devblog / friday 070122 (Patreon)

Here we are then, in the foothills of Eternal 2020. The belated Proper Winter has arrived and is settling outside on the ground as if the clouds turned to dust and fell to earth. We are blanketed by the heavy sky. Hope you all ‘had a break’, feel ‘rested’ and are primed to deal with with that strange silhouette in the distance, hurling itself towards us like a sentient wall of pure joy. Why, surely it is the long promised Bright Future we were told about!

This week at 65LABS we switched the machines back on after the shortest possible hiatus. Mostly coffee makers, to be fair, but also a couple of computers, and with them we ground out some more dilettante code for your listening pleasure.

THIS WEEK

- We are now at a count of 64 Wreckage Systems running in the V2 stream. SIXTY FOUR! One more and then surely the Turner Prize is ours for the taking. Here’s the full list in the order they appear in the software, which is sort-of-but-not-really chronological:

• 01. Bowed Bass #1
• 02. Detext
• 03. Dulcimer A1
• 04. Idle Cuts #1
• 05. Malign
• 06. Number Station
• 07. Papour
• 08. Paralt [Piano]
• 09. AC // QuietArp_01
• 10. Scout
• 11. Seed // Ascendant
• 12. Seed // Bolt
• 13. Seed // Sol
• 14. Seed // Dawn
• 15. Seed // Drift
• 16. Seed // Hidden
• 17. Seed // Kill Yr Dreams
• 18. Seed // NiteTime
• 19. Seed // Static
• 20. Seed // Variant
• 21. Unravelling
• 22. Wanderer (Revision A)
• 23. AC // QuietArp_02
• 24. AC // Pianic_01
• 25. AC // Companic_01
• 26. Renoiser_Ambient
• 27. Renoiser
• 28. Seed // stories
• 29. Seed // Resistor-Noise
• 30. Seed // AncientAlso
• 31. Seed // Back of Things
• 32. Seed // Dream #5
• 33. Seed // FS_PianoVariant
• 34. Seed // SF_Ambient
• 35. Mist // CrackleTone_1
• 36. Mist // Loc Flutter
• 37. Mist // Subplot
• 38. AC // Companic_02
• 39. AC // Companic_03
• 40. All Available Data
• 41. Cycle Three
• 42. Seed // circuit magnetic
• 43. Paralt Original
• 44. Seed // threadless
• 45. Mumble Prime
• 46. Thief Cuts
• 47. Evaporated V2
• 48. VoxRelic
• 49. Bit Drift
• 50. Laser -> Solar
• 51. Laser Games
• 52. Squall
• 53. Proto_YU
• 54. Shapeshifter
• 55. CryWave
• 56. Pianoblivion
• 57. UPHILL
• 58. VerticalFault
• 59. SummsThUnder
• 60. MIMIK
• 61. Snowdrift V2
• 62. Mist // Riptide
• 63. The Flood Pulse
• 64. Cyclone

- The construction of number 64, a new system called Cyclone, is what took up most of this week.

- Cyclone is currently running as part of the V2.1.7 stream, which went online this morning in the USUAL PLACE. It is substantially different from the other systems in terms of the code and mechanics being used to generate the audio. If you missed it earlier in the week, we put out a little EXPLAINER VIDEO that goes into a bit of detail about how it works. Essentially, after a couple of dead ends, we ended up at a place inspired by Steve Reich’s Piano Phase, leaning into using the physics of the Wreckage Systems environment to engineer slick, melodic drifts that produce ever-evolving patterns from sad pianos. There’s a new video at the top of this post showing the final version running in the stream, this time without a voiceover. MP3 also attached if you want it. (No Bandcamp codes for this one soz.)

- Aside from this, we got some more writing done on the next instalment of the Wreckage Systems Technical Overview, which might (?) be the last part. Hard to tell at this point. There’s an argument to be made that this would be more clearly explained in a video, and generally you all seem to like the videos, but that would take quite a lot longer to pull together. So thoughts on this welcomed. How do you prefer your tech deep dives?

- We took another run at the next Research Release. It didn’t work out. We’ll keep trying. The thing is, we’ve worked hard on making the more ambient systems in the stream fill the role of being a constant soundtrack to your day. They can slide into the background and hang out with your subconscious when the bit of your brain that thinks of itself as 'you' focusses on other stuff, but they can also be explored like weird, x-dimensional, liminal noise spaces with some active deep listening when, y'know, you're in the mood for that kind of thing. In light of that, our attempts at locking down some concrete, permanently constructed ambience just don’t seem as compelling. We want to avoid putting out content just for content’s sake, so we’ve passed the Research Release on to the specialists in the 65LABS Retention Wing, who will do their best to give us reasons why we should keep working on it. If they fail, into the memory hole it will go.

- The Flood Pulse, a new system introduced to the stream a couple of weeks ago, turned out to not actually be in rotation in the V2 stream due to human error. We’ve promoted that human to Chief Imagineer, fixed their error, and we will never speak of this again.

THINGS TO COME

- The tireless march to the End of Season One continues. The scope of Wreckage Systems is so vast and there are so many more things that we want to explore, but we also need to free up a little brain space to deal with the real world, in which 65daysofstatic sometimes also exists.

That’s it for now, friends. Until next time, take care out there. Avoid Tories like the plague. And avoid the plague like it’s a Tory.