The introduction of the synthesizer brought with it a many new types of sounds and a new way of thinking when it came to creating instruments. This week on The Music History Project, hear from some of the legendary synth pioneers that creatively and scientifically invented some of the most iconic sounds in recent popular music including Don Buchla, John Chowning, Suzanne Ciani, Bob Moog and Malcolm Cecil.

Ep. 104 - Synth Pioneers

Album: AAI
Thrill Jockey, 2021
Thrill 537

Mouse on Mars, the Berlin-based duo of Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma, approach electronic music with an inexhaustible curiosity and unparalleled ingenuity. Operating in their unique orbit within dance music’s nebulous echosystem, the duo’s hyper-detailed productions are inventive, groundbreaking but always possessing a signature joyful experimentation. A genre-less embrace of cutting-edge technologies have ensured that each Mouse on Mars release sounds strikingly modern, a fact made more remarkable when one reflects on the duo’s 25 years of making music. New album AAI (Anarchic Artificial Intelligence) takes Toma and Werner’s fascination with technology and undogmatic exploration a quantum leap further. Collaborating with writer and scholar Louis Chude-Sokei, a collective of computer programmers and longtime Mouse On Mars collaborator/percussionist Dodo NKishi, the duo explores artificial intelligence as both a narrative framework and compositional tool, summoning their most explicitly science-fiction work to date.

AAI compiles some of the most immediate and gripping music in Mouse on Mars’ extensive catalogue. Emerging from a primordial ooze of rolling bass and skittering electronics, hypnotic polyrhythms and pulsing synthesizers propel the listener across the record’s expanse. Hidden in the duo’s hyper-detailed productions is a kind of meta-narrative. Working with AI tech collective Birds on Mars and former Soundcloud programmers Rany Keddo and Derek Tingle, the duo collaborated on the creation of bespoke software capable of modelling speech. What appears to be Louis Chude-Sokei narrating through the story is in fact the AI speaking. Text and voice from Chude-Sokei and DJ/producer and programmer Yağmur Uçkunkaya (DJ Rayne) were fed into the software as a model, allowing Toma and Werner to control parameters like speed or mood, thereby creating a kind of speech instrument they could control and play as they would a synthesizer. The album’s narrative is quite literally mirrored in the music - the sound of an artificial intelligence growing, learning and speaking. Artwork was provided by the inventor of the computer graphics language Processing, Casey Reas, a further exploration of technology’s application in the context of art.

In Chude-Sokei’s text, as machine learning advances, robots begin to develop language, conscience, empathy - “anarchic” and unpredictable qualities. Drawing parallels between the evolution of human and machine, AAI uses technology as a lens to examine deep philosophical questions. The question of how we use technology and world resources feels particularly poignant and timely as we head into 2021. AAI posits that we must embrace AI and technology as a collaborator to break out of our current cultural and moral stagnation, and to ensure our survival as a species. As Werner explains: “AI is capable of developing qualities that we attach to humans, like empathy, imperfection and distraction, which are a big part of creativity. We need to get past the old paranoia that fears machines as the other, as competitors who will do things faster or better, because that just keeps us stuck in our selfishness, fear and xenophobia. Machines can open up new concepts of life, and expand our definitions of being human.“
https://www.thrilljockey.com/products/aai

New Definitions

CRISISMIX008

Synthian

Mostly performed with Moog Mother 32, Subharmonicon and DFAM. Inspired by Lucio Fulci's "The Beyond"

Cupio Dissolvi

The Weeknd - Too Late (Tobi Carter's Bounce Edit)

Gerco de Ruijter

A live rehersal om my newly purchased Moog Subharmonicon combined with the Mother 32, DFAM and the Microcosm pedal by Hologram Electronics

Subharmonicon Live jam

Link to the video captured here in real-time: https://vimeo.com/150015591

Patch Notes:

This was a patch experiment using the new Mutable Instruments Rings/Clouds Modules, and trying to create strumming/plucking guitar like sounds within a patch. The inspiration came from playing around with the Clouds Parasites 1.3 alternate firmware running in the Resonator mode highlighting the "scatter" (or strum) function. The master clock was the Tiptop Circadian Rhythms module, taking the first 4 outputs into my Nord Drum 2 for the Kick, snare, closed and open hi-hats. From there the clock output from the CR was multiplied and then sent to the Modcan Touch Sequencer. First row output from the TS was sent to the intellijel Shapeshifter creating a two note baseline sequence that comes in at 1:58. The second sequence Row2 output from the TS was sent to the "ALM Akemie's Castle" module OSC A output using the chord function, that comes in at 25 seconds. The gates from the modcan where set to a 16th's pulse sequence. Modulation from the synthesis technology E102 Quad Temporal Shifter output 1 modulating the Multiplier input on Operator 1. The 2, 3 and 4 outputs from the E102 where also modulating the Operator 2, 3, and 4 inputs on the Akemie's Castle. This was creating the harmonic timbre changing as the sequence was playing.

The slowly evolving sweeping noise textures that come in at 1:09 is from the Music Thing Radio Music module. The sample was a white noise sampled lightly filtered and then sent to the intellijel HexVCA with the amplitude CV control via a Intellijel Dixie modulating from slow to high rates (free running). The Make Noise Rene was being externally clocked from the Circadian Rhythm, and was sending out a quantized output to the Mutable Instruments Clouds pitch input creating the chord guitar sequence. The strum sounds on Clouds was played by the 4ms QCD running in 32th division output into the Trigger input. The freeze input was also triggered by a Ladik R-110 Random clock module. The combination of the two created the trill chord like strums.

