TALK 913 Scanner, UVI And Sledgehammer

Hello everybody, welcome to Sonic Talk, episode 913, recording today, 14th October 2026, as

we head into a very busy period. This is the Music Technology Podcast, where we talk about

all things to do with, well, music technology, software, synthesizers, drum machines, hardware,

live performance, recording, manufacture, vibe coding, I suppose as well, all sorts

of stuff, so sit back and enjoy the next hour or so as we discuss the week's news and releases.

I want to say a very big hello and thank you to all our friends watching live, electronic

conductress, CheapoCard company, we're on Twitch, we're on YouTube, we're on Facebook and we're on

Instagram, although I don't think I see the comments there, and we're on, what else are we on?

Twitch, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, oh yeah, that too, Tyneth WVQ, Wagyu of course, thank you,

ah GetJervis, happy birthday belated, I saw it was your birthday recently, Wagyu of course, dealing

with the back-end and the moderation, Ohmgrown, Donald Duck, Jeremy Makes Music 123, Katie

Killabyte, lots of you there, so nice to see you all, thank you so much for joining us live, it makes

the whole thing much more fun. I'll get on to introduce our guests in a short moment, but before

I do, I want to let you know about what's coming up on Sonic, we've got a few things, oh we've got

a competition with Ubershell at the moment, which is not that, is it? It's coming up, am I supposed

to do that? Is that what it is? No, it's not it at all, is that what happens? No, oh well, never mind, coming

up, do I do this? Maybe I press that, there we go, no, that's not working either, never mind, it's going

to be one of those days, yeah, competition with, running with Ubershell, you can win the loop tool

and guitar one and two, so do check that out at sonicstate.com forward slash competition, lots of

video coming up soon, it's been a quiet summer, but now the floodgates are opening, we've been working

on stuff with people behind the scenes, which we haven't been able to talk about, that's all starting

to come on stream quite soon, so watch out for that, Brooklyn Synth and Pedal Expo, Matt will

be there this weekend, we'll be sending videos back, that's October the 17th and 18th in Brooklyn, New

York City, then we've got a Natural Audio AL1 video, which is the new limiter, which is really

good, did a great video with Richard Reinhardt, I think his name is, on that, I've got Elphita

Cord Cat, that Matt did a video on that, then Beijing Modular 25th to 23rd to 25th, which I will be in

China from Tuesday, so no shows, but I'm going to be recording a show tomorrow to go in there with

Gertz from Erica Synth, we're going to talk a little bit about the whole sort of vibe coding

and firmware hacking craze, that's all the rage at the moment, what it maybe means for manufacturers,

Paulie wrote a great article on that and it's just sort of a continuation of that discussion,

phew, right, I was going to play an ad now, time to play a membership ad, I'm going to be doing

some exclusive content for China, so if you want to see the vlogging and the, I don't know, the

twitching food I might be eating or not eating while I'm in China, then that's a place to look

for it, anyway, back after this, so let's introduce our guests for this week, waiting patiently while

I do all my housekeeping, first up we've got Gaz Williams, who's there in Bristol, Gaz of course,

right, rack records, modular performer, bass player with Charlotte Church, although I think

that's paused for the time being, you look like you've got a lot of stuff going, there's a lot

of synths over there behind you, have you had a good week, how are you Gaz? Yeah, amazing, thank

you, lovely, thank you for that introduction, yeah, great, the Charlotte Church thing does

continue, I hasten to add, which is great, some bookings coming for next year, so really pleased

about that, as you know Nick, you came to the Bristol show, I was told, I feel, I feel ripped

off, I was told it was the last show of the tour, I wouldn't have come, yeah, of course, it's always,

she always says it's the last one and then it comes back, so yeah, take that with a pinch of salt,

yeah, very addictive, that sort of show, I'd imagine to play and to be in front of,

yeah, it's one of them things when it all comes to an end, you know, or when the tours end

and you have to sort of adjust back to sort of normality, it's quite difficult because you do

kind of get into this headspace of quite ridiculous, the ridiculousness, I don't know,

it's something, yeah, well it's, it's, it's, it's, yeah, I mean touring is a very specific,

yeah, lifestyle that, yeah, people love, you know, it's escapism in a way, but it's,

it is escapism, yeah, but yeah, I mean, yeah, but then, you know, I do crave being back in my studio

and being back on my, I'm on a mission, I'm on a permanent mission, you see, I always want to get

back onto the mission, so me and my friend Ryan, we always talk about, you know, the mission,

you know, we check in with each other most days to see how we're progressing in the mission,

the mission being this, we don't know exactly what it is or what the end goal is, but it just

feels like it's, you know, unlike us, we all are on Sonic here, both audience and

participants here, you know, we're all on our missions, aren't we, you know,

and that's what makes it all so good and exciting and everything is always changing and, you know,

we're kind of adapting to it, but yeah, I mean, so I'm playing on Saturday for anyone who's in

the Bristol area with Steve Davis, we're playing at a Bleak Club and Esher collab that's in kit

form, that's in Jamaica Street in Bristol, yeah, and it's going to be some really fantastic

visuals as well for that, so does that saloon by any chance? No, not on this one,

actually, it's going to be the Bleak Club, it's going to be the Bleak Club Posse, yeah,

providing visuals and yeah, so that should be really fun, there's a good, you know,

some great artists playing and yeah, so Saturday night, that's Bristol, so it's actually,

if you know where Elevator Sound is, it's pretty much opposite Elevator Sound, so I think,

was that where the pre-show, the Elevator pre-party was last time? Yeah, yeah, okay,

yeah, that was a sort of warehouse, big windows, yeah, yeah, big windows and lots of exposed kind

of light fittings and cable dangly things, you know, that's sort of slightly, slightly,

slightly post-apocalyptic, but yeah, but swanky, yeah, yeah, so we just, so I've been spending a

lot of time with Steve and with another person who should remain nameless at the moment, but we've

done a load of recordings with, who everybody knows here, but and it's, it's a really interesting

kind of process because we're exploring what it means to kind of collaborate and make music

together, Steve obviously coming from a very different angle, but I mean, Steve's played

with Utopia Strong as well as with me, he must have played over, I'm probably estimating over

200 shows now with modular synths, so he's, so although he's known as a snooker player,

he's probably played more modular gig shows and probably 95% of modular synth users,

they've even hired, you know, yeah, but yeah, so it's, it's always kind of challenging to me

because it's, you know, I'm always getting my own musicality kind of, or my impulses to do

certain things, it's, it's, you know, we're always just trying to sort of meld and find new pathways

and I have to kind of adapt, adapt, yeah, and we're both using these new modules which are

mind-blowing and really interesting, I know a lot of people get a little bit bored when

we talk modular, but I think there's certain things happen within that kind of physical realm,

you know, not just modular, but the physical realm rather than the virtual realm, and

the, the Bella Trails is a really fascinating module, it's a four channel, and you,

and Bella, I think their, their kind of special strength is that they're, it, it's super sensitive,

I think it's sort of like, something like 2.6 megahertz or something, they're really fast,

so you can put these gestures into this, I think, chaos pad, similar kind of approach.

Oh, okay, right, interesting, but you can record them, and yeah, you can record, yeah,

function generator that you draw effectively, yeah.

