on the film “The fact that I was the DP and have spent nearly as much time as an editor made the job of being a first time feature film director a lot easier I could walk away from each scene knowing I had enough in the can that was going to cut and I would have options This also gave me a consistency all the way from pre production DaVinci Resolve Studio was used for all of the film’s post production audio for a 5.1 sound mix and VFX work completed by Michael Gissing from Dig City Post in Tasmania Gissing used DaVinci Resolve and Fairlight Desktop Consoles Gissing explained his work on the film: “I was keen to get involved with Nick’s film often with a mix of controlled lighting and sometimes just available light There were also night shoots and some VFX shots so it was a great exercise for me to push my skills into the requirements of those tasks It was a further bonus to know the edit had been done in Resolve It was a relief to know I would get a project with perfect translation and no issues with file reconnecting as with Blackmagic cameras there is really no chance of file name duplication And the sound post was also helped by having the audio in the timeline in Resolve.” One of the DaVinci Resolve Fairlight audio features that Gissing relied on was non destructive clip stacking on tracks This allowed him to layer clips and hear just the top layer which meant a huge amount of dialog editing and controlling level EQ and cross fading did not require clips to be spread over lots of tracks It also allowed waveforms to be seen as an overlay so matching ADR to a reference clip was easy “My favourite Fairlight feature is the ADR tool It allows me to setup a complete foley session This usually means an actual character for ADR sessions but it also means ‘foots timber’ or ‘foots grass’ etc can be setup in a list with accurate record in and out as well as an onscreen text to help the foley artist move incredibly quickly through a recording session To be able to filter the list by character means all the foley of a particular type can be done So foley for the film was remarkably consistent fast and used minimum keystrokes,” he explained An accidentally semi-custom build that can handle gravel The longtermers series takes a look at Cycling Weekly's staff and contributors' personal bikes I’ve had my Fairlight Faran 2.0 since late 2020 I don’t remember why I was drawn to the Faran initially but since we had 1-year-old twins when I placed the order I can’t remember much at all from that time It turns out your body isn’t capable of forming memories if you don’t get enough sleep I’ve since managed to catch up on sleep I’ve enjoyed putting miles on my Faran all over North America Fairlight Cycles has made a name for itself by offering contemporary steel bicycles with exceptional design details The company highlights these features on its website with notes about the design process and intent behind each aspect of its frames Poring over these notes was one of my favorite parts of the ordering process and I promptly put my name down for the first batch of these updated frames when they were released Other reviewers have been equally smitten with Faran’s offerings which seem especially well-equipped to match the riding conditions of the Pacific Northwest as they closely mirror those of many parts of the UK I used this bike to test out that groupset all the while switching back and forth between wheel sizes and tyre profiles depending on the terrain at hand I’ve found certain products that work just right for me which can be found on nearly all of my bikes They are as follows: My favourite Zipp SL-70 Ergo handlebars which combine a pleasing top profile and short reach with just the right amount of drop; Ergon’s SR Pro saddle in the M/L width; Zipp’s CX specific bar tape and lasts; Spurcycle’s Original bell the DT Swiss GR 1600 Spline which combine DT’s bombproof 350 hubs with a 24 mm internal width rim My Faran’s current iteration—I won’t say final—was prompted by my changing schedule As I started to travel more often as a bike journalist I decided to make this bike easier to break down and pack and switched from Shimano’s GRX hydro levers to 105 7000 series cable-actuated levers paired with Paul Components Klamper brakes With this combination I don’t have to worry about issues with pistons or hydraulic fluid while I’m shuttling between planes Since 11-speed Shimano components are cross-compatible Around the same time I decided to switch up the groupset, I also happened to stop in at R+E Cycles near my house in Seattle R+E is a long-time (50 + years) bike shop that builds custom bicycles under the Rodriguez name and does all its own painting and repair work in-house The shop often has the capacity to take on fun projects in the slower winter months and since they had the time to squeeze me in I decided to have them rebuild the front half of my bike to improve the fit By adding about a centimetre to the reach I was able to almost perfectly match the geometry of a custom frame I own and Rodriguez had it completed in about a week’s time The builders were even able to match the custom tube shapes of the Fairlight to maintain the ovalized down and top tubes of the original so I decided to leave the front half of the bike raw I plan to ride it like this for a while (don’t worry it’s coated with boiled linseed oil) until I choose a colour I know I’ll be happy with for a while I was quite tempted to have R+E add couplers to the frame What makes the Faran so useful as a travel bike is that it rides very well with a wide range of tire sizes For trips where I’m riding chunky gravel And for trips where most of the riding is on roads It is equipped to carry all manner of racks and bags Without any carbon parts (save for the seatpost) I don’t have to worry too much about this bike even in the hands of less-than-cautions baggage handlers or overly zealous customs agents I’m not sure what the future holds with this bike (maybe something crazy like a front derailleur?!) but I’m happy to have it along for the ride Thank you for reading 20 articles this month* Join now for unlimited access Enjoy your first month for just £1 / $1 / €1 *Read 5 free articles per month without a subscription Try first month for just £1 / $1 / €1 he spends most of his time in the saddle piloting his children around in a cargo bike His writing has appeared in magazines published in Europe The new Fairlight Strael 4.0 “sets a new benchmark for steel All-Road bikes” according to the brand’s co-founder Dom Thomas Although Thomas says this claim is “for others to judge”, Fairlight says the new bike is lighter and stronger than the Strael 3.0, which we awarded a full 5 stars in 2021 The lighter weight and added strength are largely due to the bike using new Reynolds tubing developed in collaboration with Fairlight.  Fairlight says the Strael 4.0 blends the performance of a steel race bike with the comfort of an endurance bike will enable you to ride comfortably on wet slippy and rough roads – and that it can handle hard-packed tracks.  Fairlight worked with Reynolds Technology to create a new version of its 853 steel tubing called Reynolds 853 Road DZB DZB (Double Zonal Butted) tubing was originally developed for mountain bikes, and Fairlight used it on its Secan 2.0 gravel bike. But the brand says it saw the opportunity to apply this technology to all-road bikes.  Fairlight says that by adding material to high-stress areas of the tubes it has been able to reduce wall thickness in the rest of the tube.  Fairlight says this increases strength and leads to “substantial weight savings” for the Strael 4.0 compared to its predecessor which is 280g lighter than the previous model in the same size.  This tubing required the development of new tooling and processes and only the head tube remains unchanged from the previous Strael There was a long development process behind the new tubing Having realised that adapting the existing tubing wasn’t an option for what it wanted to achieve Fairlight and Reynolds had to create new tooling which are used to shape the tubes and created using a process called grinding.  “Reynolds hadn’t made new tool bars for several years and many of the specialist grinding companies in the UK had closed it took nearly nine months to go from completed tube drawings to the tooling being finished,” Fairlight says.  Fairlight also says it saves weight by welding all parts of the frame together with a threadless bottom bracket shell each frame is mounted into a CNC lathe and the bottom bracket threads are cut Many of the Fairlight Strael 4.0’s tubes use an ovalised profile to reduce wall thickness but ensure strength The chainstays and seatstays are also ovalised but Fairlight has done this “to promote displacement (compliance) in the rear triangle under load while also increasing resistance to pedaling forces”.  Fairlight says it has also increased the tyre clearance of the bike from 36mm to 39mm to allow for the use of wider wheel rims.  This required remaking the mould tooling for the chainstays, and also increasing the steel road bike’s wheelbase by 1mm – one of the few geometry changes Fairlight made for this new model.  Fairlight has also redesigned its Anraed fork for the Strael 4.0 The Anraed 4.0 has a new leg shape and layup which is said to lead to roughly 10 per cent more compliance It can also fit 39mm tyres – or 35mm tyres if you have mudguards which can attach to what Fairlight calls ‘proper’ eyelets on the rear of the fork.  The fork also has a mount in the front of its crown for a front light and fully sleeved internal routing for a dynamo wire.  Fairlight says the new fork is only marginally lighter than the previous version The Strael 4.0 features Fairlight's new MK III modular dropouts Made in collaboration with Bentley Components Fairlight says this is an expensive process compared to casting the dropouts but that “it allows us to create exceptional quality parts” The modular dropouts mean your Fairlight Strael can be tailored to whichever gearing system you're using Shimano Di2 or SRAM AXS electronic drivetrains.  Fairlight has also produced a modular dropout for SRAM T-Type drivetrains that use SRAM’s Universal Derailleur Hanger. In the press material for the Strael 4.0, Fairlight describes SRAM UDH as a “‘trojan horse’ designed to get frame makers to build in the required interface dimensions for installation of their Transmission (T-Type) rear derailleurs” But Fairlight says modular dropouts give the brand “the best possible chance of designing around any future standards; so that we can hopefully continue to provide compatibility solutions for our customers”.  Bentley Components has also created a mount for a rear dynamo light that attaches to the dropout.  Fairlight says the Strael 4.0 is available as a frameset (£1,499) or in a range of builds:  There are upgrade options available including dynamo lighting The bike is available in 10 sizes – including regular and tall sizing – and three colours: stealth SIDE-LINE In support of 2002’s hugely successful “Harmonizer” album, Apoptygma Berzerk toured extensively for two years across Europe and the USA Stephan Groth took a break from the intensive live work to recharge and figure out Apoptygma’s next move Stephan created the – really excellent – synthpop electropop project Fairlight Children The song recorded became the “808bit” album The album will now be re-released on vinyl via Emmobiz Records in two versions on May 17th he already knew then that Apoptygma’s next album “You And Me Against The World” would have a more guitar-driven rock essence so Fairlight Children became a perfect counter balance The album also featured a cover of Soft Cell’s “Bedsitter” Iben Groth on the title track and of course the singalong track “Before you came along” On “Falling Out” you can also hear Jon Erik Martinsen on a Korg MS-20 The project name ‘Fairlight Children’ obviously pays homage to the Fairlight CMI a vintage digital synthesizer emblematic of 1980s music production it references the Fairlight computer scene group known for creating demos on the Commodore 64 the project resurfaced in 2020 with the release of the “CMI EP” More people are reading Side-Line Magazine than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can - and we refuse to add annoying advertising So you can see why we need to ask for your help Side-Line’s independent journalism takes a lot of time But we do it because we want to push the artists we like and who are equally fighting to survive you can support Side-Line Magazine – and it only takes a minute The donations are safely powered by Paypal Electronic Bodies - Nightside Sessions by Shane Aungst Electronic Bodies - Session 1 by Various Artists Electronic Resistance - Reconstruction by Various Artists Electronic Resistance - A Darkwave / Post-Punk Compilation From The Ukrainian Underground by Various Artists The Fairlight CMI is a legendary piece of equipment This little documentary seeks to explore the rise of the Fairlight forging a turning point in Electronic Computer Music - with interviews The film was produced by Samantha Bennett & Nic Vevers and features music by Newborn Noise.  