An excerpt of POLYBIUS 2.0 by Raquel Meyers + Goto80
Recorded at fh.meppen, Berlin 100113.
Presented by Visual Berlin

Since 2007, the allround venue Worm in Rotterdam has housed CEM – a studio that dates back to 1956. Last week, I had the opportunity to spend 4 days there, amounting in around 20 (sketches for) new songs. These will be released over time, but for now you can listen to three tiny teasers at wormstudio.

I used the Arp 2500 and a Commodore 64. I sequenced, played the keyboards and tried different ways of synchronizing them. Eventhough the studio has so many machines to use, I deliberately focused on one in order to gradually improve my trial and error methods (being somewhat inexperienced with modular monsters).

The C64 has analogue filters and is not as deterministic as other computers – something I always appreciated. I saw this residency as an opportunity to amplify and recontextualize these characteristics, in order to take the C64 into a new ultra dimension.

Neither of these machines are optimum for setting exact tempos. Unlike today’s standards they are influenced or even determined by electric currents. On the 10-step sequencer of the Arp, you have a knob to set the tempo, and every millimeter counts. To me it also seemed to fluctuate a bit in the tempo, possibly caused by other signals leaking into the clock signal. (This can be solved, but I like to encourage these things)

On the C64, you normally have predetermined tempo-settings to choose from. If you hear a C64-song, it will likely be in either 125.31 or 150.37 BPM. In European PAL-country that is, because the tempos are derived from the electric current.

However, with my dear Defmon software I can set the tempo with maximum precision – down to a tick of the processor. Going out of the inherent tempos however, has consequences for the sound. You can no longer be sure that envelopes and loops sound the same. To avoid this, I usually have the C64 as master, but this time I adjusted the tempo after the Arp.

The process was this: output the clock signal of the Arp as audio, sample 2 minutes of it, analyze the BPM, convert the BPM into hex-values according to the other speed settings of Defmon, and you got it synchronized. Sort of.

I can hear all you tech-geeks sighing over this lamer solution. But it was wonderful to leave the machines running, hearing them mutate by themselves since they were slightly out of sync, or due to electrical leakages in the Arp and uncontrolled bugs in the C64. From a technical point of view, this might be possible to do with a laptop, but this was sometihng profoundly different from working with über-data-control.

All this amounted to several hours of recordings. Some of these 30 minute improvisations can be cut up in parts, and overdubbed with more C64, to create songs that also relate to eachother quite specifically. But we will see what happens. I already miss that studio with tropical heat and sparkling beats!

Two videos of me & Raquel’s gig at HAIP Festival last November, filmed by r00000s. The sound will please the distortion lovers! To get a good look of the visuals, high quality is available: double-click on the video and then click just below the bottom right of the video. It is magically embedded in high-quality, which seems to work on newer browsers atleast. Stay up2date, fuck the past!

Tonight at 19.30 Goto80 and Skuggan will perform on Swedish TV (Barnkanalen). It’s an Idol / Talent Hunt kind of show, where the crowd and jury consist of 10 year old children. So don’t miss honest critique, castrate vegetable action, and data rock confusion! I’m guessing it will be ripped and shared soon enough …

update: torrent of the video is here (thanks rosamannen!)
update2: complete song here
update3:

HELLO. Back from this year’s LCP, hanging out with the C64 elite boys, trying to be friends although everybody is just there to win the compos. Hehe. Lately (as in the last years) I haven’t really been up to the challenge of making those winning songs anymore. The tunes I make at demoparties are usually a bit weirder. So bare with me..

Goto80 – Ponky my C64-song, got #3 in the competition. It’s some kind of dub-blues-rock, or something? Made on a 6581 but sounds best on 8580. The C64-emulator VICE does a pretty good job with this. Or, you can check out the ultra-sloppy remixes: MP3#1 and MP3#2.

Made music for two Amiga releases: Otro’s announcement intro for Mazemod – which is an online Amiga radio channel. (not yet really online though, hehe) And yeah, also made a quick’n'dirty module for the new DUREX release: The Message.