Exactly that, and you can shape and squeeze that voltage, and you can, you know, put it through

pitch quantizers, and all sorts of ways of manipulating it, and once you've made a gesture,

you can go into a mode where you can actually rotate the gesture, so like an X, Y gesture,

if you imagine rotating that, and that's going out of two different CV outputs, the X and Y,

when you rotate that gesture, then, you know, obviously.

All sorts of stuff happens.

The X and Y can, yeah, it's really interesting, and then when you put that through,

you know, if you dial in the pitch quantizer, it's quite an interesting thing, because

you can have two different quantized layers, depending on odd and even voltages,

so you could, like, pick certain notes for odd voltage, so, for instance, if you have...

So you can have, you could set it up so they counterpoint effectively, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, if you have, like, over four volts or five volts, you know,

if you've got over five octaves, you've got, yeah, five octaves, but each octave,

subsequent octaves, have different note groupings, so that gesture, you move it through.

No wonder you're so deep into it.

No, I mean, this stuff is interesting, because it has musical, and then if you then have four

channels all set up, and then from the top layer, control all four gestures, which,

all four layers, which are all set to do different things with different quantized amounts,

different gate speeds and stuff, and then from just a single gesture, just a single gesture,

you know, usually on the...

Flips the whole thing, yeah.

It's, it's...

Yeah, that sounds, that does sound it.

Well, sounds like you're having a lot of fun out there in modular world, in your synth

laboratory, so, yes, but thank you, and thank you very much for joining us.

No pleasure.

We've also got Paulie here this week, Paulie Poe, that's not, that's, that's the one I'm

looking for.

Paulie Poe, uh, loving the iPod Nano hair clip, that's a great, uh, that's a great addition

to the look there.

Yeah, yeah.

That's a, I don't, they don't, I don't think they actually make them Apple anymore, do

they?

They don't, did, but I did, I hear they've re, they've re, uh, they, they've relaunched

or announced a new Apple TV, which is $300, which just sounds like a great, anyway, that's

beside the point.

Oh, wow.

How are you, Paulie, are you well?

You good?

Everything okay?

This, this week, Nick, you know, I'm usually very, very upbeat.

Okay.

This week, I hit profound burnout.

Ah, okay.

I know we're going to talk about it, like, um, we're going to talk about it tomorrow

with Gertz about firmware hacking and, you know, stuff like that, vibe coding, soft

sync and stuff like that.

But I had this moment where I was like, God, this, this world really has changed, hasn't

it, um, in terms of idea to, to product and the interesting, it's getting used to the

fact that most of the people I've spoke to, um, regarding this stuff, regarding AI are

very keen to protect their own discipline, you know, like songwriting or something, but

then are very happy to use AI for everything else.

So yeah, including plugins and things like that.

So it's, and, and I was, you know, interviewing people going, oh, how did you make this?

What's the story?

You know, I like to tell stories in my articles and stuff and, and all the answers were like,

well, I put it into Claude and I had an idea and it was done and it was like, oh, I'm going

to have to, you know, really dress this article up and add some drama or something.

But yeah, I, I just really hit burnout with it.

I was like, you know, what, what's next?

What do I cover?

Can I cover everything that's coming through?

Um, I was talking that to Tom from, you know, Synth Anatomy.

Yeah.

He wrote, he wrote an interesting article about how, uh, you know, how it's, it, it,

how much there's so much vibe coded stuff and how much stuff that he, you know, he has

said on how he's going to deal with it.

It was an interesting viewpoint.

Very long article, actually.

Yes.

Yes.

And, you know, I'm looking forward, I'm looking forward to that tomorrow.

I am okay now.

I've kind of had to recenter my, my passions a little bit more solitary though.

Right.

Because every, every space you go into about Synth now, it's just constant, a constant

barrage and I think the problem is, is a lot of people are still stuck in the, it's an

endless candy store, wonderful, you know, thing of, uh, we have all these toys now,

we can do anything.

And my brains go in because I've got autism and ADHD and I've been riding the dopamine

dragon since birth.

I'm like, well, that, that honeymoon phase isn't going to last forever.

And then where are we going to end up?

No, that's a, that's an interesting point.

I mean, I suppose as a counter, I mean, one thing, you know, as, as the level of, um,

then there will be people who can do truly amazing things that we almost can't comprehend

with the help of, you know, perhaps and things that are so many more things may become even

more amazing and fantastical and, and maybe the, the, the level of mediocrity will be,

will be considered sort of much further up the scale that we have, which maybe isn't

a good thing, but you just, so, you know, but anyway, but that may mean the pinnacles

could be even higher.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought it was important to discuss just in case anyone was feeling the same, basically.

Fair enough.

Well, I, I would like to add, I've never hired a systems admin, uh, and I always have to

do it myself.

So I find AI is really helpful for me to administer the service.

I would just like to point out, I've, I, now our footage, uh, you know, I film a video

on the, I film a video on the phone.

First shot is a business card or a name badge or something.

Now that information gets extracted from the image.

So it all follows the footage through the system, which makes my life so much and all

the editors lives so much more easy.

Yes.

So these are things that I can do that I, I'd never have paid anyone or had anybody

else do anyway.

So I don't feel too bad about it.

I'm not coding clients anyway, but, but yeah.

I think the, the less creative something it does, you know, like, like a mundane task,

the less issue I have with it, basically.

I think that's a fair, that's, and that's probably a good point to leave it.

Keep, just do more mundane stuff so we could just concentrate on the esoteric things, but

then anyway.

So, um, we have topics.

I mean, it's a very software heavy, uh, week after all that talk about coding, and I'm

not suggesting that these are vibe coded, uh, plugins by any stretch.

In fact, I'm fairly sure most of them aren't, uh, um, but, uh, I, I wanted to just, we'll

start with, I was hoping to get scanner on because, uh, when they got in touch with me

and said about this plugin, they said, Oh, I said, would you like to come on the show?

Unfortunately they're gigging.

So it's almost impossible to get them on, but we'll start with this because I think

it's a, uh, a good one to go with.

So let's go.

This is a scanner library from scanner.

And it's a really, so my superhero origin story here is that I have this rather vast

archive of recordings and endemic was helpful for time to explore what these tapes will

actually offer.

And I hadn't listened to them in 20, 30 years.

And in conversation with the guys at Sonic Couture, we were interested.

I was especially interested in making an instrument that was very minimal in essence.

In fact, it began in a very minimal way.

It offered very little.

And I mean that in a very positive way.

I, I won't, I won't play old thing.

Robin's got a great method of delivery.

It's perhaps not snappy enough for, for, for the, the, the fast edit of my, uh, how I like

to run a show, but hopefully we'll get Robin on at some point and he can, and he can, uh,

he can, he can kind of let us know a bit more.

This I thought was really interesting for several reasons.

Uh, it's a three and a half gigabytes.

It's a unique library of 400 recordings.

And some of these things are, it's sort of like a, it's like the essence of,

of creativity throughout his journey through music.

And as we know, scanner made a lot of waves by sampling sort of obscure shortwave radio

and just kind of telemetry and all kinds of stuff and working it into his music.

And it was very successful and still remains successful.

Does a lot of live performances.

And this is just a sort of distillation of that, uh, 400 unique recordings, 200 presets.

Uh, I think it's on offer at the moment for 139.

And I just thought it was, it's a great way to sort of, if you've still got a lot of that

stuff, a way to bring that out.

I mean, not all of us.