The world's first digital synthesiser was developed right here in Canberra The Fairlight Computer Music Instrument was developed in Australia and took the music world by storm Shaping the sound of the 80s and the changing way music would be made forever But before the Fairlight was the Fairlight there was the Qasar sequencer that was developed right here in Canberra A Mustard Flats Original Produced by Samantha Bennett & Nic Vevers Special thanks to: Australian National University Archives National Archives of Australia Trove: National Library of Australia ArtsACT Supported by ACT Government More from Mustard Flats Brighton primary has worked with organisation to provide better quality time outside With a playground that measures just 800m2 and more than 400 children there is no room for sports on the school grounds is finding to cope with the issues many state schools are fighting; shortages of green space A Guardian analysis has found that more than 500 schools have less than 1000m2 of outside space while unpublished research shows that children have lost more than an hour of playtime every week since 1995 More than 10,500 school playing fields have been sold off in the last 35 years and the schools that still have grounds are grappling with the cost of maintaining them limited staff capacity means shortage of oversight for playtime is that it is the children who have the least green space at home who suffer the most from inadequate playtimes “Cities are getting denser and the doorstep spaces are going So we have to be all things to our families the space where parents can talk to friends.” “We have children who leave here on a Friday go back to their flat and won’t go outside again until they come back here on Monday morning.” ShowAs part of our Access to green space series we've been looking into the amount of space that our children have at school – and how much time they get to enjoy it our data team put together detailed information about the amount of land owned by England’s top private schools and then used satellite data and a number of other variables to calculate how much of that was green space accessible by the pupils We also looked at the amount of outdoor space available to England’s state schools and spoke to experts about some of the issues facing our children As Tina Farr of St Ebbes primary school in Oxford told us: “We need to start running schools in line with healthy child development We can give them a nourishing six hours a day and we absolutely have to.” Thank you for your feedback.The football practice is just one of the outlets that Jordan has created for the students: Fairlight has also worked with Opal Play – a campaigning organisation that teaches schools how to provide better quality play – to transform the playground into an adventure play space. On a grey, February day, children are building a den out of wood and tarpaulin, swinging on ropes from under a jutting roof as well as running about playing ballgames. Under a low wooden roof makeshift swings are popular “particularly with our autistic young people” says Jordan “they really love the swinging motion”. But even schools that do what they can to bring playtime up to a high standard can only work within the parameters of a – highly pressured – school day. “I’ve been a head for 22 years,” Jordan says. “We are now trying to cram far more learning into the same length of day. The curriculum means that from six or seven years old, play is gone even though we know older children need play too.” “We played football recently against a private school. Their children play football for an hour four times a week. How do they have time for that? It’s simple. Because they don’t have to do Sats. “They also have so much more space. When we were there I had to pull half of my children out of the trees they were playing in as they don’t usually get that experience. “Play teaches risk, resilience, turn-taking. But instead we have to teach fronted adverbials. Then our children are competing in life with children [at private schools] who get more time outdoors or playing football. How many jobs are about sitting still and listening? None of them. Work is about human interaction, thinking on your feet, having your own ideas.” Tina Farr is head of St Ebbes primary school on the outskirts of the city The school recently introduced the Opal programme and has seen clear benefits “The impact on their wellbeing has been profound; there has been a massive decrease in low level arguments and falling out We have fewer first aid incidents because children are developing better spatial awareness They look up when racing buggies through the playground They think carefully when balancing a large pile of tyres “And I think it’s improved their ability to deal with uncertainty.” One of the greatest successes was finding a way for children to play football – a common source of tension in small But several children wrote to me asking to have them back So I had a massive meeting with children and we talked through the problems and now we have sessions that are refereed with a clear system She believes that nothing could be more important “Just switch the news on and you will see the mental health crisis for children We need to start running schools in line with healthy child development can you real­ly claim to have seen Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring at all At that 108-gigapix­el res­o­lu­tion, notes Jason Kot­tke, “each pix­el is 1.3 microns in size — 1000 microns is 1 mil­lime­ter.” You can learn more about the tech­nol­o­gy behind the project in this mak­ing-of video pro­duced by Hirox Europe the local branch of the Japan­ese dig­i­tal micro­scope com­pa­ny respon­si­ble for both the ten bil­lion-pix­el scan and this 108 bil­lion-pix­el one which neces­si­tat­ed 88 hours of non-stop scan­ning this rel­a­tive­ly small can­vas of 15 inch­es by 17.5 inch­es a process that result­ed in 41,000 3D images 3D images: though Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring known as “the Mona Lisa of the North,” may be known far and wide in flat rep­re­sen­ta­tions on pages Ver­meer achieved his ultra-real­is­tic effects not just by putting the right col­ors in the right places, but apply­ing them at the right thick­ness­es and with the right tex­tures — all of which have been repli­cat­ed in a “mega-sized” phys­i­cal 3D print, 100 times larg­er than the orig­i­nal work, com­mis­sioned by the Mau­rit­shuis for its Who’s that Girl? exhi­bi­tion via Kot­tke Why is Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Ear­ring Con­sid­ered a Mas­ter­piece?: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion A Guid­ed Tour Through All of Vermeer’s Famous Paint­ings, Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry Mas­ter of Light: A Close Look at the Paint­ings of Johannes Ver­meer Nar­rat­ed by Meryl Streep What Makes Vermeer’s The Milk­maid a Mas­ter­piece?: A Video Intro­duc­tion Down­load All 36 of Jan Vermeer’s Beau­ti­ful­ly Rare Paint­ings (Most in Bril­liant High Res­o­lu­tion) The Largest & Most Detailed Pho­to­graph of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch Is Now Online: Zoom In & See Every Brush Stroke When inven­tor Édouard-Léon Scott de Mar­t­inville sang a nurs­ery rhyme into his phonoau­to­gram in 1860 he had no plans to ever play back this record­ing the phonoau­to­gram took inputs for the study of sound waves but could not be turned into an out­put device we can hear the voice of Scott in what is now con­sid­ered the first ever record­ing of human sound What you will hear in the above video are the var­i­ous stages of recon­struct­ing and reverse engi­neer­ing the voice that sang on that April day in 1860 like wip­ing away decades of dirt and soot Scott had looked to the inven­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy and won­dered if some­thing sim­i­lar could be done with sound waves focused as he was on improv­ing stenog­ra­phy And so the phonoau­to­gram took in sound vibra­tions through a diaphragm which moved a sty­lus against a rotat­ing cylin­der cov­ered in lamp­black What was left was a wig­gly line in a con­cen­tric cir­cle Scott’s inven­tion nev­er turned a prof­it and he went back to book­selling The inven­tion and some of the paper cylin­ders went into muse­ums In 2008, Amer­i­can audio his­to­ri­ans dis­cov­ered the scrib­bles and turned to the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry and a soft­ware called IRENE The soft­ware was designed to extract sounds from wax cylin­ders with­out touch­ing the del­i­cate sur­faces and the first pass revealed what they thought at first was a young woman or child singing “Au Clair de la lune,” the French nurs­ery rhyme (not the Debussy piano work) a fur­ther exam­i­na­tion of Scott’s notes revealed that the record­ing was at a much slow­er speed and it was a man—most prob­a­bly Scott—singing the lul­la­by The video shows the stages that brought Scott back to life: Denois­ing a lot of extra­ne­ous sound; stretch­ing the record­ing back to nat­ur­al time; “tun­ing and quantizing”–correcting for imper­fec­tions in the human-turned cylin­der; clean­ing up har­mon­ics; and final­ly adding fur­ther har­mon­ics The result is less an unrec­og­niz­able ghost sig­nal and more a touch­ing sound of human­i­ty desir­ing some­how to have their voice live on Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019 The Old­est Voic­es That We Can Still Hear: Hear Audio Record­ings of Ghost­ly Voic­es from the 1800s Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Cour­tesy of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-San­ta Bar­bara  Opti­cal Scan­ning Tech­nol­o­gy Lets Researchers Recov­er Lost Indige­nous Lan­guages from Old Wax Cylin­der Record­ings Hear Singers from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera Record Their Voic­es on Tra­di­tion­al Wax Cylin­ders 400,000+ Sound Record­ings Made Before 1923 Have Entered the Pub­lic Domain Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts. You can read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) | Image via Here­ford Cathe­dral and Here­ford Map­pa Mun­di Trust every aspect of William Shake­speare’s life has pro­duced more spec­u­la­tion than any of us could digest in a life­time but also his even more scant­i­ly doc­u­ment­ed per­son­al life the known facts are these: on Novem­ber 27th 1582 a mar­riage license was issued in Worces­ter to the 18-year-old William Shake­speare and the approx­i­mate­ly 26-year-old Anne Hath­away Six months lat­er came the first of their three chil­dren while Anne — willed only her hus­band’s “sec­ond-best bed” — remained in his home­town of Strat­ford-upon-Avon the cou­ple could not only have remained in com­mu­ni­ca­tion but also lived togeth­er in the cap­i­tal for a time “Here­ford Cathe­dral Library holds a frag­men­tary sev­en­teenth-cen­tu­ry let­ter addressed to a ‘Mrs Shak­spaire,’ con­cern­ing her husband’s deal­ings with a father­less appren­tice,” writes Steggle in his research paper recent­ly pub­lished in the jour­nal Shake­speare “Of the Shake­spear­es record­ed in Lon­don William Shake­speare is the only viable can­di­date to fit with the letter’s details.” In Steggle’s analy­sis it “paints a pic­ture of William and Anne Shake­speare togeth­er in Lon­don It fur­ther sug­gests an Anne Shake­speare who is not absent from her husband’s Lon­don life but present and engaged in his finan­cial and social net­works.” The New York Times’ Ephrat Livni quotes Steggle as say­ing that “this let­ter offers a glimpse of the Shake­spear­es togeth­er in Lon­don both involved in social net­works and busi­ness mat­ters pre­sent­ing a unit­ed front against impor­tu­nate requests to help poor orphans.” This would “lend some heft to fem­i­nist read­ings of Shakespeare’s life,” as well as to the pop-cul­ture trend of “rethink­ing the mar­riage and Hathaway’s role in it.” Each era thus con­tin­ues to cre­ate the Shake­speare for whom it feels the need — and the Mrs Free Course: A Sur­vey of Shakespeare’s Plays Why Should We Read William Shake­speare? Four Ani­mat­ed Videos Make the Case Behold Shakespeare’s First Folio, the First Pub­lished Col­lec­tion of Shakespeare’s Plays, Pub­lished 400s Year Ago (1623) The Only Sur­viv­ing Script Writ­ten by Shake­speare Is Now Online Did Shake­speare Write Pulp Fic­tion? (No, But If He Did, It’d Sound Like This) Did Bach’s Wife Com­pose Some of “His” Mas­ter­pieces? A New Doc­u­men­tary Says Yes Above, Lars Schmitz a pro­fes­sor at Clare­mont McKen­na Col­lege, guides us “through a giant tree of life map­ping the evo­lu­tion of eyes in the ani­mal king­dom: how they work and the evo­lu­tion­ary advan­tages they’ve unlocked across species.” The video comes cour­tesy of Wired It’s 36 min­utes and down­right fas­ci­nat­ing If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here Ani­mals Laugh Too: UCLA Study Finds Laugh­ter in 65 Species, from Rats to Cows 16,000 Pages of Charles Darwin’s Writ­ing on Evo­lu­tion Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an 8‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es YouTube cel­e­brat­ed its twen­ti­eth anniver­sary prompt­ing younger users to won­der what life could have been like before it The fifti­eth anniver­sary of Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail has inspired sim­i­lar reflec­tion among com­e­dy enthu­si­asts to imag­ine one­self back in a cul­ture not yet dis­rupt­ed by Mon­ty Python’s rig­or­ous­ly absurd log­ic and delib­er­ate break­ing of nar­ra­tive and social con­ven­tion — a cul­ture where that sort of thing could be feared too dan­ger­ous for tele­vi­sion and film It was their BBC sketch series Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus that intro­duced this comedic sen­si­bil­i­ty first to Britain Between that show’s third and fourth sea­sons and Ter­ry Gilliam — took on the side project of cre­at­ing their own cin­e­mat­ic re-inter­pre­ta­tion of Arthuri­an leg­end With a mod­est bud­get fur­nished by Led Zep­pelin, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tul­l’s Ian Ander­son and oth­er investors con­nect­ed to the music world punc­tu­at­ed by inex­plic­a­ble anachro­nism and sat­u­rat­ed with an icon­o­clas­tic dis­re­gard for received wis­dom and trumped-up glo­ry whose place in the annals of com­e­dy leg­end has long since been assured Ter­ry Gilliam’s Lost Ani­ma­tions from Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Are Now Online Mon­ty Python’s Eric Idle Breaks Down His Most Icon­ic Char­ac­ters Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Cen­sor­ship Let­ter: We Want to Retain “Fart in Your Gen­er­al Direc­tion” Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Re-Imag­ined as an Epic, Main­stream Hol­ly­wood Film Mon­ty Python’s Best Phi­los­o­phy Sketch­es It’s hard to believe, but Mar­vin Gaye’s clas­sic 1967 record­ing of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” was orig­i­nal­ly reject­ed by his record label Gaye’s ver­sion might have been for­got­ten had it not been includ­ed in his 1968 album, In the Groove “The DJs played it so much off the album,” Gordy said lat­er Gaye’s record­ing of the song became a crossover hit It rose not only to the top of the R&B charts but also spent sev­en weeks at the top of