Arrival

There’s another new toy over on the software page.

Screenshot showing Auxotroph playing through Osculatrix in AUM on iPad.

Auxotroph is another AUv3 plugin, but this time a generator rather than an effect. That means it makes sounds all by itself — via FM synthesis in this case. It’s a simple pattern sequencer based on regular divisions of the bar, with motion and stochasticity to spice things up. Unlike the effect apps, it can run standalone, though (like nearly everything) it sounds better with some effects.

Mac version available for download now, iOS will be on the App Store once it’s been through the review dance.

Temporal Engineering

Frankly still reeling from Meryl Tankard’s genius Pina Bausch restaging, Kontakthof – Echoes of ’78. Like a blow to the head, but in a good way.

The gimmick of surviving dancers performing alongside archive footage of themselves — and their non-surviving colleagues — from nearly 50 years ago sounds simplistic, perhaps even trite. Hackneyed. Yawn. Seen it all before, right?

Wrong.

Bloody hell. It is so good. Great source material projected across time to become something even better, breathtaking and heartbreaking and ephemeral and astonishing.

Maybe I’ll be more measured when the concussion wears off, but don’t count on it.