TALKING SHOP
The producer, developer and label head on the generative ideas behind new project Paperclip Minimiser
Electronic musician, Cong Burn label head and developer John Howes’ music lives on the boundary between chaos and control. On the one hand, his work is largely produced using systems and tools of his own design: rhythms and notes are generated using Strokes, a sequencing environment he’s developed, synth patches are meticulously constructed on his Nord Modular G2 and Elektron Machinedrum, while parameters are modulated using another self-built software tool, the global modulation matrix Dispatch.
But though he’s rigorous in his command of the creative process, Howes tells us, it’s when he begins to let go that the magic happens, through generative music-making and semi-autonomous agents that possess what he’s called “lo-fi AI”. His latest release, a self-titled project under a new alias, derives its name from Paperclip Maximiser, a thought experiment that envisions how an AI tasked solely with manufacturing paperclips could run out of control and inadvertently kill us all in the process, were it not instilled with some form of self-correcting, machine-based ethics.
Thankfully, the AI-powered tools used to produce Howes’ latest release, Paperclip Minimiser, haven’t yet threatened us with extinction: instead, they’ve helped him record some of the best experimental music we’ve heard this year.
How did you get into music-making?
“I started making tunes on PlayStation 1 and cracked software, FL Studio on PC. When I moved to Manchester when I was 18 I got into a bit more and started buying equipment – drum machines and effects and modular stuff, and now I’m kind of in between all of it. I’m still using all these things – not so much cracked software, though [laughs]. But still torn between the world of drum machines, synths, hardware, and software.”
When did you move into development?
“When I was at uni I made a bunch of Max for Live devices. I had one of those Eurorack converter things where you can send CV out. I didn’t have a lot of money, as a student, so I was making LFOs and sequencers in Max that would output CV into my modular, basically as a way of saving money. And then I didn’t touch it for five or six years.
“I worked in the music industry for five years, and I got to the stage where I was like, the next job that I get in this industry is going to be working on stuff that I don’t give a shit about. Mainstream, money-making, business techno or pop music type of thing. So it was like, I guess I’m at the end of my road here. I just left the music industry completely, didn’t put out a record or do any work on music for about a year, and studied coding. Then, the first job that I got in coding was for Behringer. So I kind of went straight back in.”
Tell us about Strokes, the