the Bill­board Pop Sin­gles chart It was Motown’s biggest-sell­ing sin­gle up to that time and the In the Groove album name was soon changed to I Heard It Through the Grapevine as did the back­ing vocal group The Andantes and the Detroit Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013 Revis­it­ing Mar­vin Gaye’s “What’s Goin’ On,” and the Album That Opened R&B to Resis­tance: Revis­it­ed 50 Years Lat­er Zoo Hires Mar­vin Gaye Imper­son­ator to Help Endan­gered Mon­keys “Get It On” Hear Grace Slick’s Hair-Rais­ing Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for “White Rab­bit” (1967) Fred­die Mer­cury & David Bowie’s Iso­lat­ed Vocals for Queen’s “Under Pres­sure” (1981) While you almost cer­tain­ly know Simon & Gar­funkel, you may not know Dis­turbed, who’ve been steadi­ly pop­u­lar in the met­al world since the release of their debut album The Sick­ness in 2000. Lis­ten to that album’s big sin­gle “Down with the Sick­ness,” and you’re instant­ly trans­port­ed back to the turn of the mil­len­ni­um when the exag­ger­at­ed­ly rhyth­mic and aggres­sive sub­genre of “nu met­al” reigned supreme Enter­tain­ing though the sheer incon­gruity of a nu-met­al ver­sion of “The Sound of Silence” would be, that move­ment had long since flamed out by 2015, when Dis­turbed record­ed their cov­er of Simon & Gar­funkel’s sig­na­ture song. Instead, they take the haunt­ing aus­ter­i­ty of the orig­i­nal in a grand­ly mourn­ful direc­tion and the kind of cav­ernous sen­si­tiv­i­ty in which met­al acts occa­sion­al­ly indulge via Slate Watch Simon & Gar­funkel Sing “The Sound of Silence” 45 Years After Its Release, and Just Get Haunt­ing­ly Bet­ter with Time Paul Simon Tells the Sto­ry of How He Wrote “Bridge Over Trou­bled Water” (1970) Paul Simon Decon­structs “Mrs. Robin­son” (1970) Fred Armisen & Bill Hader’s Comedic Take on the His­to­ry of Simon and Gar­funkel Who Invent­ed Heavy Met­al Music?: A Search for Ori­gins Some­time dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry, the Saal­burg was redis­cov­ered and exca­vat­ed, then lat­er ful­ly recon­struct­ed. It’s now a UNESCO World Her­itage site and hous­es the Saal­burg Muse­um If you think the Ital­ians have mas­tered the craft of mak­ing shoes Accord­ing to the site Romans Across Europe the Romans “were the orig­i­na­tors of the entire-foot-encas­ing shoe.” The site con­tin­ues: There was a wide vari­ety of shoes and san­dals for men and women Most were con­struct­ed like mil­i­tary cali­gae with a one-piece upper nailed between lay­ers of the sole Many had large open-work areas made by cut­ting or punch­ing cir­cles Some very dain­ty women’s and children’s shoes still had thick nailed soles The image above, which puts all of the Romans’ shoe-mak­ing skill on dis­play, comes to us via Red­dit and imgur Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016 The Ancient Romans First Com­mit­ted the Sar­to­r­i­al Crime of Wear­ing Socks with San­dals, Archae­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Sug­gests Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman San­dal with Nails Used for Tread How Wear­ing Ridicu­lous­ly Long Point­ed Shoes Became a Medieval Fash­ion Trend A Huge Scale Mod­el Show­ing Ancient Rome at Its Archi­tec­tur­al Peak (Built Between 1933 and 1937) Exquis­ite 2300-Year-Old Scythi­an Woman’s Boot Pre­served in the Frozen Ground of Siberia with char­ac­ter­is­tic straight­for­ward­ness “Every­body has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” Back in the time of the Roman Repub­lic and the ear­ly Roman Empire all of Rome’s ene­mies must have had a plan until pila punched through their shields A kind of javelin with a wood­en shaft and a sharp iron shank the pilum came in both long and short lengths Short pila had the advan­tage of dis­tance but long pila had the advan­tage of pow­er as well as the con­ve­nient fea­ture — whether delib­er­ate­ly or acci­den­tal­ly imple­ment­ed at first — that their shanks would more read­i­ly bend after impact mak­ing them imprac­ti­cal to remove from the shields they’d pen­e­trat­ed With his shield thus made unwieldy by one or more pila, an advanc­ing com­bat­ant would thus be forced to dis­card it entire­ly — assum­ing he was still in the con­di­tion to do so. As you can see vivid­ly demon­strat­ed in the Smith­son­ian Chan­nel video above a pilum land­ing in the cen­ter of a shield could eas­i­ly skew­er any­one stand­ing behind it His­to­ry has it that Roman sol­diers were also trained to throw their pila where ene­my shields over­lapped pin­ning them togeth­er and thus ren­der­ing twice as much of their defense use­less pila could be gath­ered from the bat­tle­field for refur­bish­ment an exam­ple of qua­si-indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion under­gird­ed by Roman mil­i­tary might with an elo­quence very dif­fer­ent from Tyson’s — in the realm of sport Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er an Ancient Roman San­dal with Nails Used for Tread Ancient Greek Armor Gets Test­ed in an 11-Hour Bat­tle Sim­u­la­tion Inspired by the Ili­ad Watch Accu­rate Recre­ations of Medieval Ital­ian Longsword Fight­ing Tech­niques, All Based on a Man­u­script from 1404 A Close Look at Beowulf-Era Hel­mets & Swords, Cour­tesy of the British Muse­um How Many U.S. Marines Could Bring Down the Roman Empire? “Tom Jones and his show might’ve been seen as some­what ‘square’ by the rock­star stan­dards of CSNY,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds,” but when the four­some agreed to appear in Sep­tem­ber of that year just weeks after the mas­sive fes­ti­val in upstate New York it turned into a mem­o­rable tele­vi­sion event with Jones tak­ing lead vocals on “Long Time Gone” and blow­ing the audi­ence and the band away “The man’s mighty lungs inspire the rest of them to keep up whose “face goes from one of disdain/’What am I doing here?’ to ‘This fuck­ing rocks’ about halfway through.” Even stranger than this com­bi­na­tion is the fact that Young agreed to do it at all He had become noto­ri­ous­ly averse to doing tele­vi­sion even turn­ing down The Tonight Show with John­ny Car­son and cit­ing his hatred of TV as a rea­son for leav­ing Buf­fa­lo Spring­field two years ear­li­er Though he may have been caught up in the moment as his long­time man­ag­er Eliot Roberts told biog­ra­ph­er Jim­my McDo­nough: “Neil went It’s that shit.’ He always used to say ‘that shit.’ Cros­by had this weed of doom… Neil nev­er for­gave me for that but in ret­ro­spect it was embar­rass­ing.” Young prob­a­bly shouldn’t have wor­ried it didn’t seem to hurt his cred­i­bil­i­ty as much as his bewil­der­ing (though crit­i­cal­ly re-appraised) 1982 New Wave record rein­vent­ing him­self in the 80s and 90s in good-humored self-par­o­dies then becom­ing a bona fide pop star once more He has yet to appear again with Neil Young Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020 Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969) Tom Jones Cov­ers Talk­ing Heads “Burn­ing Down the House”–and Burns Down the House (1999) David Gilmour, David Cros­by & Gra­ham Nash Per­form the Pink Floyd Clas­sic, “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond” (2006) Tom Jones & Chuck Berry Per­form Togeth­er, Singing “Roll Over Beethoven” & “Mem­phis” (1974) The Time Neil Young Met Charles Man­son, Liked His Music, and Tried to Score Him a Record Deal Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness If you hap­pen to go to the Lou­vre to have a look at Leonar­do da Vin­ci’s Mona Lisa you’ll find that you can’t get espe­cial­ly close to it That owes in part to the ever-present crowd of cell­phone pho­tog­ra­phers and more so to the paint­ing’s hav­ing been installed behind a wood­en bar­ri­er and encased in a stur­dy-look­ing glass box for the sin­gle most famous work of art in the world But there was­n’t always so much secu­ri­ty nor was Mona Lisa always so dear­ly prized you could just walk out of the Lou­vre with it which visu­al­izes each step of the heist and its after­math Why did Perug­gia dare to steal the Mona Lisa in broad day­light, an act wor­thy of Arsène Lupin (him­self cre­at­ed just a few years ear­li­er) hav­ing hid­den the paint­ing in the false bot­tom of a trunk near­ly all the while Perug­gia cast him­self as an Ital­ian patri­ot attempt­ing to return a piece of cul­tur­al pat­ri­mo­ny to its home­land is that he was noth­ing more than a pawn in a larg­er scheme mas­ter­mind­ed by the forg­er Eduar­do de Val­fier­no who planned to make sev­er­al copies of the miss­ing mas­ter­piece and sell them to cred­u­lous Amer­i­can mil­lion­aires whose unre­lat­ed pos­ses­sion of stat­ues stolen from the Lou­vre drew police sus­pi­cion.) How­ev­er the heist occurred it would­n’t have hap­pened if its object had­n’t already been wide­ly known But soon after La Gio­con­da was returned to her right­ful place she became the face of art itself — and the rea­son muse­ums do things much dif­fer­ent­ly now than they did in the nine­teen-tens What Makes Leonardo’s Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing?: An Expla­na­tion in 15 Min­utes How the Mona Lisa Went From Being Bare­ly Known, to Sud­den­ly the Most Famous Paint­ing in the World (1911) What Makes the Mona Lisa a Great Paint­ing: A Deep Dive Why Leonar­do da Vinci’s Great­est Paint­ing is Not the Mona Lisa How France Hid the Mona Lisa & Oth­er Lou­vre Mas­ter­pieces Dur­ing World War II When Pablo Picas­so and Guil­laume Apol­li­naire Were Accused of Steal­ing the Mona Lisa (1911) Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media We find the free courses and audio books you need the language lessons & educational videos you want Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time One of the newer Manly ferries has suffered at least its 10th steering failure in Sydney Harbour forcing the private operator to keep the vessel out of service until the maritime regulator is convinced it is safe to carry passengers which operates Sydney’s government-owned ferries confirmed the Fairlight catamaran suffered a steering failure for about five seconds on February 1 The ferry was pulled from service and remains at the Balmain shipyard The Fairlight ferry (on the right in the foreground) is at Balmain shipyard.Credit: Rhett Wyman “The crew followed emergency procedures and immediately brought the vessel to a stop before undertaking numerous system checks to make sure that steering had been restored,” the French company said “The vessel will remain out of service while investigations continue.” The latest incident takes the number of steering failures involving the Fairlight to at least 10 since the second-generation Emerald-class vessel entered service in late 2021 Action for Public Transport spokesman Graeme Taylor said he was concerned about the frequency of the steering failures and the difficulty diagnosing the cause “The reliability of the steering is essential because a loss of control means that the Fairlight could potentially collide with other vessels on Sydney Harbour [The maritime safety regulator] needs to work with the operator and determine the cause and a remedy.” The three overseas-built catamarans purchased to replace larger Freshwater-class ferries on the busy Circular Quay-Manly route have been plagued with defects and steering failures since entering service less than four years ago The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said the Fairlight would remain out of passenger service until it was satisfied that it was safe to return “AMSA is working with the operator to investigate and resolve the circumstances of the steering failure,” it said The Fairlight and the two sister ferries had heavier-duty engines fitted last year which the government had said was aimed at reducing the frequency of required maintenance and load restrictions The government is also spending $71 million on refurbishing three of the four large Freshwater-class ferries The Narrabeen has been moved to Sydney’s Garden Island where final maintenance works will be carried out in a dry dock before the ferry returns to service in the middle of the year The large double-ended vessel was originally due to start undergoing repairs to its hull last June but was bumped from the queue at Garden Island by one of the navy’s defect-plagued Spanish-built warships While the refit will extend the Narrabeen’s working life, the government intends to retire all three remaining large Manly ferries by 2030 as part of plans to replace all diesel-powered vessels in the state’s 40-strong fleet with locally built electric or hydrogen ferries Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter which operates Sydney\\u2019s government-owned ferries \\u201CThe crew followed emergency procedures and immediately brought the vessel to a stop before undertaking numerous system checks to make sure that steering had been restored,\\u201D the French company said \\u201CThe vessel will remain out of service while investigations continue.\\u201D The latest incident takes the involving the Fairlight to at least 10 since the second-generation Emerald-class vessel entered service in late 2021 \\u201CThe reliability of the steering is essential because a loss of control means that the Fairlight could potentially collide with other vessels on Sydney Harbour That could be catastrophic,\\u201D he said \\u201CWe are looking at a significant problem [The maritime safety regulator] needs to work with the operator and determine the cause and a remedy.\\u201D \\u201CAMSA is working with the operator to investigate and resolve the circumstances of the steering failure,\\u201D it said The Narrabeen has been moved to Sydney\\u2019s Garden Island The large double-ended vessel was originally due to start undergoing repairs to its hull last June but was at Garden Island by one of the navy\\u2019s defect-plagued Spanish-built warships While the refit will extend the Narrabeen\\u2019s working life the government intends to retire all three remaining large Manly ferries by 2030 as part of plans to in the state\\u2019s 40-strong fleet with locally built electric or hydrogen ferries Start the day with a summary of the day\\u2019s most important and interesting stories After over a year and a half with the Secan and taken me over a huge variety of terrains Here's the Secan over the 3T Extrema Italia which sits at the extreme end of gravel geometry As an MTB tyre'd gravel bike its great fun but this isn't where it shines for me.  700c gravel bike the Secan feels more at home though the cranks didn't stand up to hard riding over time and worked loose.  