Strap in, this one has *background*.

Up front, this is a short highlight reel of an 8 hour improvised live performance that I was asked to join earlier this year. The performance took place in Zagreb, Croatia on 12 June, and was easily the oddest, but most creatively fulfilling thing I've done in a long time.

The idea was that I would create a soundscape that would respond to the artist, who was mixing live performance and stop motion animation into a durational piece. How on earth do you do this? And make it interesting? Well... let me explain.. First was a vague structure, this came about from the idea of cassettes loaded with a vague arc of the history of chat bots (more on that later). These ended up about 6 hours of found audio from a number of sources, mostly using TTS to read out transcripts, but with some older documentaries from the 60's - 90's. These tapes formed a narrative of sorts, but could also be looped and manipulated with the live rig I was also building over time.

Live rig? Well.. that was also a project in itself, a few tracks this have had odd ambience, drones etc in them, this is mostly me working out how little devices work. The end setup included 4 Bastl Kastles, a 'Rumble of Ancient Times (RoAT)', Roland S1, Winge2, and a lot of effects pedals. This all came together with a set of light sensors connected to LFOs that my workmates helped me build. This was really playable and let me sync lots of various gear together.

^ the live setup (mostly)

From the piece we ended up with a 1:20 stop motion animation, I recorded about 4 hours of the set, but have trimmed this down to this 'track' and a 20 minute version that is on my Bandcamp.

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"In 1966 the first conversations between people and chat bots took place. The most famous framing was that of therapist and patient, with the chat bot, ELIZA, taking on the role of DOCTOR.

It’s creator, Joseph Weizenbaum, used what at the time was an advanced method of reflecting back the users input, twisting words back in the manner of Rogerian therapists to ask deeper questions about the motivations behind the inputs.

Once the script is revealed as a program, the illusion falls away, however the foundations of even the most modern large language models hark back to the parsing of user input and reflecting back what the user wants to see. These mirrors adapt, learn, repeat, regurgitate. They take our style, they model on our preferences, they pull on the experiences shared.

When we are faced with mirrors that talk back, that re-enforce our self, we enter into a downward spiral. Affirmation machines designed to become a poisoned well of ultra-processed information.

As more and more people seek confirmation of their truths, the nature of our relationship between us and our devices is subtly adjusted to not just our own preferences, but those who control the machines."

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More info and images: https://alone-music.co.uk/repeated-resonant-figures/

Bandcamp release with 20 minute version of the outcome: https://alonemusic.bandcamp.com/album/repeated-resonant-figures

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And finally.. Art:

Tags: ableton, alone, alonemusic, bastl kastle, drone, live, tapes, week 24 2026, View by:alonemusic