I mean, I know my back catalog is just really bad songs, so it wouldn't quite work in the

same way as text as I may have recorded, but I just thought it was fascinating.

And I'm, I love Robin and scanner.

He's a, he's a great, a very, always really interested to always post some really good

stuff on social, lots of kind of observations about great pieces of art and stuff.

And I'm really glad this exists.

And I just like the idea of it as well, the way it's came to be.

I don't know if you had a chance to listen to some of the demos.

They are very, very atmospheric, aren't they?

And quite lovely.

Yeah, definitely.

And it kind of reminds me of how, uh, how I would first experiment when I got my first

four track, which was a Fostex XD5, I think four track cassette recorder, uh, in about

1998, something like that.

And yeah, of course we do record our terrible teenage love songs on them, but just recording,

I don't know, four lanes of random stuff or four, you know, lanes of radios being retuned

or something.

My nan's old radio that couldn't quite tune in anything.

And then doing these little collages just for fun, never for really with an end goal

in mind, just to kind of exploratory, you know, process a mindful meditative process.

And I think that's what this plugin can do.

It's just this treasure trove of scanners, 3.5 gigabytes of this stuff, um, you know,

from the past.

And what I'm interested, you know, cause I want to get him on Retrocast 2 to talk about

some of his old gear.

What I'm interested in finding out is when did the, the kind of, uh, cause having the

custodian of the samples, being the custodian of the samples and thinking these are mine,

I'll use them one day.

When did, when did that, you know, these are mine just for me.

This is my secret treasure trove, my secret weapon.

When did that morph into, oh, I'll release them for everyone to try and use, you know?

It can't be, it can't be all of them.

It can't be all of them, I wouldn't imagine.

But yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, but nonetheless, I don't know.

It's, it's an interesting thought, isn't it?

I mean, Gaz, you must be generating this kind of material continuously or messing about

with, uh, with, with modular.

Sorry, you're messing.

I sound a bit dismissive.

I, you were experimenting with modular all the time.

I mean, have you got a kind of route to, to, to go back and maybe have something to create

something like this for yourself?

Or I mean, do you, do you utilize it?

I mean, how do you.

I am building something similar and it's interesting.

Robin did get in touch with me about this and it's something that I have got installed

and starting to explore.

Well, I haven't explored it yet.

So I was kind of, um, but there's some, you see, Robin makes really good music.

I think, um, I was fortunate enough to perform with Robin in, in Synthiste earlier this year.

And, um, and I was marveling at how, how he could just take these kind of textural elements,

but just interweave it with a kind of very knowing, but kind of almost like, um, in some

ways it's sort of gentle or in other ways, not gentle, but just, um, just in sort of

subtly infuse like a musicality through everything.

And when we were performing together, cause it was part of the patch off.

So I was drawn at random to perform with Robin, which I was super chuffed about.

Um, but, uh, it was amazing.

The room felt silent when we were performing.

And I think in part, I mean, I attribute.

They weren't dark, I mean.

No, it wasn't, no.

Um, and I'd attribute that really to Robin's kind of craft and, and, you know, Robin performing

as scanner did, did a fantastic show that evening as well.

Um, so I was just really, uh, I felt so, I felt so privileged to be able to share the

stage, but also to kind of experience how, um, the way he was working was he had like,

um, I'm guessing content much like what he's got of this, um, uh, this, this new instrument,

um, playing it off.

I think they're using a black box.

Ah, that makes sense.

Yeah.

I think he used it, he used the Seattle Obama stuff as well.

Cause I remember we did a thing with him in lockdown where we did a little live performance

sort of thing from his, uh, his loft.

I'd have to go back and look at it, but.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, at this particular set, I think if I remember rightly, it was like two black

boxes feeding into morphogene, um, make noise morphogene, um, which is a great way of kind

of combining granulizing content.

But I think what I'm trying to say is that although there's a, you know, this thing about

all the texture and ambience, it was just his musicality was the thing that really struck

me.

And that, well, I guess that will also be refiltered in the choice of sounds that this

goes into.

I should add, it's not a plugin.

It's a, well, it is a plugin, but it's a contact plugin.

So it runs in contact.

Oh yeah, it runs in contact.

And it's sort of more or less just like a tape player in some ways.

And I guess there's so many interesting ways to process audio that having this curated

collection of interesting sounds, uh, you know, um, especially knowing how tasteful

and intelligent Robin's approach is, uh, I think, you know, I think is going to be,

you know, an absolute bounty of joy.

Uh, again, like I was mentioning, just having, you know, things like, um, you know, big news

this week, I think is that, um, Mutable Instruments' final masterpiece Beats has been open

sourced this week.

Right.

So that, you know, who knows what that, you know, who knows what's going to,

who knows what vibe coding projects that will trigger.

But at the same time, things like that, you know, they need to be fed with interesting

things.

And I think that's the sort of thing I'm kind of thinking about really that, you know,

just all these wonderful ways of manipulating audios, just having such great and oodles

of it, you know, things to.

And he goes on to talk, he goes on to talk about how much of it's because it's a lot

of it's on tape and a lot of it's very imperfect and there's all this imperfection in it, which

I think is something the human brain craves, but maybe doesn't know it needs.

It just, I mean, unless you're, you know, unless you understand what you're listening

for, perhaps the lay person might just think this isn't satisfying me for whatever reason,

in the same way that sometimes when you hear a synthesizer, if it's too precise and too,

and if it's DSP and it's not been had a proper sort of instability built into it,

you know, DX7, for instance, people say can't sound cold and requires a very different approach

to making sound, you know, I mean, and it's rawness, you know, it badly programmed, should

I say.

So, I mean, so that's what I mean, and I suppose adding, you know, the curating that part of

it's kind of interesting.

Hold that thought.

I think I will just play a message from our sponsor.

We'll be back after this.

And we're back in the room.

Yeah, fascinating.

I mean, it just, but this whole topic just got me thinking about, you know, back catalogue

and that it raises so many, so many questions, like what formats on, can you still find a

mini disc?

Can you still find a tape player?

I've got loads of DATs.

I haven't got a DAT player that works anymore, which, and it's really annoying me and I don't

want to buy one, but I sort of feel I should because I've got only 17, there's only 17

working DAT machines in the whole world now, apparently.

And they're all, they're all run by tape transfer hire companies, right?

Yeah.

That's not true, Gaz, is it?

No, of course it's not.

Okay.

If you're silly, of course it's not.

I'm going to put 17 working DAT machines.

That's a title.

17 working DAT machines, working DAT machines.

And only some of them.

I guess you could say DAT's life.

Oh, that is almost punishable by execution.

No, sorry, that was a bit harsh.

Yeah, sorry, I don't know why I said that, never mind.

Just ignore that, we'll edit that one.

No, we can't edit that, it's a lie.

Should we move on?

I feel like I should before I get into any more trouble.

Does anybody, uh, does anybody use Falcon?

Falcon seems to be, it's one of those ones that seems to be released.

This is such a monster thing.

I think we should probably cover it because it's such a huge, such a huge release.

Let me just pop that in there.

We'll do that, uh, if I can find it.

Yeah, here we go.

UVI Falcon 2027.

I mean.

Howdy doody.

My name is Cameron, better known as Venus Theory.

And oh, what a glorious day it is.

Because today I get to talk about the new Falcon update with Falcon 2027.