this feels like the ideal setup for the Secan especially over winter a I opt for terribly tarmacked lanes over muddy bridleways the Secan and the Crux have the same geometry so it will definitely be able to mix it on the 'cross field Can mix it on road with the best road bikes In March of 2022, I got in touch with Dom from Fairlight, and he hooked me up with a Secan 2.5 to use as a long-term test bike. My initial review after about six months was the first five-star rating I gave to a bike. Interestingly, the only other bike I have given that score to was the Fairlight Strael there is one setup where I think the bike shines the best Any bike I have for a long time undergoes a metamorphosis culminating in what I think of as the bike's natural For some bikes it’s easy; my Bowman Palace just needed some better wheels and Thomson finishing kit to become the most noodly uncomfortable old-school crit bike I could think of with a platform that is quite so versatile The good news for anyone considering purchasing one is that my overall score for the bike remains unchanged I still maintain that it’s a five-star machine and taken in the round it’s still the best gravel bike I’ve tested then this may serve to help you get the most out of yours Steel bikes have had something of a resurgence in the last few years as riders move back towards what was for many years thought of as an outdated material modern performance steel bikes can mix it with aluminium and carbon if we’re all being honest with ourselves is as important as any performance advantages The Fairlight Secan is a very good-looking bike but there aren't enough points of difference for many to stand out from the crowd without expensive custom paint Visually that’s something a little different In the case of the Secan the eye is immediately drawn to that top tube; diminutive wavy stays gives a classic look to proceedings Add in some thicker tubing for the downtube and headtube and a thickly bladed carbon fork and you get a frameset that’s a joy to behold especially when paired with some very large tyres and in the off-white 'putty' option you can see here You can see here the downtube ovalised vertically and the top tube horizontally (Image credit: Will Jones) The downtube is ovalised horizontally at the BB to resist lateral forces(Image credit: Will Jones)You won't find better steel from Reynolds than 853 without going stainless(Image credit: Will Jones)While the paint is lovely with understated graphics and logos that pop in the bright orange there are many many well-considered details in the frameset meaning that to some extent the build is constrained Fairlight is big enough to warrant a custom tube set from Reynolds whilst being small enough to offer something closer to a bespoke build service Not only are there ten sizes available but Fairlight will also match a bike fit for you free of charge to make sure you pick the right option I myself have ridden a size 56R bike.  I’ll not go into the tubing details in such great depth as to scare you off but the frame is constructed from heat-treated Reynolds 853 steel The heat treating essentially makes the steel stronger for a given wall thickness but the same can be said of any 853 frameset The important thing to know is that 853 is the poshest non-stainless steel tubing that Reynolds produces which I’m assuming is down to the fact that they are custom-shaped to quite such a degree Rear triangles often differ in composition from the main tubes and this isn’t any cause for concern My own custom frame has Columbus Zona main tubes but then uses Dedacciai stays originally intended for fat bikes to improve the tyre clearance In the case of the Secan the downtube is ovalised at the bottom bracket in a horizontal direction to add additional lateral stiffness where it joins the BSA shell (an unsurprising but very sensible choice of B.B.) and similarly ovalised at the headtube but in a perpendicular direction to resist braking forces and bumping at the headtube Given the headtube is an area of more stress than most other places on a bike frame the headtube end of the downtube has an extra butt at the end adding a little extra thickness internally at the weld area The top tube is ovalised over its entire length in the horizontal plane to resist lateral forces and conversely add in some compliance along the long axis of the frame allows clearance for a 50mm tyre on a 700c wheel or a truly monstrous 2.4” tyre on a 650b rim The modular dropouts are a beautiful bit of precision machining(Image credit: Will Jones)The custom stainless washer spreads the load and protects the paintwork(Image credit: Will Jones)I'd rather the downtube bosses were a set of three though(Image credit: Will Jones)Three-bottle cages are a must for any bike with bikepacking ambitions But opting for triple bosses rather than doubles on the larger sizes so taller riders can opt to put their bottles in easy reach is an easy detail to point to that shows the thought that has gone into this frame I’d have liked to see the downtube bosses be a set of three to accommodate a cargo cage but for carrying non-standard items you can use straps around the downtube to spread the load more evenly There’s also modular cable routing so you can run more or less any system you like but I’ve never been one for a snack pouch anyway Clip-on-ones work fine if this is your chosen approach and you have to draw the line somewhere I suppose; each additional boss is extra work with the brazing torch and adds cost that may well not benefit that many customers they are custom-machined units made in conjunction with Bentley Components a one-man machining wizard based in Yorkshire As much as anything they’re a lovely piece of machining but they also serve to provide individually replaceable units for the thru-axle mounts The non-drive side also includes the flat mount for the disc brakes and either side is also installed with a large custom washer that not only dissipates the load from the mounting screws but also protects the paint at the mudguard and pannier rack mounting eyelets This means any issues with the thru-axle threads Also included is a table showing the numerical differences between the two Here’s where I’m going to break the bike down into three distinct guises we have what can colloquially be deemed the ‘monster cross’ setup there’s what probably constitutes a generalist setup: 700c wheels with something around 40mm gravel tyres and the stock gravel bars - A simple swap of wheels and tyres from a monstercross build full-length mudguards and narrower road bars.  speccing the test bike with 650b Hope Fortus wheels and Continental Race King tyres in 2.2” width At the time I was living on the edge of the Lake District and had some big gravel to play with; essentially MTB trails.  though to my mind there’s always a slightly odd juxtaposition in riding a bike with what is essentially road bike geometry It’s the same feeling I had aboard the 3T Extrema Italia recently though that has geometry that’s more attuned to tackling rough stuff If you are genuinely spending the vast majority of your time on really rather bumpy trails then this setup is perfectly adequate But when things progress into steep terrain (basically when you really should have an MTB) the tyres begin to write cheques that the geometry can’t quite cash.  Where I can see this coming into its own is for one-off events like the Atlas Mountain Race or similar The ability to get into an aero position will pay dividends in terms of average speed and the big rubber can eat up the rocky terrain the number of real-world scenarios where this setup came into its own were few and far between In the winter the added traction from large tyres is great but when things get slipper and more techy then the geometry isn’t best suited to this kind of riding but once you get back to a road section you’ll probably want to be on 700x40 or so.  (Image credit: Will Jones)Unless you're doing actual MTB-esque excursions then you'll notice the difference in the handling over a heavier option.(Image credit: Will Jones)These are 650b x 48 but I rarely found I'd need bigger than this.(Image credit: Will Jones)The other qualm I have with this setup from the factory is that 650b is becoming something of an outdated standard If you want a bike that can roll over anything in a drop bar build then there are others out there that do this better now in 700c while significantly more expensive (double the price handles this big-tyre MTB adjacent stuff better having run this setup for a good few months and should the need for really big tyres present itself then you can fit a set of decent alloy 650b wheels and tyres I can’t fault the Hope Fortus rims though; the hubs are excellent and the rims are strong The only thing to bear in mind is that they are MTB wheels If you’re swapping between 700c gravel wheels and these (and many other 650b wheels for that matter) you’ll either need adapters or just an entirely new set of centerlock rotors If you are dead-set on running 650b then the difference in tyre weight and casing can make to the ride feel is greater than it is with smaller-sized tyres After running the stock Continental RaceKing tyres I swapped them out for a set of Rene Herse Juniper Ridge tyres (650b x 48 knobblies) with the superlight casing but the additional suppleness and reduced weight made the bike feel much more lively If I was running 650b on a long-term basis this is what I’d fit Swapping to 700c wheels immediately made the Secan feel more self-assured it’s not to say it’s bad in any respect with 2.2” MTB tyres but the geometry of the bike felt better suited to the faster more agile feeling that skinnier rubber and carbon wheels offer While the additional squish of massive tyres certainly helps you do get slightly better rollover with 700c to offset this there wasn’t anything I felt I couldn’t ride with a 700c x 42 that I could ride with a 650b x 2.2”.  the geometry of the bike starts to sing in harmony with the component choices you’re over the front of the bike as you would be with a road bike so you can lean hard on the front tyre (tyre choice as ever does make a huge difference) On road sections you don’t feel like you’re wasting energy by being sat too upright; things generally feel more efficient the 2x GRX feels like the appropriate choice I’m still a staunch 2x believer unless I’ve got the option of running something extreme like GX Eagle I did dabble with a wider range double in the form of a Rene Herse square taper crankset and while I enjoyed the gear ratios it offered the cranks did occasionally work a little loose over time something that I find can happen with square taper systems and isn't necessarily a failing of these ones specifically and in Rene Herse's defense it would cover them under warranty if they continue to loosen after proper installation It also mentioned that it had experienced some issues with SKF bottom bracket spindles being slightly out-of-square in the past which may also be at fault rather than the cranks What I can't fault though is the shifting (happy a match for GRX chainrings) and the aesthetics (easily one of the prettiest cranksets out there).  The wetter the weather the more I am inclined to use the Secan for lighter gravel duties.(Image credit: Will Jones)Playing with the gear range was fun but ultimately I ended up back with the stock GRX crankset(Image credit: Will Jones)The bars though they did offer great control when the going got really rough(Image credit: Will Jones)Full metal mudguards have become a more or less permanent fixture since I first installed them last winter as you’re not maxing out the capacity of the frame and forks to quite such a degree I preferred to just leave a set of Velo Orange full-length metal fenders on year-round something which you can do if you commit to a single wheel size This is also the setup I ran while bikepacking something I rarely do because I enjoy the comfort of a warm bed and have a tendency to overdo it and ruin my experience I did run a Tailfin for one trip but found the weight was too rear-heavy and the elasticity of the frame created some rather nasty speed wobbles so if you do load it up with a fixed pannier rack be sure to make the most of the fork mounts too a silver crankset (square taper issues aside) and tanwall tyres was truly a sight to behold This is increasingly what I have preferred using the Secan for Especially as the winter draws in and I am less drawn to ploughing through actual mud and pretending it is gravel fitting a good set of fast wheels (Hunt 25 CGR) and a set of fat slicks (Rene Herse Barlow Pass - 700c x 38 with the endurance casing) makes riding the mulchy gloomy B-roads that I love much more pleasant than on 28c tyres.  and one that I wished I’d opted for from the start was fitting a set of narrower bars (primarily after a bike fit) When initially speccing the Secan I opted for wider-than-stock 44cm bars which to be honest felt a little cumbersome for general riding Swapping to a set of 38cm bars (Pro Vibe ones because why not) was genuinely transformative not least because it mirrored my road position identically but I’m sure any speed benefits were more down to a narrower frontal position Narrow road bars made a huge difference to how the Secan feels as a B-road basher(Image credit: Will Jones)I am steadfastly convinced that this bike is best suited to a 2x setup(Image credit: Will Jones)One thing I get asked a lot especially when I solicit questions on Instagram to aid in the creation of a long-term review is whether this really can be used as a road bike there’s no question that I’d rather be on a dedicated road bike but that doesn’t mean the Secan isn’t capable I am an extremely fortunate young man in that I have access to many lovely bikes but the ability of the Secan to absolutely sing on the road particularly on broken tarmac is what really endears it to me It is a bike that can do almost everything with aplomb If I was setting this bike up afresh and anew I’d definitely make use of the dynamo option but given how often I swap wheels this wasn’t feasible that's where I reach for the Secan lately(Image credit: Will Jones)I also did upgrade the brakes to Hope RX4+ calipers they're overkill.