The bass guitar tone sound that comes in at 1:24 are from the MakeNoise Mysteron, that is being sequenced by the Modcan Touch Sequencer, Row Output 3 was programmed in the same key but a lower octave. The "Rings" module was creating slow attack soft high pitched chords in reverb that come around 2:50. There was additional processing of the Clouds output that was sent into the Tiptop ZDSP module running the "Halls of Vahalla" card program 8 "Ginnungagap" creating the high pitch octave deep reverb shimmer effects. The harmonic slow swells that come in at 3:30 where created using another intellijel Dixie oscillator sine output running into an Strymon "Big Sky" pedal being harmonically controlled by an intellijel µScale V1. The output was being played slowly then processed using the "Choral" mode, creating the slow shimmer swells. The entire mix was sent into the Eventide Space pedal using the "Corridors" patch.

Mutable Instruments Rings : mutable-instruments.net/modules/rings
Clouds Parasites firmware: mqtthiqs.github.io/parasites/clouds.html

Strum - Modular Patch

https://tiny.cc/RHMC005

Birthed at the turn of the ‘80s, synth and wave music has remained a constant force over the last four decades, with a recent spike in interest in the sound offering further proof of its’ timeless, out-of-this-world quality. It’s against this backdrop that Dutch DJ Interstellar Funk presents his celebration of the style, “Artificial Dancers – Waves of Synth”.

A bumper compilation bristling with obscure and hard-to-find gems, the set sees the Artificial Dance label founder joining the dots between synthesizer and drum machine-driven tracks in a variety of subtly different styles. It’s the result of hundreds of hours spent digging through dusty old records, tapes, and the Bandcamp accounts of DIY musicians who have been active since the sound’s first boom in the early 1980s.

The 11-track set draws on tracks made and released at different times over the last 40 years, with the earliest cut committed to tape in 1978 and the most recent in 2018. While the tracks date from the ‘80s, ‘90s, noughties and 2010s, the showcased cuts are united by a primitive but futuristic quality that makes dating them difficult. In many cases, it’s hard to tell which tracks were made in the early 1980s and which were conjured up in 21st century studios.

As you’d expect, highlights are plentiful with a number of the most unknown or sought-after cuts appearing on vinyl for the first time. In this category you’ll find the Human League’s odd but inspired early number “4JG”, a near mythical 1982 live version of Liasons Dangereuses’ “Dias Cortas” (previously only available on a VHS video) and Chris and Cosey’s “Hybrid C”, a brilliant mid-’90s cut plucked from their CD-only album “Skimble Skamble”. You’ll also find a rare demo version of Clan of Xymox’s Dutch darkwave classic “Stranger”, which became a club smash across Europe in 1983.

Interstellar Funk has also chosen to showcase tracks by a range of DIY producers and lesser-known artists. These include Californian band Batang Frisco, who self-released a sole private press album in 1986 (their contribution, “Sewing Machine”, is dedicated to founder member Bill DiMichele, who passed away this year), Matthias Schuster’s Im Namen Des Volkes project – which contributes the previously unreleased 2014 track “Alles Ist Gewinn” – and Zahgurim, a short-lived early ‘80s act who reunited in 2018 to record their first new material since 1983.

If that wasn’t enough to set pulses racing, the compilation also showcases a solo track by sadly departed Psyche member Stephen Huss. Nobody is quite sure when Huss recorded “Infinity Sign”, but we can confirm this is the first time that one of his solo productions has ever appeared on vinyl.

Artificial Dancers: Waves of Synth will be released on the 31st of march as a gatefolded double LP and on all the digital platforms.

Tracklist:
1. Clan Of Xymox - Stranger (Demo)
2. Det Gylne Triangel - Maskindans
3. Zahgurim - The Living Room
4. The Human League - 4JG
5. Liaisons Dangereuses - Dias Cortas
6. Sociedades En Tetra Brik - Detector Martenot (Original Version)
7. Batang Frisco - Sewing Machine
8. Chris And Cosey - Hybrid C
9. Im Namen Des Volkes - Alles Ist Gewinn
10. Stephen Huss - Infinity Sign
11. Richard Bone - Alternate Music For The Hindenberg Lounge

Order

Interstellar Funk - Artificial Dancers: Waves of Synth (RHMC 005) - Snippets

Pre-order is open and the first track preview of my new EP Systik is now live! 

https://richarddevine.bandcamp.com/

BL_K Noise is proud to announce that Richard Devine - Systik will be released November 11 with pre-orders starting today. Systik is comprised of four acid tracks produced, performed live, and mastered by Richard, not originally intended to be released. Richard debuted his acid set at BL_K Noise in Los Angeles in January 2020 with the original goal of crafting and performing it throughout the rest of the year - but, as we all know, this year had different plans for us. Sinscur, the ever-evolving fractured acid track is available to stream and download on Bandcamp now.

Richard Devine’s influences, inspiration, and roots come from many sources - and this release is a homage paid to classic acid albums that inspired him in his early career but with a more modern approach and arsenal.

Every purchase in the pre-order period is entered to win a set of HEDDphones by Hedd (Heinz Electrodynamic Designs) valued at $1,899. A winner will be announced on November 11th. 

The artwork and all visual assets were created by Simona Noreik. The physical presentation was under the guidance of BL_K Noise.

blknoise.bandcamp.com

hedd.audio/heddphone/

Subharmonicon Live jam

Richiebuzz