GEM and LEM are the lost Italian legends you may not know, but should. Toto, Rick Wakeman, Keith Emerson, Italian icons — all users. But the moniker was retired, and most of us assumed we’d never see it again. Surprise: Generalmusic (now Finnish-owned) just announced it’s making GEM and LEM gear again with an Italian leadership team, starting early this year. No idea what any of this us? Don’t worry — just 90s the **** out anyway!
GEM is keyboards and digital pianos; LEM is pro audio (and broadcast) gear. And this isn’t just a reanimated brand name, though we’ve gotten those. No, they’ve managed to bring some traditional expertise onboard. From the NAMM press release:
At the helm of the project are Italian entrepreneurs Fabio De Fazio – a third-generation veteran of the music industry, co-founder and former long-standing General Manager of StrumentiMusicali.net, the leading Italian retailer of musical instruments – and Marco Medica, CEO of Audio Effetti, an Italian distributor of entertainment technology.
Legit. See, I thought I’d be writing just music gear obituaries this year, and instead it’s reunion tours? Fantastic!
Okay, if you don’t know anything about Generalmusic or GEM, I want you to imagine what this all sounds like. Got it? Bet you it sounded a little like this, right? (Thanks, Romanian organ site! I vaguely remember there was some shared lineage or demo programming action with Roland, who also ran an Italian operation, but have to look that up.)
You are now Steve Lukather!
Generalmusic has a kind of weird genesis. Elka-Orla, parent to Synthex, gets bought by GEM, gets bought by Generalmusic, and then Generalmusic goes bankrupt in 2011. Finnish Soundion buys up GEM, LEM, and Elka, but despite efforts to revive Synthex or the GEM line, apart from some digital pianos that appeared a few years back, we didn’t really get GEM/LEM as we once knew them. Evidently, that changes now.
Apart from Elka’s Synthex, GEM had its own respectable 90s WS and WX series, the respected RealPiano Expander hardware with physically modeled pianos, a 2000s DSP engine powered by RISC with more advanced simulations (RP-X), and most recently the powerful Genesys series.
Someone has taken the time to run through that whole history, and even if you weren’t born yet, I think this will transport you back to the decade in a really special way:
And here’s some VHS handycam footage of their booth at 1991 Musikmesse. Amazing.
I don’t know what they’re planning now, and even this post goes through the history but doesn’t mention models — so they’re being perhaps intentionally cagey. (Or just assume you won’t know!)
I’m curious what they’re cooking up. You can probably always push the envelope on piano realism — and on the synth side, we’d love to see more Synthex (even though they don’t mention Elka). Or they have a new workstation planned with the GEM name and some of these classic sounds. I’m guessing that’s the idea, based on the way they present this.
I’m intrigued. We’ll be watching. Actually, I think what you really need to do is bring us on a press junket to Italy. Yes, it would compromise my gear review, but don’t you want some food reviews with it?
Now, could you GEM your way into some serious ambient? Of course.