A few packages hit the desk today, including the Mackie 1202 VLZ3 which replaces the rather heavier and larger console mixer which has been the staple for Segue and the odd Silent Shadow gig over the last year or so. Most excitedly, the Monome 40h kit has arrived. Unfortunately I don’t have time to assemble it this weekend, as I fly out to Hong Kong on Saturday and will be busy eating noodles, buying robots and getting custom Kung-Fu suits made simply because, well, that’s what you do in Hong Kong. I think. But I’m very excited about coming back to put this together for the gig at Bar Soma. Check more photos of the new Monome kit out on the Segue FlickR page.

I’m quite excited to explore the world of Monome for the contradictory reason that there isn’t anything entirely special about it. Which is rather what the makers think as well. The magic happens simply by enabling a certain set of possible interactions with music. I’m a programming geek, so I have a lot of ideas for the Monome and I can’t wait to explore the fantastic patches that the user community has developed. Most people reading this, if you made it past the subtle More tag above, probably still have no idea what it does.

In short, the Monome is simply a box with buttons. It is driven by software on a computer and enjoys a similar sense of programmability as the Jazz Mutant Lemur, which I gave back in recent months. Yes, gave it back, and yes, I wasn’t pleased with it in the end. The concept is sound, but the programming interface wasn’t as fluid as it could have been, with the absolute deal-breaker of an unresolved issue that saw the Lemur simply dropping out a few times an hour. Which means a few times a set my primary control interface would stop working. Unacceptable to say the least, and that’s without considering the sticker price of this thing in Australia. Having said that, it was a joy to use it to write the Segue remix of Guise (which I’ve rambled on about previously), and I’m grateful to Ellaways Music for sending it to me for so long.

As for the Monome, the common uses are with software like Max/MSP and Ableton, where it can serve as a simple drum machine interface, as a clip and sample trigger, as a performance interface or simply as a means to sit in the dark and stare at flashing lights.

Click here to view the embedded video.

For me, I anticipate this operating as an interface to trigger clips and music events, as a sequencer (such as the drum machine example able, so I can construct sequences live on the spot) and as a nice tool for some warped sample mangling. Or, to be honest, as something to stare at flashing away in the dark if I get bored during soundcheck…

The track snippet in this video is a rough mix for a remix I did for Vitreous. The track is called “Pine”, and will be revisited for a fresh mixdown before being signed off and released shortly. More on that soon. Not in the “will tell you when we can” mysterious sense, but in the “we don’t actually know” realistic sense.

One of the things a blog should be about, and certainly for a band, is sharing some raw ideas. As I write a few different things for a few different publications week in and week out, I think I’ve let the original fun idea of a frequently used Segue blog fall into routine and a form of uniformity. Thankfully, I had a nice dose of inspiration on Friday night, heading out to catch the dual joys of Berlin Sessions at Bar Soma and Jody Wisternoff at Moon Bar. At the latter, Kris had a DJ set after Jody and ambitions to be entirely sober for it, and at the former it was great to catch up with the Logic lads and appreciate how far Nick and the crew have taken Bar Soma. So it was an interesting night. Kris dropped some originals, I lost my voice, various friends were escorted out of various venues and the usual collection of unprintable antics. I came home and threw together this little idea, before sleep overtook me and I eventually woke up wondering why I couldn’t speak anymore. I’m thinking it’s a voodoo curse. Or just talking loudly over loud music. In any case, here’s what I woke up to. It’s not a track. It’s an idea. And it’s about time to start sharing them more:

The name is literally the first thing I saw. Not being in much of a state to ponder deep and meaningful names at the time, and indeed, as per the picture above, being entertained at the time by a dancing Isobot robot in front of a rather moody lamp. Which is about all I really have to say on the matter.

With the bubbling acid and tech riffs of encore favourite ‘Reset’, and the driving tech house grooves and abstracted vocal wanderings of ‘Forever’, this is Segue stepping off stage clutching samplers and synthesisers and headed straight to the after party. As the band evolves, its sound develops, and its players collaborate outwards, “Reset & Forever” is a classic slice of the energy and electronica that has defined a live act at its most smoke machines and strobe lights obsessed. Released on Australian label Smash Bang Records, “Reset & Forever” is available on Beatport now.

Remixes:
It’s been some time since the Chemical Brothers EBW9 remix went a little crazy and gave us an education on how manic some of these MP3 blogs are, with features and file leeching all over the place. Since then we have sat on a few remixes for some great acts, ranging from test renders of Flamingo Crash, Infusion and Dizzy Gotheca, but our attention has been on a few that will be out soon. On the immediate front are Vitreous and Kris-Ko on the Amsterdam and Brisbane tip respectively. Check out our Twitter feeds or the main site for more info when we can gush what’s next!

