devblog / friday 180621 (Patreon)

A dense, dense week here at 65LABS. As if all the radio static that flows around us suddenly gained mass. This could be the heat or, maybe, the result of some foolhardy experiments over in the Monetisation wing. Their view has always been that our operation would be so much more commercially viable if music had some actual, material heft to it. To be sold by the kilo. Next to the bananas.

There are a lot of things we didn't manage to do this week. But that would make for a bad list. So instead we offer apologies that we couldn't scrape out enough time for the next edition of our Wreckage Systems Technical Overview series. Or indeed any of the other planned posts. Once again though, we have been busily making solid progress on the grand plan.

THIS WEEK

• Release Number Three is DONE. It is called Available Data and it will be out next week. In theory on Monday, but need to run that by the technicians over in the Chart Viability offices.

• This month, our schedule lined up nicely with that of long-time 65 Comrade Caspar Newbolt. He has done all of our album covers since WWEA and, well, pretty much everything else 65 since then, apart from the more recent generative-heavy projects. This is his first foray into Wreckage Systems, having finally passed the 65LABS security checks. And we love it. (Incidentally, he recently opened a print shop for his film poster work - take a look.)

• Getting Available Data wrapped up took up most of the week. We squeezed in some Wreckage Systems V2 work... Systems will now have the options of having different states, each of which can contain its own rules, sound palettes, progressions, etc. The thinking here is that it would be great for any single system to run for a longer amount of time whenever it gets triggered, without running the risk of getting repetitive. States could help enormously with that. Alternatively, if we don't up the length each system runs for - having numbers substates (essentially sub systems), then it could mean that perhaps it only cycles through a couple of them any time it is summoned. It is just another way to make those systems more varied on any given listen. Of course... there's a reason we called this Wreckage Systems plural rather than One Big System of Infinite Generative Music, and that's because familiarity is often a really powerful tool in music. That balance between a system you immediately recognise and are happy to hear, versus something you can listen to repeatedly and never get bored... this is the goal. But you knew that already.

• Had a stumble around in the 65LABS archive for an idea of a blog post on Silent Running. Haven't had time to pull things together, and it is definitely audacious of us to mention it here now in case we drop it entirely. But stay tuned just in case. 

NEXT WEEK

• Available Data is out! It's the sound of summer. Maybe a summer in the late 1990s, but unquestionably a summer.

• The rebuild work is relentless. As mentioned last week, we're very aware that the point of this project is to be more transparent with our processes and what we're building. We're actively looking for a way to get V2 out of the gate so we can update it as we go. 

That's it for now. Hope you're all ok out there, there's a whole lot of graphs making life feel uneasy lurking around every corner, on every screen. Stay safe. And don't worry, this is the last weekend you'll ever live through without having the option of soundtracking it with Available Data.

See you on the other side.