This is a free update for all Falcon owners.

And it brings four new oscillators, 10 new effects, a new modulator,

a bunch of workflow and UI improvements, and over 100 new factory presets.

Which means there's a whole lot of ground to cover in this video.

If you're not already familiar with it, Falcon is UVI's flagship hybrid instrument,

covering a nearly limitless array of possibilities with its semi-modular architecture,

wide variety of oscillators, event processors, and scripts,

studio quality effects, and deep sound design capabilities, letting you.

Right.

I mean, that's, that's part of the problem.

I mean, not part of the problem.

The problem is kind of just, how do you summarize Falcon?

It is everything.

I mean, we had this, we had this issue ourselves, didn't we?

Once.

Yeah, as Venus said there, 2027, available at an intro price of £149.

It is, I mean, it's probably the most comprehensive synth and sample playback engine at all.

And I know Rich Hilton swears by it and says he's really impressed with it.

And lots of people up in Venus Theory, who we know is a very creative output,

nice to see him on form and looking happy.

I know he had a bit of a rough period, so good to see that.

But this is just bonkers, isn't it?

It's absolutely bonkers.

And in a way, it's, while great, it's, there's so much,

I think you sort of really need to be the sort of person that can handle this number of options,

because there's just so much to deal with.

So many things, right?

Yeah, we, yeah, like I was just interjecting there,

and we did have that with Omnisphere in a way,

where you've got something that's just so gigantic

and just continues to get more and more gigantic.

It's, it's, it's baffling.

But I mean, this, I mean, this does look like a superb update.

I mean, Venus Theory does a very entertaining,

very engrossing walkthrough of all the features there.

One that really stuck with me, I thought, was FM algorithm morphing.

And I think that's unique.

Oh, that's it.

Well, you've got that in the, that's in the Leviathan, I would like to point out.

That's also in hardware.

That's available.

Okay.

But yes, good feature.

Yeah, yeah.

And just an enormous feature list.

I was surprised that some of the things weren't there before,

given how expansive it was.

But I mean, it's weird though, because as much as this is impressive,

I mean, does it interest me?

No, it doesn't.

But I mean, that's not to say that it's not brilliant,

because it clearly is.

And it doesn't interest me by that massiveness of it.

I've kind of gone back to much more sort of basic and simple things.

I guess in modular, I'm dealing with things in a much more kind of

just sort of simplified sort of way.

And I find that more appealing for me.

However, if I was working more in the production line of things.

Recall, having recall and all that sort of stuff.

And recall and all that kind of stuff, then this is immense.

And I mean, I think to get the best out of this,

or get the most out of it,

you'd have to pretty much uninstall everything else.

Just focus on it.

Well, it can do everything.

I mean, if you want to do everything in one scene,

the Falcon's probably a pretty solid place to start.

Because years back, Alchemy was in a similar role, wasn't it?

Until it got swallowed up by Apple.

But that was heading into this do-it-all thing.

But I think Falcon has, I mean, Falcon and Omnisphere,

I think you've got everything you could ever need, really.

But however, again, you know,

more is more isn't always the way to...

Not for everybody.

Yes, not for everybody.

However, there's loads of really cool...

I really enjoyed...

And I recommend people watching this walkthrough of features,

because just...

If it was only those features, it would be amazing.

Do you know what I mean?

On top of everything else.

It's on top of everything else.

So, boom.

I mean, incredible, really.

But yeah.

Yes, not my thing.

No, fair enough, fair enough.

Paulie, I mean, again, you know, it's these sort of...

It's such a behemoth, isn't it?

It's such a massive amount of stuff that you could do with it.

I'm pretty sure if it doesn't do it as well,

because you can script and you can do all sorts of things,

you can probably make it do what you want it to do.

If not.

Yeah, definitely.

By the way, I've promised everyone I'm going to stop being in misery guts now

for the rest of the podcast.

Okay, well, I hadn't noticed, to be honest.

Let's be cool and positive.

And the features that stood out to me are,

one, yes, it looks like one of these monolith synthesizers, doesn't it?

Kind of like Omnisphere, where you go to it for nearly everything.

And I have one of these already.

I've found that in the sort of last...

You know, when I'm doing demos of a Eurorack module or something,

and I need a pad to go underneath it,

or I need a bass sound, or I need something.

Nine out of 10 times an hour, I'm using Pigments from Arturia,

which has samples as well.

And I think that's another one, which is a massive, huge wavetable,

samples, VA engine, FM, you know?

A kind of endless playground.

So I think, yes, as Gaz was saying, he made a great point.

You might need to uninstall everything else to really learn

such an instrument like this.

Because that's how it's felt with me and Pigments.

You know, I've kind of ignored everything else for the most part,

and just concentrated on that,

because it does the audio rate modulation I want, blah, blah, blah.

But back to this synth, and why I think it's really cool

is that there's a new wave shaper on board,

which is always brilliant to, you know,

rough up basic waveforms and do some really cinematic things.

One of my favorite sort of 90s synths with a wave shaper

and is the Korg 01W, which sounds incredibly cinematic and foreboding.

And I always like that kind of sound.

But I think the FM on Falcon looks really, really good now.

It looks like an actual accessible FM.

You have your input, whatever it is, the oscillator,

and then you have an A and you have a B.

And essentially, you can either run it through A,

you know, which is another operator.

You can run it through B, which could be at a different pitch.

And then maybe morph crossfade between them and get sounds that way.

And I think for that, that will cover a big, big range of FM sounds, you know,

for people who don't want the complexity of six operators.

So I think, you know, for people who are like,

well, I need some FM on top of the samples.

This is absolutely brilliant.

And the final thing I noticed was the data envelope,

which is like a kind of envelope follower,

but you can record in a sample of, say, a drum beat or something,

and it'll pick out the peaks and then you can keep it

and use that as your, you know, LFO or envelope.

Oh, that's an interesting idea.

Yes, which I think, I mean, Gaz, you went through them, didn't you?

It's like a fingerprint.

It does sound fun, doesn't it?

Recording an impulse or an envelope following thing

and then just whacking that on a pad or something, you know?

So that's the things that I like.

The drum fill at the beginning of EastEnders as an LFO.

Surely it's the, isn't it the end?

It's always at the dramatic point.

Sorry, the end, the end.

I think the drum fill at the beginning is really insignificant

and you hardly notice it.

Sorry, it shows how much I watch it.

Yeah, me neither, but I do remember enough

because I used to watch it.

I don't anymore, but that was a long, long time ago.

I'm glad not to.

Yeah, it looks fascinating.

I mean, it's really, and to be sure, if you are already owner,

it's a free update.

And as Technomatic said in the chat room,

they've had free updates for 10 years.

I mean, once you buy it, it's 10 years.

That is, you see.

I mean, so this is free for,

so this incredible update is free for existing owners?

Yes.

That's the way to go, isn't it?

Amazing.

With all that whole envelope.

Yeah, respect, respect.

Yeah, fair play, fair play to you folks.

Nicely done.

Um, okay, uh, what else do we, uh, what else do we do?

Did you get my thing about, um, the Sledgehammer breakdown?

Just out of interest.

Yes.

Mmm, I've seen some of his other breakdowns.

Maybe, yeah, it was pretty good.

Maybe we'll save that.

Let's have a look.

Um, let's have a look at, uh, let's do this one quickly

because I think this was just kind of an interesting,

it's kind of fun.