Tracks:
So “Reset” and “Forever” had some crazy delays that are worth an entertaining posts itself, so check out the site in the next few days when they drop. The good news is they are finally out on Smash Bang Records now basically, though some last minute issues with the Beatport update have thrown some bugs into the works. With them out, and some remixes of them dropping soon after, we’re focusing on fresh mixes of a couple more of the classic live set tracks. “Downsize” is getting a lot of attention with some string parts being worked into a pretty epic mix, and various flipping back and forth.

Gigs:
2008 was a bit of a rest for Segue after coating the walls of Brisbane for a few years. Its humbling to think our interviews and photos in street press have lined the best kitty litters or been used in moving house across the state. With Dave joining Kris in live DNB act Silent Shadow for some gigs recently has come some out-of-the-box exploration of live rigs and Segue has hit the rehearsal studio again to work the new material into live shape. As ever, stay tuned to the site for some video previews. You can boo at your computer screen or shout “yeh yeh yeh!”, its really up to you!

Overseas:
Its happening. This year. Excited. Cant type. Just yet. Cheesy we know. But really. What more. Can we say.

Segue on the Internetwebz:
We caved in pressure from some of our ultimate meta-geek colleagues and made a list of possibly useless social networking and web media links relating to Segue. As our attention is largely on getting through these remixes lately, we would like to thank those who jumped in and sorted some of these out. As many acts miss the boat with potentially useful web services as there are those that spend more time updating them then writing music. There’s also the aspect of band confusion, as oblivious new producers accidently take the name of an established act, but ultimately, this is a lot of internet. We hope some of it is useful, and again thanks for the geeks who helped out:

Segue on the Web
Segue on Myspace
Segue on Facebook.
Segue on Twitter
Segue Videos on Vimeo
Segue Videos on YouTube

Catch the video on your flavour of Vimeo or YouTube. Also you can still download the track from the original post on the site here.

Here is the Segue remix of Electronic Battle Weapon 9. Its a dancefloor homage to the EBW series with our particular progressive acid flavour, and as you might notice, a departure from the original. We’ve gotten a lot of emails about this so here it is, you know the drill, right click and save as. As ever we’d love to hear what you think or if you play it out, so let us know via the contact page. Also please feel free to jump on the mailing list and we’ll keep you updated on the original tracks we are getting ready to release and gigs we are playing. This remix has made its way into our live set and we will eventually get around to editing some of the accumulating DV tapes. In terms of the track itself, well, if you’re interested in some back story, Dave explains further.

Listen:

Download:

Chemical Brothers – EBW9 (Segue Remix) - 14.7meg 320kbit

“I don’t know how many times i played EBW8 and EBW9 after Pete Tong premiered them on his show, grabbing them from the Radio 1 stream. I was still in Sydney at the time and managed to walk from office to my apartment (through peak hour foot traffic on Oxford Street, amid the Mardis Gras no less), by the time both played. In theory. Id keep skipping back to marvel at the awesome vocoder style vocal of the “making calculations to generate sensations” bit though. With that in mind, picture how quickly i clicked the link in the Chemical Brothers email regarding the EBW9 parts on a certain corporate sponsored site. The official remix concept was rather ridiculous, an exercise in marketing that attempted to cash in on the whole remix culture meets viral internet meets blog hype meets web two point oh angle. Still with me? The deal was to use a woeful Flash interface to sequence some EBW9 samples with lame stock “funky” loops and the “best” of these “remixes” would get a digital release. Remember kids, even if you get a job in internet marketing… smoking crack is bad for your mental health.”

“Like any geeky samplist, i had ripped, trimmed and looped all the EBW9 sounds within the hour and fired up Ableton and the MPC. Id managed to find a copy of EBW 8 & EBW9 on vinyl at Rockinghorse so i grabbed some additional sounds from it and we were away. We had a gig looming and thought it would be nice to whip up a transition part for the latter half of the set, which gets a bit acid tech where we can get away with it. It soon grew into a bit of a monster, with Leo returning to the studio to find me wired on Fairtrade coffee and grinning. It rocked live and we tidied it up a little bit for the next gig alongside Melbourne techno heroes Bubble & Squeak. We started getting emails and the odd Myspace message about the track and hooked up the usual DJ cronies, and it went from there. Segue’s homage to the Electronic Battle Weapon series. Hope you like it.”