About Us

Peter Wielk

At the helm of Horizontal Productions is Peter Wielk who recalls:

"I first came across a Fairlight CMI at Peter Gabriel's house where I was working as his technician, prior to touring with him and keyboard player extraordinare Larry Fast. They were both using Prophet 5s, which in the early days were notoriously unreliable. Luckily, I'd just returned from Los Angeles where I'd been working as Synthesiser Repair Man since leaving college (studying under legenday EMS and later Akai designer Tim Orr), so I knew my way around them pretty well.

The first CMIs were actually sold from Peters' place near Bath, before his cousin, Steve Paine, founded Syco, who then became the Fairlight distributer.

After an extremely enjoyable time with Peter, I reverted to my previous passion of travelling, and after a lengthy period in South East Asia, found myself in Sydney, Australia. There, I met up with Fairlight founders Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel, who offered me a job. As well as being CMI product specialist, I subsequently helped design, install, and later manage and run the in-house studio at the Rushcutters Bay headquarters.

After five years I left Fairlight and set up an independant Fairlight III studio in EMI studios 301, but then for reasons that on many occasions I still question, returned to London. I still kept in touch with Kim Ryrie, and subsequently became Fairlight's sole UK distributer, until they set up an office here themselves.

Since then I've been involved in sound design for film and television, and had three commercial studios, the last being an Fairlight MFX-based post production studio in Soho, London.

Because of the amount of interest, I subsequently decided to devote more time to supporting the Fairlight CMI community, something I've been involved in since 1982, and will hopefully continue for many years to come."

Contact Us

Horizontal Productions' home is now in Sydney, Australia with a dedicated CMI office, and a room full of spares, documentation, and testbeds...

You can contact us via any of the following methods: