You’ve seen plenty of live rigs with mile-high stacks of keyboards and sound modules. But this setup is different: one of the world’s best bands is using an elaborate setup of software synths. Binding it all together is one of the most sophisticated software configurations I’ve ever seen, the fruits of labors by of our friend Jonathan Adams Leonard – a talented musician and technologist – in Kore 2. I wouldn’t exactly recommend this kind of setup to anyone else; it involved pushing Kore to its bleeding edge. But Jonathan’s walk-through of the hardware and software programming for this show is an inspiring one. (For us mere mortals, Jonathan does have a fantastic, free collection of modular tools for Kore, built and editable in Reaktor.)

Jonathan goes through every gory detail of the setup on our special Kore minisite. We’ll have more on Interpol’s tour soon to follow up:

Behind the Scenes with Interpol: Obsessive Details of Hardware, Kore Software Rig [Kore @ CDM, kore.noisepages.com]

And in addition to the software, there’s the rich hardware setup, as assembled by Chad Miller (Lenny Kravitz), assisted by Ally Christie (QOTSA, Mogwai). Yes, these are some of the best techs on the planet, working hard for one of the biggest bands. Good stuff. I wish I could have been in Gdansk, Poland (seen below).

The faux-Pan Am logo. The sleek, mod, curved white casing. The elegant controls. Yes, this is indeed a synth that would look at home in the space station in Kubrick’s 2001. Technically not the future so much as the 1960’s version of the future – but surely we’re getting around to reshaping our future to look more like that, right? At least for synths?

The synth in question is the Omega 8, a “luggable” 20-pound, 8-voice analog synth with individual stereo pairs for each voice. It’s really, truly, old-school analog, with discrete analog oscillators, voltage-controlled filters of the 24dB and 12dB variety, multi-stage envelopes, and all the extras. In the “new-school” category, though, it is MIDI savvy, with MIDI destinations for just about everything (including the envelope breakpoints) and even breath controller support. How do I know this? Why, off the top of my head, of course; I’ve got three. Erm. Okay, I read it on the old Omega 8 page, then lost half an hour dreaming of my new lounge-style studio where I adjust envelope breakpoints from a giant aluminum sphere like the one in Sleeper.

All of that luxury will set you back US$4700. (If you can do with fewer voices, you can get down to a more Earth-bound US$1679. But that’s only 10 pounds, so it must make half as much sound.) But normally, the Omega ships in a pedestrian-looking synth case, like every other synth. Enter the Orion rendition.

2008: An Orion Odyssey Teaser Page

Studio Electronics News

As the manufacturers say:

what is this? it is art. it is light. it is glorious design brought to life by Antoine Argentieres, the man, who sagely let his fondness for Stanley Kubrick’s past century enigmatic odyssian vision of the future (and re-visioning of pivotal past events) inspire a house fit for the majestic voice and verve of the Omega8––a cathedral of transformation; the great work of the synth; a mind before matter mystical alignment of awareness: light and sound waves that reveal the ORION GALAXY, expanding and growing and luminous.

I’m not sure it’s art, but it is spectacularly groovy. Studio Electronics also promises a special sound bank befitting its forward-looking body.

I’ve heard varying answers to what availability will be from “I can’t conceive how expensive this is” to “rumors say it’s a one-off.” For their part, SE says it’s

available now for those who "have the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission.

There you have it. You just have to believe. You have to think really, really hard about how you want it, and believe in why it matters, and you’ll own it.

Okay, it must be really, really, really, really expensive.

But I do believe in the mission. Steampunk’s over, folks. So is arbitrarily sticking cheap knobs into a cardboard box and rendering a “polished aluminum sheen” on the case by using duct tape. Let’s get back to the future with our synth designs. (I’m encouraged by the fact that our friend Nostromo found this for us on the SDIY list, by way of the music bar list.)

You still have time to do something for 2010.

See also: Music thing (hmmm, Tom got the jump on me, so maybe I shouldn’t have gotten so lost in that reverie of owning the thing…)

Update: Music thing also points to some artistic inspiration in the same vein.

You’ve seen the “top picks” lists elsewhere online for the NAMM show, that massive Californian convergence of musical instruments and music-making gear. Add together the knobs and faders from such lists, and you could probably build a synthesizer Death Star and destroy Daft Punk’s hidden Rebel base. Of course, you’d only have a marginally larger Death Star than the identical one you could have built from last year’s gear.

We’re doing things a little differently: picking out entirely random stuff that managed to reach for the sublime — including the sublimely absurd. Bad is better than boring. We’ve seen strange things that simply failed, or at least substantially creeped us out.

Now, those moments of victory, of supreme revelation, of –

Yeah, that’s Roger Linn, the LM-1 and former MPC designer without whom drum machines as we know them today wouldn’t exist, holding the “Drum Machines Have No Soul” bumper sticker he acquired. That’s why we were in Anaheim.

We’re still waiting on Barry Wood’s legendary NAMM Oddities, so we’ll focus on our own sense of the exceptional.

Other standout moments and products for reflection:

New Years’ Eve? What’s that? The music tech year begins and ends at the massive NAMM trade show, across from Disneyland in Anaheim, California. So, as we settle in for a few hours’ rest before the big circus begins, I asked Liz McLean Knight and Mike Una to offer some of their 2007 highlights. And this gives us some great music to listen to while we (invariably) edit the hours of footage of NAMM and my recent Australian visualist tour.

Great music, great tools, and some personal highlights ahead. (Photo: moriza. Ah, sweet 2007.)

Amazing how time crawls when you’re eagerly awaiting something. Such is the case with the BoomChik: it seems like ages ago that drum machine legend Roger Linn and synth legend Dave Smith “pre-announced” this synth/drum machine. It was actually just this time last year. Unfortunately, you’re going to be waiting a little longer: feedback from musicians and the release of Linn’s AndrenaLinn III and Smith’s Prophet ‘08 (easily two of the biggest products of last year) has delayed the BoomChik.

Now the good news: in addition to a new name, the new design looks far more mature. And it’s going to be eminently affordable: street around US$1000 for a basic model, and $1500 for a fancier model with four analog voices as shared with the Prophet ‘08 and Evolver.

Full specs are available on the site and a bunch o’ other sites, so here’s the Cliff’s Notes version. (Kirn’s Notes?)

• Real-time, no-stop, no-drop OS for live performance
• Pressure-sensitive, backlit (with animation) pads
• Modulate, filter, and resonate everything, digital or analog voices
• Step record like an MPC and like an 808
• Compact Flash storage, USB for MIDI, audio, and sample transfer with a computer (plus real MIDI jacks, don’t worry)
• Ridiculous number of performance controls, simplified menus, plus foot/expression pedals. (Having seen how much menu jockeying the current Akai and Roland models have, this sounds great. When I want to use a computer, I’ll use a computer with a 23″ display, not a 1″ display.)
• Stereo inputs let you sample, process audio, or trigger sounds
• “Analog” version adds analog voices, 27 encoders for voicing, and four direct outputs — one for each voice.

I say, get a day job now so you can quit it when this comes out.

Now a bit more bad news: I hear a prototype may not actually make it to NAMM, which dashes my hopes of getting to show you an actual unit when we’re in Anaheim next week. But we will be talking to Dave and Roger, and hope to have more details soon. And if you focus really hard, maybe one will magically make it there. (Say it with me … ommmmmmm … booooooommmmmm … chikkkkkkk)

Rather than launch into technical jargon, let me summarize. It’s giant. It has lots of faders and knobs and color screens and such. Not only can you not afford it, you can’t lift it, either. It has an insanely stupid name. But it’s quite beautiful, like a 1979 vision of the future dreamt up by defense contractors.

CDM’s friends at the Spanish-language Hispasonic run one of the best music tech sites on the Interwebs. They’ve been kind enough to share some of their videos from the Messe show, and you won’t have to speak a word of Spanish to follow them. (The Arturia Origin was later overdubbed with Spanish.) Of course, I did just see some discount tickets to Spain, so maybe I should brush up. (Hispasonic links here are naturally in Spanish, but everyone can enjoy the videos.)

My favorite: a tour of the Superbooth, an exhaustive mini-expo of modular music tech.

Superbooth @ Hispasonic

Plus another look at the Arturia Origin synth:

New stuff with knobs, keys, and touchscreens: yep, it’s Giant German Music Tech Trade Show time.

Our friend Rainer Knobloch got to spend a few hours on the Messe show floor, so we politely pointed him to some of the gear that inspired the most drool. Topping the list, of course, is Clavia’s new Nord Wave, just because Clavia hasn’t yet published anything on their site. (More Nord details coming later today; sorry for the delay.) But we also learn via these photos just how cool the Arturia Origin’s flip-up panel looks, and we get to see John Bowen cradle his new synth, the Solaris. (See our interview.)

Messe 07, by Rainer [Flickr Set]

If you were at Messe and shot some photos of your own, feel free to add them to our Flickr pool. More of my favorites: