Richie Hawtin introduces Liine’s new interactive music concept with Remiix: Plastikman Replikants. Available on the iTunes App Store, Remiix lets you combine and transform original Plastikman tracks and reinterpretations from your iPhone or iPad. Richie Hawtin’s Plastikman alias is synonymous with blurring the concept of performance and experience, with stripping back the boundaries between music and technology and merging artist and audience.
With Plastikman Live in 2010 and its mind-bending melting-pot of sound and light, we were introduced to a world-first in electronic music performance: the SYNK app allowed the audience to experience Richie Hawtin’s audio-visual manipulations on their mobile devices in a new and personal way. It even allowed the audience to interact with his audio computer and the sound coming from the speakers themselves at certain points in the show. Remiix is part of this natural progression of immersing the audience further into the spectacle, an opportunity for music fans to interact with, manipulate and Remiix both classic Plastikman material and newer reinterpretations.
With Remiix: Plastikman Replikants, Richie Hawtin is setting the tone for Liine’s new interactive music concept. The Remiix series of apps for iPhone and iPad, created alongside forward thinking artists, allows users to experience music in a completely new way. Instead of being recorded and rigid, the music is delivered in parts alongside all the tools needed to put it back together or recombine it, irrespective or whether you are a studio pro or novice.
With this first in the Remiix series, Richie Hawtin offers loops and parts from classic Plastikman tracks, from remixes specially commissioned for Replikants (part of the extensive Arkives package) as well as bits and pieces discovered in the hidden depths of his studio. This is the user’s opportunity to combine things that were never intended to be combined and to twist things into even deeper, darker, stranger places.
As well as giving access to the loops themselves, Remiix apps also allow you to mix the material as you wish, and apply EQ and special effects tailored to the artist in question. For Plastikman, expect disorientating reverbs and twisted, pitched tape delays. Line have integrated professional grade effects, but with the user interface reduced to the bare minimum to allow a huge range of expression with simple macro-controls. This is all tied together with a specially created themed user interface, so that you’re actually interacting with the cover-art itself.
Available now on the iTunes App Store, Remiix: Plastikman Replikants will whet appetites for the Arkives box- set (available for pre-order), as well as give insight into the future of interactive music and of Remiix.