I don't know how, how, how much time we'll need to spend on it,

so we can use it as an amuse-bouche.

Hey there, guys, welcome back.

This is the RetroSynth ABDC.

I'm going to do a quick walkthrough of Abduction by Laszlo Dobrovolski.

So this is actually an MPE synth, believe it or not,

and all the controls here are the UI elements.

So there's no UI, it's like you, you open the window, you, you, you...

It is iOS.

Mess around.

Yeah, so it's touch.

Yes, it's iOS and it's AUV3.

So AUV3, I think, does that not work inside Logic?

AUV3?

I think it does.

And GarageBand?

And GarageBand, probably.

Maybe.

Yeah, uh, it's, the picture is the synth,

so, uh, Shepard Tones, band-limited two oscillators, noise mod,

uh, it's $4.99.

That's by Laszlo Dobrovolski.

I'm so sorry, I did, I forgot to make a note of who made the video,

um, because they did a run-through of it,

and I, I usually try and credit people, but, uh, so I didn't.

I, I don't get, um, Paulie, you mentioned this one,

because it just looked like a fun thing.

I mean, it's, it's a, it's a unique way of doing a user interface

and sort of throws out all of, all of any, any perceived wisdom

you might have on how to control an instrument.

So I suppose that's the...

Well, I mean, and you'd, you'd, you'd, you'd, you'd, you'd,

um, I mean, and you'd get very unusual muscle memory for it, wouldn't you?

Like, you know, grab the, grab the alien's head

to change the filter cutoff, I think, is one of them.

And then the other alien's head is the resonance.

I think that's, if, if I'm, um, remembering it correctly.

I think, uh, I think it was just a bit of fun.

Halloween's just around the corner.

It's my favorite time of year.

I wonder if this, this, I mean, has the sense of possibly being vibe coded,

although I wouldn't want to, uh, to, to, um, uh, to, to denigrate

the, the developer if that's not the case.

But I mean, I suppose this is the sort of thing one could do if, you know.

Is, is, is it a case of where, you know, I'm contradicting myself here already.

Is it a case of where, uh, if, if this is vibe coded, the, the UI and how,

you know, crazy it is kind of gives it a free pass in a kind of, you know, weird.

It's not true.

It's not.

People love to watch B-movies and stuff, don't they?

It feels like a B-movie synth.

It is.

It's not just a synth interface, is it?

As that's the way.

No.

For those, by the way, Synth Anatomy is in the chat room.

He wrote a great article about, uh, about dealing with all of these vibe coded releases,

which you should definitely check out.

But, uh, yeah, it's kind of fun.

I guess I'm guessing this probably doesn't appeal to you, but you are a gamer.

So there is a certain, I mean, you know, there's an angle there.

Yeah.

When he, I mean, it does make me think back to the glory days of Sonic Touch.

And when, when people were trying out all sorts of interesting ideas,

different kinds of interfaces, uh, a really early hit in the iOS world was a B-bot,

wasn't it?

The little robot that people.

Yes.

That was.

Loved it because.

Oh, yeah.

Wasn't that?

Didn't, didn't, um, uh, gosh, what's his name?

Uh, the, the wizard, the synth wizard.

What's his name?

Jordan Rudess.

He had something to do with that.

Oh, I'm not sure.

I mean, Jordan was certainly exploring and collaborating with different, um, makers in,

in exploring new forms of touch and interface.

And then this, you know, this is just, you know, it is, it is kind of fun.

I mean, um, if it enables people to explore synthesis without sort of getting bogged down

with the actual terminology, jargon and all that kind of stuff.

That is a very valid point.

I think, you know, you open the door, you open the door.

That's really interesting.

Cause I, I was watching back an old interview I did or not old, but last NAM with, uh, um,

the audio shake, uh, Jessica, uh, Jessica, I've forgotten her surname.

Uh, and she was saying that, you know, that that's all STEM separation stuff and it uses

machine learning or whatnot.

But she was saying is what happens if making something like this, if you're trying to get

your kid interested in music, they've not responded to, to the normal ways and you put

something this in front of them, they suddenly get tuned in and then they want to play with

the synth and then they want to play with the plugin.

These are the sort of things, the pathways that maybe you can open up for people to get

in, I suppose.

I like that.

That's a valid thing.

That's feels like a positive note.

Anyway, you can check it out.

It's, uh, it's on the app store.

It's called retro sci-fi synth, A, B, D, C, T, N.

There we go.

Abduction.

Oh, is that what it is?

Not enough vowels for me.

No vowels.

I couldn't make the, uh, just, just a random, there, there is, and I watch a, uh, a quiz

show on Monday nights on the UK called Only Connect.

And they have a round at the end where they have, um, clues.

So it might be music, music and politicians.

So I don't know, you might get Howard.

I can't think of anybody.

Um, but you know, there might, there might be something, a congenation of two words,

but they take all the vowels out and you've got to figure out what the word is.

So I suppose I should know a little bit about that, even though I'm terrible at that.

Sorry, that was a massive aside.

That's got absolutely nothing to do with anything, but well worth watching if you're

a quiz fan.

There's something in the air today.

There is something in the air.

I think I'm going a bit stir-crazy.

I did mention that because I'm going to China on Tuesday, my first time.

So I'm kind of like, I'm a little bit giddy because I just don't know what on earth to

expect.

I kind of, you know, part of me is thinking it could be my last ever trip just because

I've been to a strange world, you know, and anything could happen.

I might eat, I might eat something I shouldn't.

I don't know.

I'm sure I won't, but I'm looking forward to it immensely.

Nick, can I just jump in about the stem separation?

Because I've recently just bought Spectralayers 13 Pro 13.

Is that the Steinberg?

Steinberg, yeah.

And the reason I did that was because of the, um, how much more deeper you can go into stem

separation.

I talked about this last time I was on the show about going back to old, like, live recordings

that I'd made, oh, you know, of my bands.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Restoration jobs, yeah.

Yeah.

And then what Spectralayers lets you do is just go into it in so much more kind of forensic

detail.

For instance, you know, you can stem separate drums into kicks, snare, hi-hat, cymbals,

toms, uh, and, uh, so you can split, you know, you can get the drums out of, oh, the music

separation goes more layers than other ones that I've used.

Oh, yeah, yeah, because normally you get six layers, don't you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you've got a few that I haven't seen before.

So you'd split your layers, and then when you've split your layers and you've got the

drums, you can then split the drums into the components.

Oh, right, like kicks, snare, hi-hat.

Yeah, kicks, snare, hi-hat.

Wow.

And then it goes even further, you know, you can do, uh, you can do, like, sound effect,

um, you can split sound effects up into three parts, into tonal, noise, and I can't remember

what the other one is, but whatever else there is.

Wow, okay.

So for me, I'm like, you know, a lot of the, like, quasimodal jams that I've got, you know,

uh, I've got them recorded in a stereo drum mix and a stereo modular mix, but the modular

mix, you know, if you try and use conventional stem splitting for that, it can, it's, a lot

of the stuff is, it doesn't really know what it is because it's not the algorithm, but

if you do it and you split elements like noise, uh, you know, this, you use the sound effect

thing to split apart the stuff, then you kind of break it apart into these mixable components.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah, well worth a look at Spectralayers Pro 13.

Nice, nice tip.