(Image credit: Will Jones)A cyclocross asideOne setup that I would like to have tried (and maybe will in the future) is to set the Secan up as a cyclocross bike There’s a growing disparity now between dedicated cyclocross bikes from the likes of Ridley the Secan’s road-like geometry got me thinking about just how well it could handle the specific demands of a cross-race While Specialized markets the Crux as a gravel bike it is still used by some of the world’s best ‘cross riders at the pointy end of the most competitive races Just looking at the overlay you can see that the geometry is more or less identical so while I haven’t been able to test it yet I’m absolutely certain that if you fitted a set of Challenge Grifos and lined up for a muddy hour in a park on any given Sunday you’d be hard pushed to blame the bike if you don’t get the result you want Here’s the other giant feather in the Secan’s cap: Everything is easy If you’re running cables they can be fully housed to prevent corrosion and when they do need swapping you don’t need to mess around feeding things through the frame the seatpost clamp is external so if you round a bolt or have another kind of disaster then you’re not sacrificing the frame Had I not been running Di2 I’d have probably experimented with swapping in a suspension seatpost like the Redshift ShockStop It’s something I also praised the Strael for but the Secan perhaps even more so allows me to scratch that upgrade itch I love messing around with setups and because everything is normal I can fly free and unencumbered and just throw parts at it and see what works Upwards of £4,000 (in the initial guise) is a lot to spend on a bike that’s for sure but when set against the cost of top-end racing gravel bikes it’s not actually that much when considered as a bike that can realistically be an Audax bike cyclocross bike and allow you to tackle terrain hitherto the preserve of cross country mountain bikes it represents pretty astounding value.  Having tested a great many bikes since initially penning my review for the Secan I speculatively suggested that there must be other bikes that are similarly versatile out there I think the only bike that comes close is the Vitus Venon Evo which at once is a brilliant road bike and a cracking racy gravel bike but the tyre clearance is more limited so can’t handle the really rough stuff quite so well the new 3T Extrema Italia can house equally wide rubber but it’s double the price and the geometry lends itself less to on-road or racy gravel riding I can’t think of a bike that does so many things as well as the Secan congratulations… If you’ve skipped to this bit The short story is that I find the Secan to be a sublime bike and while it can certainly handle the rough stuff in a monster cross setup I definitely think it shines more when set up either as a fast gravel bike or an allroad rocket ship If you are in the market for one then I suggest you go for 700c other than how I initially specced the bike but that’s a personal preference to a degree and also shows just how flexible the buying process can be Not many brands offer the level of customisation at the purchase stage with the stock build sitting at 9.77k and having ridden lighter gravel bikes I can say it’s not going to be a dealbreaker My Vaccine Pass requirements have not been set for this event DEMONS OF NOON – Occult doom from Tāmaki MakaurauTHE FAIRLIGHT CHOIR – Post-punk, repetition, improvisation, repetition, harmonics, post-punk.DOS-OVNI – Post-rock/doomgaze from Te Matau-a-MāuiDoors open at 7pm, first band at 7.30pm / last band at 9.30pm. Catch local shoegazer rockers Fairlight Choir live at Tony’s Pizza on November 22! Known for their lush, immersive soundscapes, they’ll be joined by Mud (aka Step Dog, Mouth), bringing their own raw, textured edge. Doors at 8:30 PM, first act at 9:00 PM. $20 cash on the door or $15 + booking fee on UTR. Don’t miss this dreamy, gritty night! Play Duration: 31 minutes 39 seconds31m Brought to you by The technology in the Fairlight reframed how music could be made and its influence on industry standard production gear can be seen today. Trace the technological family tree back from modern music production and you get to the Fairlight. But even though the CMI was part of 80s culture, then, and now, it's not a household name. Fame and especially fortune eluded its creators.  This is the story of - and the soundtrack to - one of the most influential instruments of the last 50 years. Meet the creators of the Fairlight, the super stars that used it and learn the tricks of the music production trade along the way. Professor Samantha Bennett - ANU School of Music  Published: 21 Jan 2025Tue 21 Jan 2025 at 12:00am Published: 11 Jan 2025Sat 11 Jan 2025 at 12:00am Published: 4 Jan 2025Sat 4 Jan 2025 at 12:00am Download the ABC listen app to hear more of your favourite podcasts It’s almost a parody of music nerdery to be able to identify individual synthesisers by ear ‘Rio’ or a little number called ‘Running Up That Hill’ then you know what a Fairlight CMI sounds like there’s an argument to be made that the Fairlight CMI is the bedrock of music technology as we know it It was among the first synths to come with its own workstation and the very first commercially available sampler the heart of music production in the 21st century was constructed by two Australians in the 1970s Ryrie and Vogel cut their teeth in the nascent Australian electronics and computer industries of the mid-1970s launching the magazine Electronics Today International one that he pitched to Vogel once they both graduated college He asked Vogel if he was interested in making “the world’s greatest synthesiser” Starting the company Fairlight, Vogel and Ryrie aimed to build an analogue synthesiser that was digitally controlled. The leading synth at the time, the Moog had all the ease of use of a harrier jump jet so their gap in the market was accessibility launched a year after Fairlight was formed These machines had the ease of use Vogel and Ryrie were after but the actual sounds being produced weren’t nearly at the standard they were after Everything changed in 1978 when Vogel recorded a second of a piano piece being played on the radio Initially hoping to study its harmonics and synthesize them If they just took that one note and played it back at different pitches it sounded much better than anything they were actually creating from scratch but Vogel was nearly singlehandedly coming up with the basics behind sampling He detailed his thinking in 2015 in an interview with New Scientist magazine stating: “It sounded remarkably like a piano I rapidly realised that we didn’t have to bother with all the synthesis stuff and away you go.” They decided that their next project would be a machine designed to do both—one that users could record sound they’d completed a prototype of their crowning achievement The Musicians Union struck back against them upon its unveiling describing it as a “lethal threat” to its members Vogel and Ryrie decided to demonstrate it directly to musicians themselves unveiling the finished Fairlight CMI to Peter Gabriel at his home studio while he was working on what would later become his self-titled third studio album a veritable who’s who of boundary-pushing English musicians were queueing up to purchase their machine Everyone from Trevor Horn and Kate Bush to its first UK customer and this continued with the company’s US expansion Stevie Wonder and Joni Mitchell getting on board The irony of calling the CMI ‘accessible’ is that in today’s money so this was a machine very much for the professional class the software developed for it was revolutionary came along with the second iteration of the CMI in 1982 It was the beginning of what music production would become today borderless process that anyone could try their hand at You are viewing your 1 free article this month Fairlight Books has acquired bookseller Jenna Warren’s second novel were acquired by publisher and founder Louise Boland directly from the author The novel is set in a seaside town in northern England and follows Charlotte a glamorous West End actress who finds herself out of work and back in her hometown where she takes a summer job at the local independent bookshop An unlikely friendship blossoms between her and Greg when she discovers his secret passion for community theatre humour and tenderness of Warren’s debut novel The Moon and Stars The Hometown Bookshop is an uplifting story about books theatre and stepping outside your comfort zone,” the publisher said Warren was born in Middlesbrough and grew up in Saltburn-by-the-Sea She studied theatre at the University of Hull and completed an MA in Creative Writing at Teesside University Her stories have featured in the anthologies Whitby Abbey: Pure Inspiration and Through the Cracks: The Teesside Literary Society’s Inaugural Anthology After she worked for several years as an assistant in an art gallery her passion for books led her to open Book Corner She said: “The Hometown Bookshop is a novel about two of my passions: bookshops and theatre I’ve had great fun finding ways for these different worlds to collide and I can’t wait for readers to meet Charlotte and Greg I’m delighted the novel has found a home with Fairlight Books who did such a beautiful job publishing my debut The Moon and Stars.” Sign in or register below for free to unlock 2 articles each month and receive personalised newsletters to your inbox.ORHelp support our journalism and subscribe with unlimited access.Subscribe from less than £3.50, and you'll receive: Share via...Gift this articleSubscribe to gift this article Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe Abbey Cook is Fairlight Asset Management’s newest addition along with US beauty retail stock Ulta Beauty Cook, a fund manager who joined the Sydney-based global equities firm in June last year after almost four years at rival Magellan has long “admired” the New York-listed mid-cap stock praising its strong financials including more than 30 per cent return on capital SaveLog in or Subscribe to save articleShareCopy link Gift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe. Follow the topics, people and companies that matter to you. The Loop was known for its on-air personalities who were notorious for crossing the line MILWAUKEE–The documentary “The Loop” looks back at Chicago AM and FM radio stations with that moniker during their heyday from the late 1970s to the 1990s The Loop was known for its on-air personalities who were notorious for crossing the line: Jonathon Brandmeier They inspired and were copied by stations and DJs across the country I was brought onboard by production company Duncan Entertainment to produce 5.1 and stereo mixes I used DaVinci Resolve Studio’s Fairlight audio post production tools Focusrite interface and Lipinski and JBL monitors as part of my workflow AI Noise IsolationGiven the project is a documentary so noise wasn’t too much of a problem DaVinci Resolve Studio’s AI-based voice isolation did come in handy on several occasions and it’s so nice to have it on every channel it allowed me to isolate dialogue from background sounds and the DaVinci Neural Engine did all the heavy lifting I’ve found setting the processing to around 30% cleans up the dialogue yet still sounds very natural I used to reach for another solution for these real-time cleanup jobs but now I can just press the voice isolate button in DaVinci Resolve Studio which is incredibly easy and saves me time While most of my work was carried out in the Fairlight page I also used DaVinci Resolve Studio’s edit page to lock the reference video or delete multiple video tracks I didn’t need and the delivery page came in handy when sending the client a rough mix with reference picture “The Loop” documentary was a joy to work on It’s very entertaining and irreverent Most documentaries are serious and even somber Studio 19 in BetaSince my work on “The Loop,” I’ve had the chance to dabble in the beta of DaVinci Resolve Studio 19 and some new features have found their way into my workflow right from the start The music remixer FX is my current favorite I can lower the vocal of a song when it’s under dialogue Ducker does what it’s supposed to: one track can auto-adjust the level of another track without needing side chain compression or automation curves you can automatically set background noise or music to lower when dialogue is present helps bring dialogue upfront while lowering random noises that I swear are from outer space Sometimes it makes you wonder what is happening on set I have a tool that makes it easy to rebalance the dialogue against background sound audio panning to video is another AI tool that I have my eye on to use in my next project as it works amazingly well Using DaVinci Resolve Studio’s IntelliTrack AI point tracker and control their voice positions as they move across 2D and 3D spaces I’ve had features like these in third-party plugins for quite some time but having them in DaVinci Resolve Studio on every track The professional video industry's #1 source for news Randy Bobo is founder and sound designer at Independent Studios which delivers crafted audio and visual post production to filmmakers This week’s Synth Journal looks at the new Behringer Wasp Filter module an editor for a classic VA synth and a couple of great little mini synth docs Hoovering up the smaller news items from the last seven days we’ve got news of people power persuading a company to back down on its subscription model plus documentary shorts on the Fairlight CMI and the burgeoning Glasgow electronic music scene Not content with giving us a Wasp Deluxe nearly six years ago Behringer has extracted the filter from it and made it into a tidy little Eurorack module Now you can process the oscillators of your choice and give