adrian belew - "flux" app

Very much enjoying adrian belew's new songs in the "flux" app. It's kind of fun to work through the random permutations of the music, but I do appreciate that one can create a playlist to get back to the more song-oriented pieces. "Rocketship" and "Summer Shower" are among the best songs I've ever heard him do.

This isn't the first time such an app has been available, though. Mexican-American jazz singer Iraida Noriega and guitarist Alex Otaola did something similar with "Infinito" a couple of years ago. Theirs isn't quite as extensive as Adrian's, but it has more long-form pieces and is also pretty good.

I find that I still prefer to hear music from albums, but these projects are a pretty bold step in to the future, and think they have their own inherent value as an art form.

https://www.teamrock.com/news/2014-11-27/adrian-belew-launches-flux-music-concept-after-36-years

 

Do you have to have your phones data on to use it? If so, does it chew through tons of data?

 

I think it must save a certain amount of content at a time as I could still use it in "airplane mode" tonight with new items still showing up in the play mode. It was a rather large download, and I was home and on Wi-Fi when I did that.

 

Little help here please...

In the Apple app store, there's just the app called Flux, but on the developer's facebook page it says there are two Flux apps. Which one do you get when you buy the one called Flux in the app store? Here's the text from the developer-

"Not to confuse the issue.... but there are actually 2 apps called FLUX, both by the rhino king himself Adrian Belew. FLUX:FX is the audio manipulation toolkit [ie. the "paintbrush"], but FLUX:music by belew is the artwork. "
from https://www.facebook.com/noiiseaudio

 

Found this on the official Flux site:

Flux:FX appears to just be for those wanting to manipulate their own sounds, while Flux is the app containing Belew's creations. Can't wait to get home and download this tonight (580mbs!)

 

...or Todd Rundgren's interactive No World Order back in 1993. Of course, with Todd's unerring ability to back the wrong horse and embrace a technology a decade or more before it is ready, it is considered a footnote in interactive music these days. I wish he or someone would go back to the CDi, Mac or Windows versions of No World Order and create an iPhone and iPad app from the material.

 

I also think the songs weren't very good, at least not by the standards Todd had set previously (even recently on Nearly Human). Belew's project is a little bit more expansive with some songs, some musique concrete, some snippets, demo and alternate versions, and more. But at the core, the song-songs that I've heard in the app so far are really, really good.

 

iOS, huh?

Can this migrate to a (Mac) desktop somehow?

 

Well, what do you think of it?

 

Not yet.

Still waiting for the yearly Christmas gift of an iTunes card so I can get this.

 

Thanx!

Happy to wait. It's not like there's nothing else on the get-list.

Belew was great live a few weeks ago. With not one mention of flux, he proceeded to create a flux-like experience for much of his performance. That is to say, songs were precisely sliced and diced, to one extent or another, with lotsa quick cuts to other material. Must have been hell for the band to rehearse, but they made it look easy.

Always something great from Ade.

 

Love it, lots of fun. There have been a handful of songs that have circulated through a few times during several hours of playing with it over a few days, but each time I listened, some new piece would pop up. I listen mostly on my drive to and from work so some of the visuals don't get any attention (there are some that work with the compass and gyro, and so show you an environment of sorts as you move the iPhone about.) For some reason, I'm reminded a lot of Op Zop Too Wah - an album that had a lot of short pieces that jumped around in style.

What's interesting to me is that I may have read into the app's description wrong. I read something about generative music and how it's different every time, and was so thinking that the app had been crafted out of stems, which would all shuffle each time, mixing this vocal with that guitar and those drums, and next time it's completely different. What it really is, or at least that I can fathom, is a bunch of song-ideas that don't flesh out into full songs by themselves, but bridge together with many instrumental snippets and textures, and these pieces are what gets shifted around each time. So you will run across repeated songs from one play of the app to the next, but it's random as to when they will appear, or even if they will appear. I'd love to know how many "songs" are in this thing. I figure at 580mb, and the songs are likely a compressed format, and also very short, there has to be hundreds of "parts" going around.

 

Thanks... sounds like it's more interesting than just a basic visualizer app, so I'll give it a shot!

 

I take your point, to a degree. But 'Property' is as hooky and lyrically smart as Todd gets, and 'No World Order' and 'Worldwide Epiphany' have merit, too. The manner in which the songs were chopped up for the linear (CD) version, to demonstrate how the interactive project would sound if you had a CD-i player, was pretty jarring to casual listeners.

Will be seeing Adrian Friday - looking forward to it!

 

"Worldwide Epiphany" is the one I remember listening to the most on that album.

 

Worked on stage crew last night mixing monitors for Adrian and his band. FLUX:FX is part of his live rig now! Fun to watch him play that Parker Fly with one hand and tap an iPad with the other.

And yes, the band quick-cuts between songs from his entire career during the show. It's a trip watching a virtuosic band play like an impatient listener skipping through a Belew playlist on shuffle mode (which is also, coincidentally, what they had playing as preshow and between-set music). Flux by Belew played while the band signed merch and we tore down the gear on stage.

Great night, Adrian's on top form.