Yeah, this is really interesting.

Some interesting comparisons with it and earlier versions of Spectralayers as well, where you

get to hear just how clean these, you know, the, the drum, when they do the drum separation

on the stereo drums, because the stereo drums are recorded extremely well anyway.

So you're giving it good source material when you listen to the stems.

It's quite interesting because you can listen to your mix and then listen to the stems.

Virtually, you know, identical to listen to if you sort of toggle between the split stems

all playing at the same time and the original.

So you kind of go, okay, it's kind of cool because, uh, but then if you do listen to

things and you kind of say in the toms and you're hearing some snare or something, you

can take elements and get and recombine them with, and tell them to go to other tracks

so you can clean it up extremely well.

Yeah.

Never seen anything quite like it.

Fascinating.

That sounds really interesting.

It's blowing my mind.

Yeah, very powerful.

Um, I should probably take a quick break here and, uh, be back after this, uh, message.

Yeah, that's an interesting, I actually, I should have put that in for the show release

actually.

That looks like an interesting effect.

It's like a combination of, uh, transit and something new as well.

They're using UI elements for that.

I don't know if you had a chance to check that.

I guess, I mean, I guess it's in software world, but, uh, that's the Baby Audio Hyper

Warp, which, uh, which looked kind of interesting.

Um, okay.

Uh, gosh, should we do, should we do the, the, the, we haven't got that much longer.

Should we do the Peter Gable thing?

I can't play the video.

Obviously I'll get completely busted.

Should we do that one?

Does, does anybody feel happy with that?

Yeah.

I haven't managed to watch it yet, but, uh.

That's all right.

We can talk about it.

So yeah, this is, so this is a Sledgehammer breakdown.

This is a MIDI, uh, MIDI error.

Found it on, uh, and put it on the site.

Obviously our site can't, you know, won't show YouTube videos to this browser for some

reason, but it's a breakdown of Sledgehammer, uh, 1986 song, arguably Peter Gable's greatest

hit and sort of relaunched his career, funded the building of real world.

And, you know, the whole album.

So it was collaboration with, uh, Daniel Anwar and all that recorded at, uh, Ashcombe house.

And it's a great video by creating music and sound.

And, uh, they just basically take the, the, the, the, uh, the multi-track apart, Manny

Cacci on drums, uh, Tony Levin on bass, and just those two elements alone.

You're just like, Oh, such a drip.

I mean that bass sound it's like on the Shakuachi or it's so iconic.

The video is really iconic as well.

And almost kind of kick-started a whole new wave of stop motion videos that were done.

In fact, uh, I think I did a video.

I did a track called Laceranissima in about 1990, which was still, you know, it was still

stop motion claymation video was still being kind of referenced and still being used then.

And that was, that was done by my old school friend, Dan Simpson.

And he did, you know, and that, I think, um, started it all.

It's just absolutely fascinating.

I think it was recorded at Ashcombe house, which was, uh, a house in box, not in box

in Woolley, uh, where I, in a bizarre twist of fate, we ended up renting the building

with a band that I used to be in, uh, and recording that.

And it was just amazing to think this is while Realwood was being built because Peter Gable

had moved out and was obviously touring.

So everywhere, it's a fascinating thing.

And just all the individual elements.

I don't know, Paul, if you've got a chance to, to check some of it, it was just, it's

like a proper iconic record with one of those tracks with everything's a hook.

Basically, isn't it?

Yeah.

I mean, that shakuhachi sound from the beginning, was it emulator or fair like that?

It's in the original, it's in the original emulator library, but you have to kind of,

in order to do it, you have to go, but yeah.

Yes.

You have to play really fast, I think.

Yeah.

And then you get that, that sound is really, really good.

By the way, just in case, you know, you never know who's watching.

Peter, give me a call.

I've got a song idea.

Anyway, yeah, I know, Troy Mullock.

The thing is, right, it's so iconic for so many reasons that it's like a forever, evergreen

kind of topic, you know, this kind of album, the more you go down the rabbit hole of the

production and the people behind it and stuff like that.

I think it was, the album was so, wasn't it?

I think.

Yes, it was.

And was it the one we don't give up on it?

Don't give up on Red Rain, all those classics.

Interestingly, I mean, probably Peter's last pop type of thing.

I mean, some of the tunes recently have been absolutely amazing, but this was so pure,

but such a purely, I know that legendarily it takes a very long time to make these kind

of things, you know.

I think, yeah, I mean, it was really pop because after, on stuff like

the 1992 one with Talk To Me and...

Up.

Is it Up or Us?

I can't remember.

Us.

And Digging In The Dirt, which is my favourite Peter Gabriel song, apart from the earlier

stuff on Melt and things like that, Intruder I love.

He went either kind of cool world music after this album, he went kind of cool world music

or kind of a little bit darker, you know.

I know he did a song called, a few years later, called Darkness, which is really, really dark,

you know, and really, really cool.

So this possibly was his most poppy song.

And, you know, there's some kind of, on the live tour of this, there's some jazz poppy

arrangements of earlier kind of grungier tunes like No Self Control, which is another

favourite of mine.

But I digress anyway.

This song, I think I first heard on the Beavis and Burrhead show, randomly.

You remember, they used to watch music videos.

They used to watch music videos in between the, you know, Hey Beavis,

kind of sketches.

And then, and this came on.

And, of course, it's Peter Gabriel having loads of water thrown in his face, and then

on a roller coaster, and then a dancing chicken.

And then all of these cool, like, you know, funk riffs are played.

I think it's Tony Levin on bass, isn't it?

Oh, yeah.

On Chapman's stick.

No, it wasn't.

No, it wasn't.

It was Music Master.

Oh, that's cool.

That's awesome.

With an octave higher.

Who is another musician who's just absolutely played in some absolutely amazing ensembles

and stuff.

Yeah, no, really good.

Stuff like that.

So it's, the world may see it as a, just his most number one pop, poppy, throwaway

masterpiece, maybe.

But the actual depth and the musicianship in this layers, in these layers, is absolutely

phenomenal.

Because it would have been, 86, it would have been pre-Pro Tools, you know, because

I think Manicacci, Manicacci was one of those drummers who was, was really popular because

he had a real stylistic kind of, it was that thing when you do the, on the little, you

have the little splash symbol, and the drum fills that fell over the, the bar boundary,

and those are, you know, I mean, as well as everything else.

I mean, he's a bloody great drummer.

So it had, that was the thing that was interesting to me, and this was actually a very pedestrian

arrangement in a lot of ways, you know, in terms of instrumentation, but everyone, there

was a really interesting story in the video about how Peter Gabriel wanted to use the

Memphis horns because he'd seen Otis Redding play.

Yeah.

Back in, you know, at some point, and he got the original, the remaining member did the

horn arrangement for that, and it's a beautiful horn arrangement as well.

It's just, I think it's a masterpiece, guys.

I mean, I know you'd appreciate this because it's live musicians, right?

Well, yeah, and also David Rhodes was integral in the arrangement of this.

I was fortunate enough to tour with David as his bass player, and he told me about,

partly about the writing of this and how, interestingly, he wasn't in the writing credits,

but he'd sort of done largely a lot of the arrangement of it.

Peter being of the more old school top line and lyric kind of is the song, and I thought

about that for a while, and I was thinking, yeah, because like, if you imagine like a

female jazz pianist doing it in a different key,

the song would survive that transformation, wouldn't it?