them that Wasp feel with the WASP VCF Claiming to be faithful to the original WASP VCF it comes with three inputs covering audio in one for the band pass and the other sharing low pass and high pass duties with a mix knob to control the… well You are currently viewing a placeholder content from YouTube Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers Oh how we love to moan about the subscription model companies seem to be adopting in droves these days We could argue the merits and pitfalls of paying monthly to effectively “rent” your software but there are benefits if the service or product is well done when companies start subscription services where none used to exist there is always a lot of pushback and one such case saw MIDI Kinetics take a whole lot of grief from disgruntled Lemur users Lemur was one of the first successful “build your own controller” concepts that originally ran on dedicated hardware In 2011, Jazz Mutant, the original developers, brought it to iPad, which made total sense, and the user base blossomed. However, it vanished from the App store some time later, only to see MIDI Kinetics bring it back just last week But the subscription model did not go over well and now MIDI Kinetic have rolled back the decision and are now offering Lemur as a perpetual licence for $99 Users who took out the yearly sub can crossgrade to this version for free whereas monthly subscribers can crossgrade for the difference between a yearly and monthly sub This policy change is awaiting approval by Apple’s App Store along with efforts to bring uniform pricing across the US Their first foray into the world of virtual analog this modelling synth actually uses FM to recreate an analogue synth Reputed to have been closely modelled on a Prophet 5 the AN1x has a loyal and faithful user base One complaint that people do have though is the slightly unwieldy user interface It’s not incredibly intuitive but it’s better than many a software editor would be useful and that is exactly what Hristo Konstantinov has put together this lightweight yet fully featured editor and librarian is completely free and allows complete on-screen control of the AN1x along with a raft of really useful extra features There are also graphical representations of many of the features giving users an experience they could never have dreamed of back in the late 90s QAN1x is also cross-platform and available to use on Windows Grab QAN1x from Hristo’s Github page. Two of my biggest passions are the Fairlight CMI and music technology history workshops and seminars on the big white beast from Australia I’ve also been involved in restoring a number of the machines myself and currently have a few systems sitting in my workshop Many people have tried to tell the tale of the Fairlight CMI with varying degrees of success and failure Like any story that spans over five decades some attempts to tell part of or the whole story have been so awful that they do far more damage than they realise So it was with much delight that a short documentary from Mustard Flats popped up on YouTube last week featuring the fantastic Professor Samantha Bennett and my dear friend and partner in Fairlight restoration especially as it focuses on the early development of the Fairlight and its predecessor Without Tony’s work on parallel processing of dual Motorola 6800 chips It was his machine that Vogel and Ryrie licensed to kick start their own invention which a system that was supposed to be a powerful additive synth but actually ended up “cheating” and using digital recordings to get the sounds they had been wanting to make accurate and really highlights the Australian ingenuity behind it as well as the key Aussie figures who championed the QASAR and early CMI incarnations in the early days ahead of it coming to the attention of the likes of Stevie Wonder and Peter Gabriel the latter of whom would play an important part in its popularity The last nugget in this week’s journal is another documentary highlighting not an instrument but a movement The concept of Electronic Music Open Mic nights seems to be a decidedly British phenomenon and one of its crowning jewels is the ‘Attack/Release’ events in Glasgow These nights seem to be fuelling a number of similar events across the city and bringing increasing numbers of modular musicians out of the woodwork and into clubs and bars to perform their brand of electronica It’s also bringing big names from around the country to Scotland’s second city this half-hour documentary looks at what brought the scene about independent movement growing here and ‘Attack/Release’ has been the catalyst for a lot of it *Note: This article contains advertising links that help us pay for this site Don’t worry: the price for you will always be the same Leave a Reply Comment * document.getElementById("comment").setAttribute( "id" "a4d3d51b172677769f3d1bab49dd7ddc" );document.getElementById("e2a7d02a0b").setAttribute( "id" Hot Picks5 of the Best Modern Synth Clones: Affordable Classics Neuzeit Instruments Drop Is a Ridiculously Comprehensive Snapshot-Based MIDI Control Center for Live Performance Intuitive Instruments Exquis: Is it Now the Best Controller for Ableton Live Epiphone Inspired by Gibson Custom: Popular Models Go ’60s Spec The best budget beat-making gear to help you get creative The Best Value Offset Guitars – Jaguars Eurorack Synthesizers: How modular has changed synths Best Portable Keyboard Controllers 2025: MIDI Keyboards for Your Hand Luggage Best Electric Guitar for Beginners: Which one should you buy Five of the Best Synths From Sequential: Complete the Circuit Electronic Dance Pioneers: How To Sound Like New Order 5 Common Recording Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Elektron Octatrack Alternatives for Dawless Music Production The best Digital Pianos – from budget to professional Roland SH-101 Alternatives for Classic Leads and Basslines The Wild Bunch from Bristol: How To Sound Like Massive Attack Converting Vegetarians: How to Sound Like Infected Mushroom Yamaha CS-80 Alternatives: 5 Replicants of the Polyphonic Giant Space Echo Alternatives for the Studio and Stage Electro-Pop Origins: How to sound like Gary Numan Best Holiday Gifts for DJs: 7 Fun Ideas for the DJ in Your Life Frap Tools Magnolia - Superbooth 25's Surprise Hit? 05 May · Getting UDO vibes on the aesthetics Anymore would be disappointing but we live in unsure times Frap Tools Magnolia - Superbooth 25's Surprise Hit? Software Deals from SSL, KORG, Moog Music, and OUTPUT 04 May · Beware! Korg will not allow you to transfer your software license to another user, that means you are not allowed to sell your license to another person if you wish to do so. While this extreme policy... You are currently viewing a placeholder content from Facebook. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers. You are currently viewing a placeholder content from Instagram. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers. You are currently viewing a placeholder content from X. To access the actual content, click the button below. Please note that doing so will share data with third-party providers. Residential developer Micronest's co-living development in Fairlight has been hit by 260 public objections since last November as Australia struggles to understand how rental homes can solve the affordability crisis Some households have submitted more than one objection with many saying the project will attract a "transient" community create traffic and parking problems and "does not respect the local character of the Fairlight precinct" Read MoreNSW residential propertyLatest In PropertyFetching latest articles A Fairlight harbourfront estate has just smashed the suburb record by more than $5m selling for just shy of $14m at auction to a local family There were 15 parties fighting for the Art Deco home at 17 Fairlight Cres which was on a 651sqm block on harbourfront reserve next to Fairlight Beach had been quoting a guide of $10m for the four-bedroom home with a “postcard-perfect harbour panorama” to the heads Records show it’s been owned by the Breckenridge family since 1989 when it cost $935,000 Station master’s cottage on track for huge price ‘Alice in Wonderland’ home wows buyers The home has postcard-perfect harbour views to the heads At the recent auction with auctioneer Vic Lorusso presiding bidding opened at $11m and there were still three groups in the running at $12.9m “The sale has set a new benchmark for Fairlight and I can’t see the record being broken for quite some time,” Burgess said The previous Fairlight record was also in Fairlight Cres $8.06 million for a prestige unit at 3/31 Fairlight Cres in March 2020 Buyers agent Peter Kelaher secured the long-held estate for the buyer Kelaher said one interesting trend at the moment was downsizers opting to buy a small house rather than an apartment for visiting grandchildren and they are not wanting to travel overseas with all this global upset,” Kelaher said third parties have written and supplied the content and we are not responsible for it completeness or reliability of the information nor do we accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way from omissions or errors contained in the content We do not recommend sponsored lenders or loan products and we cannot introduce you to sponsored lenders We strongly recommend that you obtain independent advice before you act on the content realestate.com.au is owned and operated by ASX-listed REA Group Ltd (REA:ASX) © REA Group Ltd. By accessing or using our platform, you agree to our Terms of Use. From the early tape-splicing experiments of French musique concrète artists in the 1940s through to the plunderphonic wizardry of albums like Paul’s Boutique and Since I Left You sampling has become known as the most contentious compositional method in musical history seemingly never failing to spark an endless chain of controversies in its wake Although it tends to be most associated with international movements such as hip-hop or house its practice as we know it today can actually be traced back to surprisingly local origins with two young Australian music enthusiasts joining forces to create a device that’d flip music on its head when unveiled to the world in 1979: the Fairlight CMI Read all the latest features, columns and more here. it really should come to no surprise that sampling was pioneered down under The story of this fabled instrument kicks off in the early ‘70s with a young electronic music enthusiast named Kim Ryrie who stumbled upon the idea of creating a DIY analogue synthesiser for Electronics Today International Initially dismayed by the limitations of analogue technology in the mid ‘70s Ryrie got in touch with his former classmate and fellow electronics enthusiast Peter Vogel and pitched him an idea that was almost too bold to even comprehend back then – the prospect of creating the world’s first digital synthesiser Basing their designs around the recently invented micro-processor Vogel and Ryrie officially took their concept to the next level in December 1975 when the pair founded Fairlight in the basement of Ryrie’s Sydney home and began toiling away at their soon-to-be-revolutionary concept After the first six months of their work failed to garner any results Vogel and Ryrie would later find out about the work of Tony Furse a Motorola consultant who had designed a digital synthesiser in partnership with the Canberra School of Electronic Music Intrigued by Furse’s decision to use two 8-bit microprocessors in parallel to create its digital sounds the two young innovators licensed the design and integrated into their own work emerging over a year later with a prototype that they called the QASAR M8 While this synth did boast some features that’d make their way across to the CMI such as the light pen and distinctive graphic interface the QASAR was a ridiculously bulky unit that possessed a rather indistinctive and unpleasant sound Despite being a big moment for the company Vogel and Ryrie would subsequently refer to the QASAR as ‘research design’ and went back to the drawing board on their quest to create the ultimate digital synthesiser in an attempt to understand the harmonic qualities of acoustic sounds recorded a snippet of audio from a piano composition and discovered that the audio sounded much more realistic than a synthesiser when played back at different pitches.Compelled by his findings and he and Ryrie went about modifying their design by adding in a QWERTY keyboard and a bulky box to house the sophisticated processing hardware that powered the unit creating what became known as the first generation of the CMI scant sampling rate of 24 kHz and a maximum sample time of a single second Vogel and Ryrie’s invention wowed Australian musicians and distributors when it was debuted in its earliest form in 1979 While the sound quality of the CMI wasn’t fantastic by any means felt that the unique timbre of the instrument would be a hit with artists Spurred on by the positive reaction to the device Vogel took off to the UK in hopes of securing interest in the cutting-edge instrument marketing the product to a number of science publications and managing to terrify the Musician’s Union with its sampling power before landing a chance appointment with Peter Gabriel Gabriel would be the first artist to employ the device on his self-titled third record and would mint Syco Systems with his associate Stephen Paine in order to distribute the device at an eye-watering sum of 12,000 Pounds Soon after, the CMI made its way across the Atlantic and into the hands of artists like Joni Mitchell, Todd Rundgren and Stevie Wonder, who would take the Fairlight CMI out on the road while touring Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants. Jazz-funk pioneer Herbie Hancock would also manage to get his hands on an original CMI and even took to Sesame Street to demonstrate its real-time sampling functionality in front of a bunch of fascinated kids possibly making for one of the most wholesome product demonstrations of all time the original Fairlight CMI certainly wasn’t without its flaws: for starters used to program the player’s movements was incredibly convoluted and impractical and made programming