Conversation · Egg Head

Who will be the innocence of hard-core anodic dance music?

"We have... tamed the sound. Made it our own."

"THIS ONE IS FOR THE ANODIC GENERATION!"

"INTRODUCING THE ULTIMATE SOUND!"

"Whooh, thump-thump-thump, maestro!" The speedfreak waves his hand in the air.

"Now... if only we had the melody for the full effect!"

"I'm... not sure."

Here's an idea -- say what you said before. The exact same thing! OR. Or, wait! Say something that's only marginally different! It will yield a drastically different outcome.

"You should crank up the, uh, oscillator matrix."

"Oscillator matrix?" The man's brow furrows with concern. "Where is that?"

"Here, let a pro show you how it's done." (Turn some knobs at random.)

As you fiddle with the knobs on the mixer, the young man stares with amazement...

"Cop-man can ride the knobs! SO COOL." He gives you a thumbs up.

Whatever it is you did, it seems to have helped slightly. Maybe now you'll be able to make sense of it?

"It's nowhere. I just made it up."

The large-headed youth gives you a sorely disappointed look...

An innocent soul, unaccustomed to acts of wanton guile.

A cruel joke to play on an earnest torque dork.

"Oh, you don't have one? Maybe it's just top-secret cop-tech."

"TOP-SECRET COP TECH! MEGA COOL!"

"You gotta bring us some, Big Sheriff! The future of hard sine depends on it!"

"Don't listen to him," the man yells over the music. "He's making shit up. There's no top-secret cop audio tech -- there's other top-secret-spying-on-people tech most likely, but cops don't care about music."

"I don't know the technical term, but it needs less bzoot-bzoot."

"YEEEEAAARRGGHH. PUMP OFF THE BZOOT-BZOOT."

It's hard to say for sure, but the digital throbbing seems ever so slightly louder than before.

"Dude, you gotta reroute the sound juice through the fluxifier!"

"The fluxifier?" The man's brow furrows with concern. "Where is that?"

Bzoot-bzoot-bzoot goes the track in the background, never-ending. You can't grasp what's missing. But you can try to make something up anyway.

Whereof one cannot speak, one ought to remain silent.

The young man bobs his head to the music, much as before.

Just make it up. No way this speedfreak can tell the difference.

You scrape the mouldy recesses of your brain for some technological sounding jargon. It'll impress the large-headed speedfreak.

Isn't that what real artists do? Make it up as they go along?

"I found this reel of tape, maybe you can use it to hard-up Eyck's jam." (Give him the fixed hawthrone tree tape.)

"Yeagh, re-mix time!" His voice booms through the church as he takes the tape and attaches it to the empty reel slot. "Tape goes here -- into deck B." He clicks a switch, the tape starts spinning...

A hand on his ear, he listens to the audio through his headphones, and shouts...

"Wow..." His face lights up with delight. "Did you get this from Arno himself?"

A great excitement is bubbling to the surface within him. This is big.

"What do you mean?"

"Listen, I'm just going to show it to you... Ready?"

"Ready."

"Hear that?" He grins with glee. "Sounds like the missing part of van Eyck's jam!"

"The sines match perfectly!"

"What is this?" Acele looks up from her contact mic. "It's good. How did you guys do that?"

"Do what? I just found a random tape and brought it to Egg Head. He's just incredibly good at remixing."

"Yes, but what if van Eyck based his remix on some forgotten local melody -- like a folk song? And you just found the original piece that inspired him to create this jam. That would explain why it fits so well."

"Nah, to me it sounds like classic van Eyck, I don't think he needs any 'inspiration' from folk songs. Maybe he lives in Martinaise and just threw away a part of his song because he thought it wasn't good enough?"

"I think it's just happenstance. Chaos in action. Contingencies of our limited existence. That and Egg Head's fantastic talent." He nods to his friend behind the turntables.

Noid's right, Egg Head's technical talent is the key.

No, this is definitely part of the same song. Something cut from it. It fits too well.

Something mysterious is going on here...

"Andre's got it. Sounds like a local folk song re-mixed."

"Be how it may -- if it fits, it fits!" He pumps his fist in the air. "Bring up the volume!"

This is it... this is a new era. The fabric of the world has been irrevocably altered.

Who will be the innocence of hyper-hard-core anodic dance music?

"What about the bass? Do you have any ideas for that?" Andre looks back at you.

"Yeah, I remember -- you said it needs more bass!"

I think you might know the answer...

"I think it's good enough the way it is. Adding that melody has already been a massive improvement. It's pretty hard core now." (Finish task.)

"HARD CORE! Not exactly the hyper that I was hoping for, but... it's definitely ULTRA!"