But it's got nothing to do with the original arrangement.

And I kind of thought about that.

I was like, oh, okay, yeah, sort of, you know, it's, yeah, anyway, but I find quite

interesting, though, how, because the arrangement, the sound, everything combines on this,

and as Paulie mentioned, the video was just immense, and without the video,

it probably wouldn't have been the massive success.

Well, it was one of those things that MTV.

And it was our beloved Bristol Aardman animation who were responsible for it.

Did you notice, when you saw the video, it's brilliant, there's all these little things,

it always is like, that bit looks like the pepperami advert that they did like 10 years later.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.

Yeah, it's brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

And now, obviously, we've been talking about 2011, and the way his bass is, you know,

it's super compressed on this, and it's a...

Octivider as well, isn't it?

Yeah, and it's the way it moves, it's just, it's fantastic.

I don't think you could do that.

I mean, not only that, but one thing I noticed,

it's really hard to play with an octivider that cleanly,

and he's got loads of really good articulations.

You play an octave up, I know that, but yeah, amazingly.

I saw Tony playing, like I mentioned, I think to you before,

about when I saw him playing with Beat a few months ago.

Yeah, it was fantastic.

Oh, wow.

Tony had just turned 80 years old, you know,

and there he was, sprightly as ever, playing as brilliantly as he ever did,

and, you know, and I was just bowled over by his...

He's one of my, you know, the bass player part of me.

Tony is one of my biggest idols, amazing.

In fact, I was, you know, I was quite humbled

when I went out on tour with David,

to think that, like, David's used to playing with Tony,

and I was going, no, he's saddled with me.

Did you Tony up?

Did you have to Tony up?

Did you think about shaving your head and growing a moustache?

But see, he's just the coolest of the cool, I think Tony is.

But his bass line, you know, but I mean, it is, isn't it?

It's sort of, maybe this, I haven't watched it yet,

so I apologise for that, but the breakdown,

but just off the top of my head, thinking about just the layers,

and as you say, it is, everything is hooks, isn't it?

Because that bass line,

all that syncopation in the bass line, and, you know,

that's all hook, that's all hooky, isn't it?

And the drum fill, you know, and the loop,

it's not a loop, but you know, it is, yeah.

Yeah, just, you know, and it's sort of,

in some ways, it's like the 80s, the most 80s thing ever.

Do you think, I think it pre, I think it post,

I think it's very post 80s, but it happened in the 80s.

That's the thing I would say.

Okay, yeah, okay, fair point, fair point.

And what I was going to go on to say, I was, I was meaning, you know, 1986, MTV,

the video, all of that kind of stuff is being sort of like, as a kind of thing.

But I was going to say that's, but the song transcends the era

and still manages to sound super fresh,

where some 80s production sounds kind of really laboured and stiff.

This has movement, it has groove, it has feeling, and it's-

And the song.

And like, you know, I remember distinctly hearing it for the very first time.

I'm sure many of us do.

It was around the same time, I think, as Addicted to Love by Robert Palmer.

Oh, yeah, okay.

You know, which had, for me, a similar impact of just this kind of,

like, it's so in your face, the production, you know, but Sledgehammer was-

I mean, it followed all the, you know, all the,

but Sledgehammer was-

I mean, it followed all the classics.

I mean, apart from the length, because at that time, to get on the radio,

it was like three minutes, three minutes 30.

This is five minutes, 45 seconds long.

I mean, it's ridiculous.

But it had, you know, it has the,

and that's the intro.

And it's like, okay, right, we know what this track is.

And so it's literally-

It's Sledgehammer time.

Yeah, Sledgehammer time.

And yeah, it's just a masterpiece in sort of pop production.

Apart from the length and the arrangement.

The arrangement is intro, verse one, verse two, re-intro, double chorus,

middle eight, and then outro.

There's only two, there's only, no, there's only two choruses in it,

which is unusual.

It's not chorus repeat.

It's-

No, and it sticks though, doesn't it?

It really sticks.

I mean, yeah, masterful in every-

Going into the, you know, going into the minor key at the end with the whole,

♪ I kick the hair a bit, kick the hair a bit, kick the hair a bit. ♪

The backing vocals are superb.

Careful, we'll get busted.

Yeah, the backing vocals, yeah.

Anyway, I just, it's a joy to behold.

It's well worth, just if you've not, because I've never heard the multitrack,

and I'd be interested to know where he gets them.

I mean, I get, I wonder if it's stem separations,

or a lot of these end up on the internet, don't they?

I kind of wondered that.

But he had the reverb from the drums separately,

which I think was a very specific track,

and that would have been quite hard to-

That would have to be multitrack.

And just listening to the mix, I was listening to the mix beforehand,

and there's the ding-ding-ding, the guitars,

and they're all sort of quite quiet,

and then at the end, in the outro, he turns it back really loud.

It's like, whoa, bloody hell, louder than the drums almost,

and then back down again.

It's quite a very dynamic mix,

and that's, I think that was Daniel-

One of Daniel Lanoir's, that was his entry

onto the super producer kind of world stage, I think, wasn't it?

Oh, he's incredible, Daniel Lanoir.

Yeah, he's, yeah, wow, yeah, Daniel Lanoir, what a career.

He's well worth an episode alone, isn't he?

Just many episodes, just sort of looking at his work,

and his absolutely different approach to things.

Yeah, amazing.

Absolutely, well, anyway, that's quite a joyful note to end on.

We don't have to talk about anything like that, but hurrah!

It's been lovely talking to you.

Thank you so much for joining, Gaz.

You've got anything coming up?

You're streaming, you're doing any kind of,

any of that sort of business?

Oh, God, I keep saying that I'm going to, and I do intend to.

Yeah, well, you do it when you're ready, don't you?

Yeah, I suppose so, but again, just if you've missed it

at the top of the show, you know, Saturday night,

playing with Steve Davis in Bristol, in kit form,

Saturday night, as part of Leap Club.

But there's a whole host of things just bubbling under,

so I have got various news.

Oh, you went to see Poitrine de, what's it, didn't you?

I went to see Poitrine last night, I went to see them.

Okay, show's not over yet, I want to hear about it.

It's worth it, because, you know, for a start,

because there is a technical element, like a music tech element to it,

which I think is quite interesting to try and dissect.

A few of my musician friends, Greg, the drummer of Quasimodo,

was there with me yesterday as well.

So we were, you know, we were really, everybody,

everybody there was just blown away.

It was a three and a half thousand people there,

which is, you know, amazing.

Last time they played in Bristol was Strange Brew earlier in the year,

which is like, I don't know, I guess about 300 capacity.

You know, and then to sell out, it sold out within the first hour,

I think the tickets were on sale.

Well, you know, and this is this thing, isn't it, you know,

where something that's gone viral, which everybody, you know,

everybody in the world, it seemed, got exposed to it.

And as with these things, you know, does it live up to the hype?

Can they actually do it live?

And my goodness, they can.

And it's such a feat of technical wizardry.

It's amazing.

But there's something like they managed to get the balance right

of this complexity of microtonality, polyrhythms,

or maybe, yeah, odd time signatures.

The guitarist, or the thing,

there's thing one and thing two, I have no idea.

So let's say guitarist is thing one.

Mastery of looping.

I was realizing how much they bank loops.

