So seriously, yeah, something would have to go. Basically, the sicavio would have to go. No, no, no. And it's really like you were loving that thing. Is it an additive synthesizer, the sicavio?

No, it's FM and sampling. Okay. And the great thing with the sampling is that if you transpose it down, it really scales down the oscillator that is driving the samples. So you're always playing back every single sample, regardless if you play it back fast to a slower. And this just sounds so much nicer than if you interpolate. Yeah. But of course, it's an insane luxury. Yeah. Because that means every single voice has to have their own set of digital to analog converters and filters and everything. And that was possible because the philosophy of the sicavio was it doesn't matter what it costs. We built the best system period. Yeah.

Wow, I was unaware of that. Are there any other mono samplers that do that?

I'm not sure. Probably.

What kind of, yeah, I remember interviewing Dave Rossum and he was mentioning this kind of brute force approach of playing back

samples. But I mean, that's why the SP12 sounds so strange.

Yeah. He really was not a fan when he was making it. He was up as an engineer. He was very frustrated because he was like, this is terrible. I mean, listen to

it. No, I mean, but it leads to this if you transpose the hi-hat on the SP12 and you get 500 different hi-hats.

It's true. Yeah, the aliasing is just a wonderful world. Absolutely. I mean, it can get a little tiresome. I must admit, I think it's been overused so much, you know. I sometimes hear the effect and just think, okay, you know, I don't really want to hear that aliasing again.

Yeah, I understand this. But I have a question for you. You also have the infernal machine. I do. And I hate the reverb. Yeah. The reverb sounds like nothing else in a bad way. Oh, yeah. And so

what are you doing with it? Well, I like the reverb. So there's that. Yeah, I really like it.

What are you using for?

Well, I love the pitch shifter, although it's not as... Of course. Yeah. So I use it mostly for the pitch shift. I like how it has these extremely long delays like it can and also like it's a good sampler. Interesting.

I never used it as a sampler. You use it by a MIDI just triggering the two voices.

That's how Prince used it, apparently. That was like one of the main reasons Prince had it.

But you can't store anything. So that means you record the sample, you play with it and you record the result and that's it.

That's pretty much it. I mean, yeah, I mean, I must have... I don't use a sampler that often. But the time stretching is quite

cool.

You know, so yeah, I mean, that's the thing. Yeah, I understand if you don't like the reverbs, but I find them quite... I just find them amazingly weird and cool. No, absolutely.

Maybe I should try it again. I mean... Yeah. I think they're cut out very often. And for me, this reverb is completely white.

It's true. Yeah, it's very clangy. It's just that it's very like... It's unrefined. But again, I really love that because I feel like if you run that, if you don't... You can't think of it as a reverb, basically. I think that's the first mistake. It's not a reverb. Although cathedral B is quite charming. Yeah. And I think we have to add... If you want it to sound more dimensional, then obviously you run it into a 15-80s or something that can modulate time and give you that chorus thing that it's kind of lacking. Give you... You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's for sure. But you have the other units, the other public funds,

right? Yes. They are really... The DHM is just a...

Magical box. Yeah. Yes. It has a totally different pitch shifting algorithm. Is that what it does? Pitch shift and delay, right?

Yeah, it does only pitch shifting. But the great thing is you have two controls where you define the start and the end point. And basically it tries to find a suitable segment in between. And you have this freeze button. So you put anything into it. Yeah. And then you press freeze and you play with the start and the end point. Ah. Just beautiful. It's a performance sampler. Yeah. It's really...

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That slightly reminds me of, you know, the old 6-1-2, the Akai. Yeah.

Yeah, probably similarities. Yeah.

It has like a start and end slider. Yeah. Which is a great thing because it's... And you can pull the start point, I think. You can pull it through the end point and then just... And then it plays reverse. I think. It has a disastrous effect in a great way. That's a great sampler. Yeah, I really... I must crack that one out again. But yeah, I mean, ah, yeah. Now I know it's funny, the infernal machine, it said it does... I mean, it does its own thing, doesn't it? It's just, it's crude, you know? It's crude. The pitch shifting is incredible. The pitch shifting is remarkable. I find it incredible that it can... The way it tracks polyphonic material, it's pretty good at it. It's like it just sort of has a way with polyphonic material that I absolutely love. Yeah. I

will give it a try again after I will talk here.

I mean, if you have one at works, then, you know, that's already a big thing. It should.

Actually, the one channel is acting up. But

it's already on my to-do list of having a look. Really? You're not afraid of looking at an infernal machine. Well,

the problem is something very simple. It seems to be a loose connection somewhere. Okay, good. So, and for everything else, well, you know, I take it and travel to Paris to bring it to the man.

Oh, yes. Have you ever sent him stuff before?

He repaired the DHM, yes. And

it comes back just in incredible form, doesn't it?

Oh, I mean... Like those staggering end. He's correct. The amount of effort Mr. Prager puts into these things is insane, yes. Really incredible.

