Devblog May 2024 (Patreon)

Hi friends.

Development at 65LABS continues apace!

Admittedly, this month the development was more in the minds of our technicians than out here in the material plane, but it still counts!

Last month it was an exploding bass amplifier getting in the way. This month it was a spontaneously combusting Elektron Octatrack that once again complicated things. An Octatrack is a kind of 'performance-based sampler', as you will see in this month's video, and it had been well on its way to unexpectedly earning a place as a kind of central brain in these new live set-ups we are trying to figure out. So when it started trying to set its internal circuitry on fire (this really happened), it threw a bit more of a spanner into the works than we first realised.

The lesson here is that the real world is messy and everything breaks and 65LABS works much better in the realm of the imagination.

This month we are bringing you another secret backchannel video of us experimenting with ideas for our current still-speculative project (which was detailed a couple of months ago HERE if you missed it). And like previous months, because of how Patreon works it might be weirdly embedded at the top of this email and not look like a video at all. So if in doubt, check it HERE.

It's a solo effort this time, but also, it's not really that at all. As we've written about at least indirectly in the past, part of framing 65LABS the way we do is to try to dismantle certain expectations around bands. For our own benefit as much as anyone else's. It's much more rewarding to try thinking of ourselves as co-producers or technicians/engineers working together rather than as four musicians each just sticking to their own lane. (Although, like most non-hierarchical, horizontal organisations, it does sometimes mean making decisions gets a bit difficult...) Anyway - the point is, while this video is just Paul, he's still operating in 65LABS mode rather than Polinski mode. Different intentions, goals, kick drums, etc. etc. It is work being done with half a mind on either expanding it to make sense with more people, or else making something that fits inside the overall trajectory of 65days/65LABS. Do these distinctions really exist outside of the four of us? Hard to say. There's definitely plenty of overlap when it comes to 65Prime and our various side projects, but those projects are also pursuing their own ideas and objectives that don't always quite fit in the grand 65 plan.

In any case, this particular video is very much part of 65, even though it's just one of us. and for some reason it feels worth pointing that out.

OTHER NEWS

• Speaking of Polinski though, he is doing a solo live show in Sheffield at the end of the month. It won't be anything like this month's video because, as we mentioned, the Octatrack is currently, er, offline, but it'll still be good. Presumably. It's at Sidney and Matilda and has a banging line-up. It's on 21st June and tickets are available now from HERE. And there's more info about the show over on The Komoy Noise Research Unit, (a 65LABS-affiliated endeavour.)

That's it for this month. We really do appreciate you sticking around - we are aware that this project currently isn't as full-tilt as Wreckage Systems, but the last thing we want to do is to end up churning out pointless content for the wrong reasons. Enjoy the video! Research notes to follow.

65.x

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THE UTJ // 280224

Hardware used: Elektron Octatrack / Arturia Beatstep Pro

Software used: Ableton Live

Tracks From the 65 Archive: N/A

Time Signature: 4/4

Tempo: 140bpm

Technician: Paul (jumper)

Generative Systems: N/A

Wreckage Systems: N/A

Other notes: When performing live electronic music it is easy to fall into an existential wormhole about what 'live' really means. To some degree that is the same with any instrument, but with acoustic instruments there tends to at least be a kind of physicality or easily-observable gesture involved that makes it clear to an observer that a musician is doing something. When it comes to electronic music, especially laptop-based music, things are more opaque. This in part is what led to the birth of live-coding and algoraves. "Show us your screens!" demanded the TopLap Manifesto - sharing what's happening on the performer's laptop screen is one way to reduce to the distance between them and the audience when computers are the instrument of choice.

But there is no end to this. Even 'live coders', who are typing the code that creates their music live on stage still rely on pre-built software that knows how to deal with the code they are typing. Nobody is writing actual software or, indeed, building a computer from scratch live on stage.

Regardless. The more we rely on laptops, the more useful it is to keep trying things that ‘aren’t laptop’. (A good life lesson, this). And so experiments in making electronic music with hardware are useful to us from time to time.

Also - as difficult as it might be to find a pleasing way to actually perform live music in a way that also visually represents a performance and isn’t just a guy stood behind a laptop, what is even more difficult (at least at 65LABS) is finding a way for more than person at once to do that at the same time and remain able to communicate with each other in some musically useful manner. Four tired guys in the shape of a band? Fine. Four tired guys hunched over laptops or MIDI controllers? Less impressive.

All of these problems are presented to contextualise this video, a short improvisation using an Octatrack and a MIDI controller. Sure, there are a few loops running in Ableton Live that are not caught on camera, but a surprising amount of this song is created live, through judicious use of Octatrack ‘scenes’ and its crossfader.

For this session, the problem of how to involve more than one musician at once was deliberately put aside to see how pushing this particular combination of mostly-hardware elements in the direction of 'how live can things be?' would work, and to see how what useful results could be gathered. Further research is needed.