I think they're using a 505 boss foot looper,

but they might be using more.

I haven't actually managed to see the pedal boards,

but playing a riff, then that riff loops,

switching over from the guitar to the bass,

putting a bass line in,

playing like a kind of polyrhythmic part over the top of that,

then muting the original riffs.

The polyrhythmic part plays a moment that they've already sort of laid down.

They mute the other licks.

Then the drummer switches onto the new rhythm

exactly on moment.

Yeah, astonishing.

You can, and then bringing in these other parts,

but everything, there's no backing tracks.

Everything that you hear is created in the,

you know, is created.

And then, as I say, looped, performed back.

So Chris Powell, a great friend of mine was there,

and afterwards we were going,

they must have a click track running to sort of,

because the way, you know, but that's,

that the audience doesn't hear.

And that's not a problem at all.

It's just that in order to kind of be so synchronized with the looper,

they must have to have something just holding time

because they do all these stops.

Do you know what, what does it use?

What's the looper that they use?

Is it a 505?

As I said, I think it might be a five,

sorry, the 500, the floor version of the 505,

the RC 500.

Oh, which, because that has a tempo sync drum track

you can send out of a click track output.

You can have it just do cowbells or.

Yeah, exactly.

That's my, and that's what,

how I feel that they are managing to do it.

However, you know, you're looking at this thing about

how difficult can you make it for them?

You know, not only.

Wear a mask, that means you can't see anything.

Yeah, with tiny little eye holes.

And then, but you're also having to do,

you know, you're playing microtonally on both instruments.

So there's so many.

His back is going to be so, so knackered

after a couple of tours.

And I feel so.

It's something funny.

There's so many things that are funny that happen though

in between songs.

They kind of, they do this thing,

that's the symbol, like a triangle.

And, you know, and it's so funny how everybody's kind of

induced into this kind of cultism.

Like anytime, everyone's there in the audience holding it.

And you could just look and see, you know,

thousands of people all doing this symbol.

I think really, ultimately though,

and the final thing I'd like to say about this

is just the way that it connects with people on a visceral

and I think they kind of got their pop smarts about them.

They've, they sort of know.

Well, they're big on iconography.

I mean, and that's how it brings, makes sense.

I would, I just, I just like to say a point, okay.

Many people don't know this.

Perhaps they've never heard of it.

Ted Milton of Blurt, very famous sort of punk band in the UK.

He used to have an alter ego called Mr. Pew,

called Pew's Puppets.

As a child, I used to see Pew's Puppets playing

and they looked like that.

And I wonder whether they'd seen pictures.

So they'd have like massive great noses and sort of long things

and then dot and polka dots.

I was just looking at them.

I could only find, yeah, it's really interesting idea.

So if you get a chance, so Walker Festival,

when I was a child, that's where I would go

and hang out at, into my 14, 15.

Mr. Pew's Puppets used to play there in the field

and Mr. Pew's Puppet, it was like Punch and Judy,

but really bonkers, you know, and like really sort of punk.

Punk, Punch and Judy.

Yeah.

Anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt there,

but I suppose I do have to stop the show at some point.

I think the final point of that was though,

is they do the, they kind of do the drop

and then they bring in this groove

and the audience just go, you know,

they just play with you for a while,

play with the idea of it.

It's coming, it's coming and they hold it off until,

and then pow, and it's just irresistible.

Yeah, top, top, 10 out of 10, phenomenal.

Yeah.

Fantastic.

Yeah, it's an interesting one.

Math Rock for the win.

I hate that term, I hate that term.

What would you call it then, Gaz?

For me, it's Space Rock.

It sounded like, it sounds like gong.

It sounds like the Omriff, you know,

it sounds like it's, it's space.

I think it's, I think it's got,

because this is, it's aliens making Space Rock.

Okay, fair enough.

Paulie, how would you describe it?

Not Math Rock.

Not Math Rock.

Okay, Space Rock sounds good enough.

Yeah, it is kind of space, isn't it?

I, I, um, I would love it

if we were allowed more weird bands in the mainstream.

Basically, it's like, they're absolutely amazing,

but I'm like, can we just have loads more of that?

Well, no, but this is, I mean, without,

without starting a whole new topic,

that I think this is one of the,

I think this is one of the, the byproducts of

bypassing the music industry,

because if it was left to a regular record company,

kind of A&R route,

this band would never have existed,

or they would never, but because they've got the,

they've got the imagery, they've got the,

and everybody's going, what the hell is that?

And they've gone via YouTube.

And here's an interesting thing.

The thing that went viral is the KEXP session,

which was like a mini concert.

I think you had five tunes, maybe six,

four to six tunes.

I'm not sure how many it was,

but rather than sometimes when something goes viral,

it might be a song.

It might even be a clip of something.

But what actually went viral

was like a substantial performance

where you got to hear numerous songs.

And I thought, wow, I've not actually,

that's what really stuck with me.

I was thinking, because most people I know

watched, were compelled to watch all these songs.

And by the time you've actually watched a bunch of them,

you kind of get it.

You sort of go, oh, this stuff is great.

So I think it was quite interesting

that in this short attention span era,

that the thing that kind of did catch was,

wasn't just a single song, as I say,

was that particular performance.

I think it's KEXP and, you know.

Yeah, that's true.

That's very good.

And very powerful.

That's Angine de Portrine,

just for my transcription software,

which we'll have to try and pull out this chapter.

Right, interesting.

Okay, well, let's call it there.

Paulie, lovely to see you.

I guess you'll be looking at things

which we can't talk about at the moment,

but I'm sure you've got lots of other stuff going on.

I noticed you did some, you did the,

well, I don't know what you've been doing videos for.

You probably can't talk about any of it.

So, you know, I'm sure you're busy.

I've done a video for a Eurorack module

by Trilling Synths called the Dark Dual Arpeggio.

And it's an absolutely fantastic dual arpeggio

that you can either just run as two arpeggiators

or completely mess up with CV,

but still keep it kind of in time, you know.

And I was doing some weird polyrhythmic stuff myself

with that, synchronizing it

to a 1984 Cheetah Spec drum machine,

which was cool.

But the other thing I wanted to mention is

I'm going to be going to SynthFest in Sheffield.

Oh, yes, of course.

Yes, fantastic.

Which is going to be awesome.

You know, I think that's going to be the cure

for my kind of burnout and, you know.

I did, I forgot to mention, SynthFest is on the 24th,

isn't it, in Sheffield.

Sadly, you can't be there.

So, yes, do check that out.

SynthFest UK, Paulie will be there.

And it's the sort of sound on sound organized event.

I forgot to plug it.

I did post a news item about it, I think.

But anyway, yeah.

So that'll be a lot of fun.

And then slightly later on the 30th,

I'm at Birmingham Conservatoire teaching them

about how to scare people, witless, with sound.

So there we go.

That's me.

Excellent.

Well, lovely to see.

I've already asked you, Gaz.

And then we talked about pottering.

So I won't give you another outro.

No.

But thank you so much, everybody.

That's finished.

That's finished.

Thanks ever so much.

It was lovely talking to you all.

That was Sonic Talk, episode 913.

See you all.

We'll be back in a couple of weeks.

We'll be back in November.

There will be a pre-record, hopefully, on one of the weeks.

I haven't decided when it's going to go.

See you later, folks.

Take care.

Bye-bye now.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.