Bend Everything: Inside DIY Electronics with Lucky Dragons and Daedelus

A local scene bends circuits into fresh beats and sounds

Comments (0) By Chris Martins Wednesday, Sep 9 2009

“I’ve been using the same circuit-bent Roland TR-606 drum machine since 2000,” says Daedelus, “and I never know what I’m going to get when I turn it on. It does these miraculous things — it has huge amounts of colors and shapes in it, and nothing else I own, certainly no ready-made studio synthesizer, has given me that kind of longevity. There’s still something else in there — I know it.”

“I like the idea of getting away from wanting things that cost more than you have,” says Fischbeck. “Sort of simplifying the chain of the economy where it’s no longer about some specific object that you fetishize, and instead you wind up learning about how electronics work or how sounds are made. Whatever materials you’d need, you can find pretty locally, and if you just ask questions, you can acquire the knowledge. Any of this stuff is just as satisfying when you abstract it and pass it around as when it’s visceral and you experience it.”

Star Foreman

Alfred Daedelus and his weapon of choice, the Monome

Star Foreman

Lucky Dragons: Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara

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But there is something about experiencing it. At Señor Fish, Daedelus conducts the crowd through his Monome, flipping his arms out sideways from the device as the 256 buttons light up and move to their own rhythm — a beat orchestra in a box that oscillates between wild jitters and thick groove. He tilts a smaller, handheld Monome to the side, and the song slides off the table. When he rights it, sound returns. In the small crowd, as many dance to the music as study his every move, and it suddenly seems very fitting that these same brick walls, in a previous life the Atomic Café, once housed this city’s homegrown punk movement.