Featured Musician: 8rix
Making music with LEGO is the ultimate in maker fun. This week we spent some time learning more about 8rix, a musician in France that makes chiptune tracks with samples from train tracks and noises from the city.
Check out this Lockdown Live Session he did with Nightride FM this weekend.
We were really impressed with the controller he built using LEGO and Makey Makey.
Meet 8rix
I am an artist from Paris (France) who spends a lot of time in public transportation.
In 2018, I decided to share this experience through music by creating chiptune tracks on my phone during my trips in the city guts, melting minimalist compositions with the sounds I could record on-the-fly. My goal is to transcend the « time lost in transport » while letting myself be carried away by inspiration and unexpected things, and to paint a colorful picture of a part of Parisian life usually presented as grey and dull.
As a music enthusiast, I like to put some hip-hop, grime, ambient or latino influence among four-on-the-floor tracks. My universe is an unexpected assembly of station announcements, birds singing, reverberated voices, distorted and pitched sounds, children construction games, where trains go on their rails endlessly.
What Inspired you?
I want my performances to be dynamic, and as samples are of big importance in my music it seemed the right direction to be able to play them live. Makey Makey + Soundplant fit this need perfectly, and on top of that being able to use whatever external switch as trigger gave me much more possibilities! As I love construction bricks, I could build up a whole custom controller, which is really fun to play with. The current version is the 2.2, I’m regularly thinking about new features I could add to it.
What will you make next?
I’m thinking about building an interactive train station and exposing it in dedicated forums. Using the same kind of system it could play real train sounds when the toy trains enter or leave the station, and visitors could trigger announcements too :D
That sounds really fun! Are there other ambient musicians whose work you follow we should check out?
If you’re talking about other people doing crazy things, I cannot avoid talking about Alexis Malbert AKA Tapetronic, a french guy using absolutely everything to make music.
If you enjoy kitchen music, you should give it a try: http://www.alexismalbert.com/
Music and Social Links to Connect with 8rix
