Create Digital Music » Something New is Coming From Elektron; Elektron Fans Getting Restless

Mar 17 2010

Something New is Coming From Elektron; Elektron Fans Getting Restless

Mark of the octopus. The mystery continues. Photo (CC-BY-ND) Allen Elliotte.

With Germany’s Messe trade show just a week away, buzz is pretty well focused on Swedish boutique machine maker Elektron, that beloved manufacturer of the Machinedrum. They’re about to launch something, and it’s a product with “octa” in the name, but that’s about all that’s known. Of course, that hasn’t stopped the Elektron fanbase from getting well worked up in an increasingly hilarious set of message threads. (Bless you, fora.)

First, the rampant speculation:
Are we expecting a new Elektron product at Musikmesse?

User Atiko, however, notes in a video of Elektron assembly a button labeled “Octatrack.” (That’s “button” as in “the kind you wear on your shirt at Messe.”)

http://vimeo.com/9879569

That in turn leads to another crazy thread:
Re:Mistery [sic] OCTATRACK: new from Elektron?

Elektron, for their part, hints at the upcoming launch with the text: “SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: THE OCTASHARK BITES” in the corner of their site. (Octashark?) They’ve also emblazoned their site with a Messe banner that reads, in text that suggests they’re about to release a prog rock album, “The New Dawn.”

Konkrete predicts this site will somehow enter the fray. What to do… do I fulfill the prophecy?

what I’m hoping for is a XXXCSHDRRT but we’re probably going to get a FFFRPPPI!!ING and then everyone who was right will be like ZZZWWWAARRW and all thoze who were wrong will be like OH ACTUALLY I’M REALLY DISAPPOINTED. Then there’ll be lots of BWWAWAWAWAWA maybe even on peter kirn’s ‘ELECTRONIC CABBAGE SPROGGIT PSEUD’S CORNER’ where the ‘a new butter based USB massage enables DIY multiple dorkgasms’ hook will lead into many a DEEP PENETRATIVE INSIGHT into the Oktospastik Cyclotron everyone’s all be waiting for and lathered up about. BUT I WANTED A FSFSSRRRGGRLL, and I’ve been saying that since 2004 when the first… they moan nonetheless. Then someone will complain that it’s too expensive and that anyway therez a plug wot can do all that anyway like. Cue nuclear flame festival and rotten tomato in the stocks hurling, bunion scraping, cheese rolling, caber tossing, frollicking Glastonbury mud orgy of a thread while we all save up the quids for DA TING with its 8 TRAXX of SEXX, which we can’t really justify to the better halves anyway cos it’s just a BOX THAT SEZ “MOOO!” (albeit repetitively), and it seems that there’s no way that that could possibly be worth more than a hair sandwich, EVEN if it’s set off in glorious brushed aluminium, COMEZ WITH STICKAZ and says moo REALLY LOUDLY when plugged into those expensive expansive high end tweeters in our sound proofed cave. But one thing is for certain. When we have TURBO MIDI, there ain’t gonna be no USB, especially not without no stinking Sepia Officinalis CONNEXION, dig?

Thanks, Konkrete. I’m … uh … flattered?

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22 Comments

Dennis Stein

Sorry but I’m one of those geeks and I feel like I’m about to have an aneurysm as I wait in anticipation!

March 17, 2010 @ 10:48 am

Peter Kirn

Hey, I think it says something really good about the product if people get excited about it.

I’m not *entirely* sure what that last blurb means above, but hey.

March 17, 2010 @ 10:52 am

lalaland

i wish i would go this year to frankfurt/mannheim and not the last… Would have loved to visit this and plastikman at timewarp…

March 17, 2010 @ 11:02 am

Mudo

…

8 track realtime pitchshifting/timestretching sampler with control surface like APC40.

…

March 17, 2010 @ 11:41 am

dtr

about time :D the machinedrum is my favorite instrument by far. i mean electronic instrument, not to insult my guitar… got the monomachine and sidstation too!

March 17, 2010 @ 11:43 am

RJ Valeo

The Machinedrum and Monomachine have totally changed the way that modern musicians interact with hardware instruments, and given their track record this new Octa piece will do it again.

So far they have a sampling drum machine, and a 6 part monosynth, so something is telling me that this new piece will be an 8 voice polyphonic something. They rarely, if ever, differentiate between samplers and synths, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they followed this model yet again.

I really don’t think it is going to be an 8 track sequencer, being that both Monomachine and Machinedrum have this functionality built in.

March 17, 2010 @ 11:49 am

Tx

… and use OSC via ethernet°!!!^^11

March 17, 2010 @ 12:15 pm

salamanderanagram

this was a wonderful start to my day. that has to be the funniest thing posted to a forum in quite some time.

March 17, 2010 @ 12:52 pm

Birds Use Stars

Konkrete forgot to mention the part where somone says it should support OSC!

March 17, 2010 @ 6:22 pm

eric

now, Konkrete has a true sense of humour, and you Peter is great to share it with us, thank you for a nice blog even if the updates seems to have been rare lately(or am I wrong!?)

March 17, 2010 @ 7:49 pm

Peter Kirn

@eric: Rare? 2 posts today, 2 posts yesterday, 2 posts Monday. Last week was light while I was traveling, teaching, and running multiple events, but still had 4 stories. I wonder what the bar is set at.

March 17, 2010 @ 7:57 pm

salamanderanagram

@peter – u want to see a new article everytime u come to the site – approx 20 times a day! where’s the love man?

March 17, 2010 @ 11:57 pm

Peter Kirn

Oh, that totally happens, so long as:
a) you squint hard
b) I’ve made a lot of mistakes, requiring numerous corrections
c) comments count as stories

There’s stuff in the pipeline, don’t worry. ;)

March 18, 2010 @ 12:03 am

Microwave Prince

I don’t want to disappoint you, but octatrack is 8 part external sequencer. It’s like monomachine, but without a synth section.

March 18, 2010 @ 4:20 am

lematt

what about the octashark ? ;)

March 18, 2010 @ 6:10 am

eric

Sorry peter, I did not mean to offend you in any case…maybe it is me having cravings for that new stuff all the time.
What impresses me is how Elektron until now works with promoting an unseen thing, and you is very much a part of it.

March 18, 2010 @ 6:22 am

Erpelmann

-octoshark dreammode on-

1 Oscillator…
1 Envelope generator…
1 Sequencable neuronal filternetwork with 8 selfoscillating filters!!! Woah!!!

-octoshark dreammode off-

My first post here!
Thank you Peter for your cdm work!

March 18, 2010 @ 8:56 am

Rogue Ops

I won’t reveal my source, but the new product is supposed to more DJ-friendly. I suppose that means it will be easy to change tempo etc on the fly.

March 18, 2010 @ 3:56 pm

Peter Kirn

@Eric: No offense taken. I also like new things. Okay, back to coding a new thing. Hmm…

March 18, 2010 @ 4:01 pm

durk

No dorkgasms here…, I dont like quasi funny product descriptions.

Guess I am one of those “I have a vst that can do that” dorks….

March 18, 2010 @ 9:23 pm

Casimir's Blake

I really hope it’s a sampling/sequencing product of SOME sort. Preferably with a keyboard, and/or a Spectralis/MPC-eseque feature set.

The music tech sector has a huge gaping hole right now, and that is chromatic, multi-timbral hardware sampling – that ISN’T just phrase sampling – using flash RAM, married to a sequencer. Right now, the only major options are an MPC, a Spectralis, or the RAM-impared Machine Drum.