Yeah, well, I love watching his progress reports because it's like, and now, I'll give him the power supply. What he means by that is he will depopulate the entire PCB, watch it, repopulate everything. You're like, you're not messing around. When you say you're cleaning it, you really are cleaning it. No, it puts other attacks to

shame, really. But honestly, I don't know how he can... I mean, he's teaching at the university, so at the music concert, I think that pays the bill because the amount of hours he puts into this repair... Oh, absolutely.

Yes, it's staggering. It really is. But yeah, I mean, hey, one of the reasons we are talking for one of the reasons is that I'm told of old music, talk about old things becoming new again. One of your older records is now going to be released again.

It's out already, yeah. Hong Kong, the very first monolack album. Yes.

Now, we've talked about how it feels to be able to know how to feel to revisit all of that music.

Ah, that's a good question. It works a lot of mixed feelings. Yeah. There is definitely a sense of achievement, like, wow, that still sounds good. But of course, when you do something out of a state of complete ignorance and innocence, it has an energy that is hard to maintain afterwards. Yes. Very well put. So, that's the mental challenge. There is so many beautiful moments in there that are the result of just fooling around without any hesitation. Yeah.

No, completely. Yeah, that beginner's mind. I mean, I suppose, is that something that draws you to different tasks and challenges is to try to be a beginner

again? Not really, because I think I can't do that. Right. I'm way too much concerned about repeating myself, about repeating what has been done by others before, by copying without adding my own character to it, and so on. All these kinds of things that come to your mind, if you do artistic creation for a long time. Yeah.

So,

what I attempt these days is to make things that make sense from a formal perspective. So, quotation marks, good compositions. So, where I can say, okay, this is meaningful, what I'm doing there. It's not just random things thrown together, but it feels there's a reason behind things. And in a way, of course, working with limited technology helps because it helps focusing. Yeah. So, one of the beautiful aspects of working with the old computers was the fact that I have three computers doing sound, and each computer is doing one sound at a time. So that means whatever I do has to work with three voices and plus effects. And in a way, that brings me back to how a lot of the old monolay stuff was recorded, because it was also just a very limited amount of technology. So for instance, a lot of the very early sequencing was seriously just a TR505, where the MIDI pads could send out different MIDI notes on different MIDI channels. And this was used to trigger the drums and the arpeggiator, and everything else was playing by hand and overdub.

Yeah, that was your master sequencer. Yeah.

For the first few tracks, definitely. And then later, self-written Max-Petch, which was also very limited. Yeah. So the limitations, they really help. I think the biggest challenge these days is before doing something, setting yourself a goal, say, okay, this is what I really want to explore, and then stick to it.

Well, in your case, that exploration can last months and possibly years, it seems. Yeah,

especially since I'm getting slower and

slower. I mean, each project, I mean, I was so fascinated by, for example, this Commodore project. Once the idea comes in your head, presumably you just bought one of these machines and started to explore it and started to realize, oh, this appeals. And I want to keep doing this. There's something about this that I'm really enjoying and it's going deeper and I'm going in.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, I

had

this. At some point, I was convinced that I could potentially do something that deserves a concert. And with that feeling, I decided to see how far I can push it. And that was the moment when I started to really seriously work on it. And when I started to seek out for collaborators to help me with offloading some of the coding work and also to have other people who share artistic visions. And when that turned out to be fruitful and created also some sort of mutual resonance where everyone involved said, this is going to be good, that gave me the confidence to move on. And honestly, before the premiere, I thought I have three options. Either it's a complete failure or it's going to be okay or the most unlikely case, it might actually be good. And well, I thought all three cases are valid. If it fails, then I can at least say I tried. I tried something that no one else tried before and I didn't have good luck with it, but at least I did. And if it's okay, well, then again, I tried something no one did before and I got an acceptable result. This is also good. Of course, the fact that I'm still doing it. And I've done it now 30 times, which I find an enormous amount of gigs given the complexity of the project. I honestly think it's the best thing I ever did. Like if I look at it from all angles.

Yeah, I think I agree. It's really compelling. It's sad I have not had a chance to witness it in person.

I have plans to bring it to the US. Oh, really? Oh, marvelous. The idea would be that I need to source these computers locally in the US. So I got on and this is planned for next year. I'm going to reach out to a few universities and the computer history museum and such people and see if we can get five running machines sourced in the US. It's quite hard to find. Not really. I mean, the topic is working state. Yes. So that would be something to incorporate, for instance, the electrical engineering or computer science department from a university and having some students and say, okay, let's find these old machines on eBay or wherever. Let's make sure they really work and then tour

with them. Is it typical stuff like power supplies and all

of that? Everything. I mean, they are old and the main problem is that very often machines from that period end up more or less in some basement and, you know, there's moisture and it's rust. So you see a lot of pictures of machines rescued from such places that just look bad because yeah, basement. Yeah.