Dorkbot

Our experience today had special value to us being avid synth heads from the eighties and getting a chance to see someone basically retrofit old atari and commodore computers for use as electronic instruments. Yes folks, we were lucky to meet sound farmer Paul Slocum in Dallas at the art gallery he lives in the rear of. When we first arrived at the Andor (not the Ewok planet, btw) gallery, Paul was in mid-combat with the owners of the second hand store next door who apparently had an issue with the fact that we needed to get their car moved in order to load in. After much waiting for the smoke to clear, we hauled all our crap into the narrow white room. Paul looks a bit like Tom Bailey of Thompson Twins which is of course quite cool and is really focused on his somewhat nerdy world of math music.

His 8 bit atari setup was particularly fantastic given my history with the 2600 as a teen. I dug how he used the pong paddles as filter controls and even reprogrammed certain games with new blippy music. For instance, his Berserker game is called Mr. Roboto and the seminal Styx song is used to great cheesy effect against the robotic pursuers.

We actually planned to finish the song by the time we left for a Karaoke bar with intent on performing our new song there. Unfortunately that didn't happen, but we did manage to finish at a reasonable hour. Paul's sounds are really inspiring. So much so that I was a little remiss adding too much on top of it. But that layering is kind of how we work and will undoubtedly thin it out in time.

This day also marked the halfway point in our journey so after we wrapped, we lived it up a bit at the Karaoke bar (which is strange in Texas as a LOT of people sing country and do so without sarcasm). Toby did an amazing Joe Cocker, Merritt did Prince, Clark on Michael McDonald and I crucified Rick Astley.

Before we split Dallas, Paul held a get together for fellow electronic artists called Dorkbot. I felt honored to be front row at their first ever meeting.