the CMI a chore for even the most technically adept of musicians Vogel would amend these issues with the launch of the CMI Series II in 1982, which in addition to improving the overall sound quality and adding in a revolutionary quantisation feature, introduced an innovative Page R interface now recognised by many as one of the first true music sequencers of the digital age By presenting the notes of a composition in a horizontal layout that ran from left to right and cycled from bar to bar Vogel essentially laid the blueprint for the DAW as we know it today It was around this time where the CMI really began worming its way onto some of the biggest records of the era with Tears For Fears and Frankie Goes To Hollywood using the CMI Series II on their respective 1983 smash hits ‘Shout’ and ‘Relax’ Both tracks can be heard utilising two of the CMI’s most famous preset patches: the distinctive breathy vocals of [ARR 1] an orchestra stab which sticks out like a sore thumb in a number of great hip-hop techno and drum ’n bass records of the ‘80s and ‘90s On paper, it would seem that the Fairlight CMI was essentially a one-way ticket to obtaining chart success during this period. In 1985, Jan Hammer scored himself a Billboard #1 hit by using the CMI on his theme for Miami Vice becoming the last instrumental track to top the Hot 100 until Bauer’s viral banger ‘Harlem Shake’ snagged a top spot in 2013 Early adoptee Peter Gabriel famously employed a CMI to create many of the tones in his decade-defining track ‘Sledgehammer’ a year later and Phil Collins even felt compelled to state on the liner notes of his 1985 LP No Jacket Required that “there is no Fairlight on this record” due to the instrument’s prevalence on the radio Vogel and Ryrie would continue to work on a number of updates to the CMI Series II and even added MIDI to the unit upon its launch, and would go on to release a CMI Series III in 1985 the Series III added a number of improvements to the functionality of the unit and added then-viable features such as CD quality sampling a superior graphic display and a whopping 14MB of RAM – at a staggering cost of 60,000 pounds 1985 also saw Fairlight introduce a number of other innovative products such as the pitch-to-MIDI-converting Voice Tracker and the CVI (Computer Video Instrument) effects and paint processor that helped take digital animation to the masses Fairlight’s golden goose wouldn’t remain as a frontrunner within many music studios for much longer sales soon began slumping due to the arrival of competing products such as the Akai S900 and Atari ST which delivered hands-on MIDI sequencing and sampling at a much lower cost than Fairlight Ryrie and Vogel’s lack of business experience resulted in a number of costly mistakes and run-ins with venture capitalists in the US and when the stock market crashed in October 1987 it looked like it was all over for Fairlight Against all odds, Vogel and Ryrie dipped into their own pockets for funding and managed to prolong Fairlight from folding and, with the financial backing of Australian distributors Amber Technology, relaunched as Fairlight ESP in 1989 with Vogel departing the company soon after to pursue work as a freelance contractor With their sights set on the rapidly expanding post-production market Fairlight ESP would continue to release a number of products into the ‘90s including the MXF hard disk recorder/editor which would be a common sight in post-production and broadcast studios throughout the decade Even though the technological innovations of the Fairlight CMI have since been eclipsed in the four decades since its emergence there’s no denying the astonishing legacy that the device has left in its wake Given the outrageous price-tag attached to most units the CMI certainly didn’t democratise music-making in the same vein as trailblazing devices like the Akai MPC but it’d be a huge oversight to say that it wasn’t an influence in the development of these units It’s even possible to uphold the view that genres like hip-hop house and techno would’ve evolved at a much slower rate without the introduction of the CMI there’s still plenty of artists that make use of the CMI’s sounds on a day-to-day basis with a version of the instrument being made available as an iOS app by Vogel in 2011 and later as a virtual instrument included in Arturia’s acclaimed V software suite the introduction of the Fairlight CMI marked a symbolic changing of the guard for music being a musician was no longer defined by playing an instrument: even the most musically inept computer programmer could harness the power of the CMI to concoct sounds no regular instrumentalist could have ever dreamed of and this ethos couldn’t be any truer; nowadays a 16 year old producer with nothing but a laptop and a cracked DAW has just as much of a chance as scoring a Billboard Hot 100 hit as any major artist with multi-million dollar recording facilities and classically trained session players at their disposal the next time you go on a long-winded rant about sampling ruining music remember: none of this would have ever happened if it weren’t for two young Aussies back in the ‘70s Never miss a story – sign up to our mailing list for all the latest news and do get close to the rim on these super wide Hunt Limitless wheels Price £3,299 (£100 upcharge for iridescent plum colour) There are many and varied reasons why people pick one road bike over the countless others on offer while I think anyone who says a great number of bikes aren’t purchased as status symbols for the Sunday club run is kidding themselves I’ve been using the Fairlight Strael for a good few months now as my long-term test bike meaning I’ve used it in its ‘stock’ spec (although there isn’t really such a thing for a Fairlight) as well as using it to test out various wheels This is echoed by my colleagues, who agreed with me on giving it the Editor’s Choice nod after testing it back to back against a slew of other similarly priced road bikes in the Cyclingnews Awards While I’d also encourage you not to click away to rival sites it’s also a bike that has been extremely highly rated by my friends/professional rivals at Cyclist It’s also worth noting that the brand’s gravel offering, the Fairlight Secan There are a great many similarities between the two and while adaptability is one of them the Strael certainly isn’t as versatile in the broadest sense rather than those who crave a status symbol riding a properly dialled road bike is a joy almost unrivalled then the Strael if not at the top of your list; it’s that good.  (Image credit: Will Jones)The rear dropouts are beautifully worked out (Image credit: Will Jones)A 105 Di2 groupset is hard to fault (Image credit: Will Jones)A waxed gold chain isn't stock (Image credit: Will Jones)Dynamo routing is something I wish I could make use of though but constant wheel swaps make it impossible Given that I’m in a relatively privileged position of having both the Fairlight Secan and now the Fairlight Strael to test back to back I get asked very often “which one should I get” As such I think the best place to start is the geometry differences between the two before we dive into any construction notes.  while the Secan has the geometry of a racy gravel bike For a 56R frame (Fairlight offers both regular and tall frames in each of its sizes) the Strael has a marginally shorter reach (by 3mm) and an 8mm lower stack so it’s going to pop you in a lower position The seat tube is 25mm longer on the Strael basically making the top tube more horizontal as you don’t really need to get it out of the way so often as you do when riding gravel; this also adds to the classic aesthetic The head angle is a full degree and a half steeper and in combination with 12mm shorter chainstays and a fork with 5mm less offset results in a wheelbase This does noticeably speed up the handling compared to the Secan A much shorter BB drop (77mm for the Secan saves pedal strikes while pedalling through corners Dom at Fairlight kindly offered to sort me out with a bike fit so that the test bike fit me properly so I was able an absolutely identical position on both bikes for the sake of a belt and braces test This is where we need now to talk about specs as there isn’t really a ‘stock’ option As each bike is built to order it’s much easier to spec exactly what you want I was provided with the nominal 105 Di2 level package with Hunt 4 Season Disc alloy wheels and Continental GP5000 S TR tyres Speccing narrower 38cm bars and a shorter 90mm stem to account for my elegant long legs and short torso was the matter of a few drop-down menus something which is much harder with a totally off-the-peg purchase and even harder still if you’ve got an integrated cockpit in that you have a frame made of custom-drawn and butted Reynolds 853 steel (the strongest non-stainless option from the Birmingham brand) The top tube is still ovalised horizontally and the downtube is ovalised vertically at the head tube join and horizontally at the bottom bracket to add stiffness in the places where it is most needed A 68mm BSA threaded bottom bracket is no shock on a steel bike either and anything else besides a threaded T47 option would be very unusual indeed.  (Image credit: Will Jones)In a world of fiddly wedges year round wheels and brilliant tyres help the frameset shine round bars mean actual real estate for mounting stuff to something that's lost with modern cockpits they're so much more easy to tune your setup with (Image credit: Will Jones)Diving in from the macro-scale steel to the details is where The rear dropouts are beautifully machined by Bentley Components in Yorkshire and have an added faceplate on the outer to avoid any damage to the frame itself being machined separately and as a standalone piece means there is a vastly reduced chance of the mount being askew braze-ons for shifter cables and external brake hoses eyelets for mudguards and even mounts for a pannier rack There’s even a set of bottle bosses under the downtube which I’ve found excellent for storing my tools and tubes in a wee canister and in a world of ever-deepening integration seeing a round seatpost and an external seat clamp is enough to bring a tear to my eye and it’s designed in such a way as to be almost entirely futureproof The BSA bottom bracket has been around since people were using whale oil to fuel lamps and is compatible with a huge variety of crank systems Having restored numerous classic bikes in my time this has all the hallmarks of a frame that could easily still be in use in 50 years time which is a delight in a world of disposable consumerism.  Ah, aesthetics then? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but anyone who says skinny steel tubes are ugly needs their eyes examined. This is cycling heritage, the kind we all pine over when looking at historic Colnagos brought bang up to date with modern riding tastes Aesthetically too it has a chamelion-esque quality of taking on the form of whatever it is adorned with With the Hunt wheels it came with it has the look of a very British all-year road bike it wouldn’t look out of place at a crit I’m yet to slap on anything larger than 28mm but I dare say if you maxed out the 36mm (slick) tyre clearance it would exude the correct vibes for someone to come up and ask you what ‘spirit of gravel’ means.  My favourite aesthetic guise however is a combination of deep-section wheels and a third bottle cage under the downtube writing cheques my legs cannot cash.  (Image credit: Will Jones)Proper mudguard mounts and pannier bolts add proper utility Top Tip: Valve washers make great mudguard spacers (Image credit: Will Jones)High end steel really can mix it with carbon and alloy (Image credit: Will Jones)It's a very pleasant place to be for hours on end (yes (Image credit: Will Jones)I did swap out the stock Fabric Scoop saddle (Image credit: Will Jones)The included washers behind the bottle cages show a clear attention to detail (Image credit: Will Jones)Plenty of clearance for wider rubber though I never really needed to go over 28mm There’s no other way to put it.  The 105 Di2 gearing is honestly as good as anyone realistically ever really needs but it’s barely perceptible unless you’re back-to-back testing with the major difference coming in the braking the Strael to me is a bike that works year-round and so speccing a more bling groupset I think would actually begin to be detrimental if it stops you riding it in the winter; this isn’t a bike to mate to a turbo in the dark months If anything the dynamo routing almost asks to be used in the cold and dark though I didn’t make use of it as I swap wheels too often to commit to a dynamo light on a long termer.  The Hunt 4 Season wheels are an entirely sensible choice for a 105 spec machine especially one that has genuine all-season capabilities it’s hard to expect more - this is a bike that all told will still give you a bit of change from £3,300 and you’re getting electronic shifting in that too and have a relatively narrow 19mm internal width by modern standards Given that they are paired with extremely good Conti GP5000 tyres it paints a picture of a spec sheet that has been tailored to improve what will maximise the riding experience Given that I’ve had bikes twice the price come with tyres far worse than these says a lot they make great winter wheels for when you want to save the flash carbon rims for a sunny day.  it’s the best road bike I’ve ridden and better than many more expensive options especially as a machine to actually live with While the wheels don’t necessarily set the world alight they are entirely capable when you view them as a £300 option and if you do want to upgrade them you can spec better sets and really is a bike that deserves decent tyres I’m loath to attribute ride quality purely to some magical properties that steel has but ‘steel is real’ claims aside it has a sense of purpose that favours seated darting qualities of a superlight carbon machine it is going to be heavier than carbon options but I’d take the hit on the scales for the extra confidence the frameset imbues.  and especially with good tyres you can really pick your line with confidence it feels more alive still with a set of extremely premium wheels but that just illustrates its upgrade potential.  (Image credit: Will Jones)Slap on some race wheels and it feels every bit the race bike is a combination of race wheels and full mudguards as well as adaptable to the point of being reasonably practical for anything from a crit race to a light tour Here’s where I’m going to get a bit misty-eyed and nebulous: It’s a proper road bike the likes of which we really see very few of anymore The days of dreaming of seatpost upgrades and carbon handlebars have been burned on the fire of aerodynamics and integration Given it’s made of mostly round tubes I know it hasn’t been designed by an engineer obsessing over fluid dynamics and drag coefficients by someone who knows how to make a bike sublime to ride I don’t use a computer for the most part so I don’t really know how much slower it would be over an aerodynamically optimised bike but especially at this sub-£4k range I suspect the difference would be minimal especially if you spec some narrow bars that you may not otherwise be able to do with other bikes however many seconds slower it might be over 40km at 30km/h at a specific yaw angle… well that’s more seconds you’re going to be enjoying the ride.  A final note on fit that pertains more to the market as a whole Having a bike that fits you is going to do more to improve your experience than a set of carbon wheels usually at prices around that of this bike and above ever more frequently I am unable to modify the fit beyond the saddle fore/aft due to the use of single-piece cockpits and a separate bar and stem with dimensions you can spec at the point of purchase easily is a bike fitter's dream If you’re going to make the leap and buy a Strael (or a secan or to be honest any bike for that matter) I’d suggest getting a bike fit first so you can have it made up to your dimensions Having a bike perfectly set up for you is like slipping into your favourite pair of jeans This is made all the more easy having been able to test the Strael back-to-back against many other bikes in the same price bracket The only thing that really matches it to my eyes is the Canyon Ultimate CF SL 7 eTap wherein you get some very good DTSwiss wheels That’s a different proposition though very much a racing-oriented machine and for the generalist in the awards) that the Strael is a better choice for more people.  you’ll struggle to find a more complete package A well-built frame that could last you a lifetime and solid year-round wheels in a package that’s tunable to fit your personal proportions for £3,300 really is excellent value for money.  A great many bikes that I test ride are great to ride I am genuinely sad to see a smaller number leave my possession A much smaller number still meet the requirements of ‘A Bike I Would Buy’ and so have a bit more time to play with various setups and see but this falls very much into that category.  If I was in the market for a new bike this is what I’d be buying If I was in the market for and had two grand more to spend I would buy this and some fancy wheels all the way through to how easy it is to live with The only drawback is a slight weight and aero penalty but that’s a hit I’d happily take He’s tried his hand at most cycling disciplines to the more unusual like bike polo and tracklocross covered tech news from the biggest races on the planet and published countless premium galleries thanks to his excellent photographic eye given he doesn’t ever ride indoors he’s become a real expert on foul-weather riding gear His collection of bikes is a real smorgasbord with everything from vintage-style steel tourers through to superlight flat bar hill climb machines The first bikes to ever roll off a production line were made of steel It’s the material that kick-started the industrial revolution and gave birth to the modern age.  But in an era of space travel and smartphones why would you want a bike made from anything other than carbon fibre because it’s fun to be different and while there are drawbacks steel has a unique charm and some real-world advantages over other frame materials Keeping reading for full details of all these bikes Related questions you can explore with Ask Cyclist, our AI search engine.If you would like to ask your own question you just need to Login, Register or subscribe Steel bikes can be very comfortable but you should be wary of generalisations as there’s a lot more to a bike’s personality than just its frame material Steel comes in many grades and variants but it’s overall a comparatively hard and stiff material. Good quality steel frames use carefully chosen tube profiles to target stiffness and flexibility where it’s needed Butting – where tubing varies in wall thickness along its length – allows bike makers to place more material where strength is required One reason some riders love steel is because it doesn’t ride quite like anything else but steel has a distinct character that’s simply different to aluminium or carbon.  Steel bikes do tend to be strong and resistant to damage and Although you’re unlikely to see one at the Tour de France steel can also still form the heart of a proper racing bike With the exception of some one-off custom designs steel bikes are always heavier than what you might expect from an equivalent aluminium or carbon bike A good quality steel road frame will weigh around 2kg in other words a good kilo more than a pretty average carbon frame Many steel frames are also matched to steel forks Neverthless, it’s possible to build up a respectably light steel bike using premium components, even coming close to the 6.8kg UCI minimum weight limit.  a bike doesn’t have to be ultra-light to be a joy to ride We care more about the experience than the numbers We’re riders like you who love our bikes and our team of testers led by tech editor Sam Challis is immensely experienced Between us we've reviewed bikes from every mainstream manufacturer plus countless smaller brands covering everything from the entry level to the truly premium.  heading out in all weathers on roads we know well to decide if they're up to scratch Whether it’s a £500 commuter or a £12,000 superbike and we prize bikes that combine good design with everyday usability and Read on for our favourite steel road bikes The All-City Zig Zag is a versatile steel road bike designed in the United States and manufactured in the Far East It relies on generous tyre clearances and aggressive geometry for a fun riding experience even when built up with a modest component list of Shimano 105 groupset alloy Halo Devaura wheels and alloy Genetic finishing kit this is still a bike that clocks in at a respectable 9.4kg. Obviously this won’t be troubling machines with carbon frames but it’s pretty impressive considering the versatility and robustness on offer Our test bike was rolling on broad 30mm tubeless Schwalbe Pro One tyres and it was supple and smooth There’s clearance for wider 35mm tyres along with eyelets for racks and mudguards With a comfortable riding position and slightly longer than average wheelbase the Zig Zag is happy to try its hand at other activities. It’s never so upright as to be lifeless and so always provides a nice mix of speed and stability The Zig Zag is currently available as a frameset only in the UK It's been announced that All City will close down and will not be developing any new bikes beyond the 2024 model year so there's limited availability of framesets and sizes purple Italian steel bike with rim brakes – what more could you ask for in life?  The Nemo Tig combines quite a modern fat-tube aesthetic with the oldest frame material in the world producing a proper race bike that will certainly turn heads.  Our test bike with last-gen Campagnolo Chorus squeaked in under 8kg which is pretty good for steel helped by those rim brakes and low-profile Miche carbon wheels.  The Nemo Tig should be high on your list if you want steel that isn't sedate. There's a disc brake version available as well for the non-purists and that's the only option currently imported into the UK Made in Italy from custom Columbus Spirit HSS tubing the Super Acciaio was designed by venerable London bike seller Condor Cycles It's a fast-looking bike that’s legitimately race-ready with the right build the Super Acciaio has the feeling of an excited buck rather than a stately mare and on the climbs the extra weight is mostly unapparent thanks to the front and rear stiffness on offer we’d happily accept the slight extra drag for the way the Acciaio descends but when the road plummets the handling becomes more responsive with the overall feel of road-holding that much more assured.  our mechanical Ultegra and Mavic-equipped creation came out at £5,500 and 8.65kg.  The classic-looking Super Acciaio is a dashing all-rounder with a racing bent. It’s quick enough to compete on but still well-mannered enough to ride all day. We've also reviewed the Condor Acciaio Stainless if you want to keep rust at bay The Strael is British company Fairlight’s all-season all-distance steel road bike made from a mix of Reynolds 853 and 725 tubing with custom forming.  Its versatility comes from the wealth of options that Fairlight offers which includes a two-level sizing system to offer a more personalised fit for each rider and fantastic spec choices that go as far as adding a dynamo Weight-wise it’s about where you’d want a high-end steel bike – not as light as carbon but lightweight for the material thanks to those custom tubes which are also ovalised to ensure stiffness and compliance come into play where you need it most That makes for a bike that has a high-performance feel paired with spades of comfort and the external routing give it a classic look The spec we tested is a Shimano Ultegra Di2 build with Hunt 4 Season wheels 28mm Continental GP5000 tyres and FSA components The Equilibrium Disc is designed to offer all-day comfort with a carbon fork that lets you eat up the miles the frame itself is constructed of Reynolds 725 tubing and butted to create strength where it’s needed and save weight where it’s not A slack head angle gives a predictable rate of turn-in and contributes to a sensation of being utterly planted to the road at all times it can do a decent impression of one if that’s what you want thanks to mounts and multi-terrain capable 30mm WTB Exposure tyres.  The full Shimano 105 groupset with hydraulic brakes means shifting and stopping is also uber-reliable There's a rim brake option available that shaves a bit off the pricetag there’s no getting away from the Equilibrium’s weight The price is also perhaps a little premium being both lovely to look at and charming to ride it more than justifies its place on our list Part of the joy of a steel bike is its timelessness Now with bolt-thru axles and flat mount discs version two of the Resolution has proved exactly that the UK-designed Resolution nevertheless marketed as a four-season bike Because with the right accessories it can turn its hand to pretty much any road-based discipline Hidden all over the Columbus steel-tubed frame and carbon fork are a plethora of tucked-away bosses to secure mudguards and pannier racks but check the inside of the fork legs or at the back of the chainstay bridge and you’ll find bolt holes ready to accept the necessary mounts to turn the Resolution into anything from winter hack to full-on touring rig with space for up to 35mm tyres (30mm with mudguards) suggesting the Resolution wouldn’t mind a spot of gravel riding to boot yet strip it back to its bare essentials and the geometry is just about racy enough for someone who wants to mix it on a crit circuit Delivering all the bike you’re likely to ever need this racy machine will adapt to your whims yet never threatens to be anything other than a blast to ride Few bikes blend new and old with more panache than a steel Ritchey – the Road Logic is a truly handsome thing.  We tested a build that arguably didn't do the bike justice but as a frameset the Ritchey is a much more appealing prospect with classic lines and 30mm clearance in the rim brake version as well as the classic rim brake frameset that we tested steel bike can still deliver a stiff and responsive ride the Ritte Phantom Steel is based around a Reynolds 725 frame that’s exquisite in every detail Made from heat-treated tubes using a process that allows them to have extremely thin walls these deliver stiffness and performance at a weight within sight of carbon frames Our SRAM Force-equipped test bike weighed a respectable 8.59kg and featured a slew of modern features including a T47 threaded bottom bracket The Phantom features full-on race geometry Add this to its minimal mass and the result is an appreciably spritely feel on the road It’s stiff for sprinting and although there’s a degree of damping it offers a pretty direct relationship with the road The Phantom is a recognisably modern road racing bike It's a classically handsome bike replete with clean lines and elegant welds.  It's lively and smooth on the road and the geometry allows tight fast cornering and over-the-bars steep climbing while the narrow steel tubing provides flex and spring to the ride but not to the detriment of pedalling efficiency The bike is hand-built in East London in small batches with set geometry rather than being a full custom build like the brand's other bikes handmade look that sets the Stayer Crit apart from mass market carbon frames Love steel but looking to ride the rough stuff? Head to our buyer's guide to the best gravel bikes for some steel gravel options To manage an existing Cyclist magazine subscription, please visit Manage your account or visit our subscription FAQ page. To subscribe, or for other enquiries, please contact us Sign up to the Cyclist newsletter to receive curated emails direct to your inbox Sign up to our newsletter Log in to access Cyclist Rides using your email pertaining to your subscription Don't forget a subscription to Cyclist includes: Log in to post comments and use Ask Cyclist our AI platform that answers your questions based on our articles Register to comment on our latest articles Occasional emails from selected third-party sponsors and advertisers Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.