Me and Frantik also did a live-set that might pop up online sooner than Pat Boone. Or Bryan Adams. In the meantime you should definitely check out this youtube-clip – recorded in the middle of the first night of LCP… while you were sleeping, losers! Goto80 + Frantik – Summer of 64

More about LCP here

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Some pretty trashy uploads to internet2008.se:

Goto80 – Bull i Bit
Goto80 – Baggis (8kbps Doublespeed Error)
Goto80 – Fishbabe
Goto80 – Foros (Volume Rimixi)
Goto80 – g80raggatest1b

Oh, I found this little video recording where me and Rune Bune play live at Microdisko in Copenhagen last November. Unfortunately you can’t see Rune’s C64-visuals as they were on another wall. Some of the photos got some of the magic though. Stu’s liveset was also filmed – here – but Computadora Feliz’s set wasn’t, unfortunately. Anyway, they were shown at Copenhagen local TV (highly recommended, btw!) around christmas aswell apparently. Merry christmas! And here’s a glimpse of the live-jam that happened aswell:

So Up Rough turns 10 years old, god damn! Frexxy party axxion!
Ok we perform ok! Dual SX-64 audiovisual mongofunky combat! (oh, and the laptop hehe)
More videos, photos and stuff @ uprough.net

Hello! Marseille rules, Sweden sucks. Data Airlines Festival was the biggest chip music event so far in Europe. (Blipfestival coming up soon btw) Gameboy+303. Streetgameboying. Naked booty boys. Dojo dancing. Robberies. Pastis. Salad. Hector. Vectrex. And more photos here and here and here and here and so on.

Goto80: Live at Main07 (last 26 minutes, thanks to Knos/TPOLM)

Me and Entter released a little machinima-something for the wild compo aswell, called “Polygonal Canyon 243313″ which should be online soon. Data trash gameoidz, yummy yum yum. Update 071112: Available here.

photo by nullsleep

Microdisko Oslo has put up a live recording from the shows of me and Meneo. These shows went on without any harm, which wasn’t the case the day after in Stockholm where Meneo and Entter were thrown off stage 3 times for some sort of indecent exposure which is illegal in Sweden (newsflash!). Hello.

Hm, this tour thing started off pretty retarded. After spending a whole day watching regional weather reports and sitcom re-runs, I had to repair a broken live-set, fix tickets, commit fruit fly genocide and pack my bags in the first morning of this 2,5 week “tour”. I was going to the Formanova Festival in Denmark by train. To cut a long story short, I missed 2 trains, managed to get a ticket sales person to say “There is no way to complain. There are no names here. It’s all your fault, for using Internet.” and arrive 20 hours late to the festival. Totale Friday the 13th stylee! But me, Korvex and Cris got to the festival in time to see Duracell and Karsten Pflum do their thing! Other highlights of the festival included Isan, Rumpistol and the mysteriously wasted Dan – normally spotted passed out at microparties in Malmö. Here is a 10 minute video of most concerts of the festival.

Ok, pause in Malmö with falafel slacking and looking for scales to see if my luggage fit that damn Ryan Air 15 kilo limit. My friend Kim came to the rescue, and then we went on a Varberg-esque frenzy around Malmö, featuring projectile goose-shit catapult fountains and intoxication. Later that evening we lost the scales and got our first hardcore gay harassment in the toilet at Debaser! Ajaj! Next day I managed to find the airport and flight, and arrived in Madrid almost 2 hours late to find Rubeck who’d been watching a passed out stoner teen being harassed by security people at Nuevos Ministeros. Got to Bilbao the next day for a few days of hard data labour with Entter. We remixed C64 audio and visuals with RAM-hacking and worked on the forthcoming data karaoke. We also played a concert at Euskal Encounter – a huge demo/lan-party which was surprisingly silent and tidy. First time I got to sign an autograph on a laptop!

Live-recording from Euskal Encounter (trashy)

I found my way back to Sweden in time for the pre-pre-BFP-party with the cream of the 8-bit underground elite squadz. Non stop hard data action, until going to the pre-BFP party in Fabriken, Helsingborg. The following day the party started, and I was conveniently trashed but kept on computing and in the end I had at least 5 songs in the competitions, under various pseudonyms. Me and Autoboy also did a dual-C64 tracker jam concert! I can recommend all the amiga music, Cool Ska Cool by Up Rough (youtube), Appetizer by Durex, Goa Brudbilder 2 by Hack n’ Trade, Deep Throat by Durex, and so on. Watch photos and download everything here

My photos from this whole ordeal is here.