Russel Haswell & Florian Hecker: UPIC Warp Tracks in the footsteps of Xenakis

Russel Haswell and Florian Hecker will release extracts from their work with Iannis Xenakis' UPIC composition tool on February on 4th February via Warp Records. The aptly titled „UPIC Warp tracks“ will feature three compositions from the sessions and document experiments which have kept the duo busy for the past four year. Xenakis finished conceptual work on UPIC in 1977 and since then, it hasn't only popped up in his own scores, but in those of others as well. The tool allows users to feed waveforms into a computer and then use vector displays to draw scores in a both playful and precise way. Ever since their first steps in the project, Florian Hecker and Russel Haswell have made use both of UPIC's qualities as a composition program and a live instrument, which allows for plentiful real-time manipulations (see the video below). Their work has taken place at the home of UPIC, CCMIX Paris, and been featured on Warner Classic's „Blackest Ever Black: Electro acoustic Upic Recordings“ - a full length effort which went deep to explore the machine's potential. „Upic Warp Tracks“ will now take things one step further, as it follows in the wake of „live multi channel electroacoustic diffusion concerts“ making use of surround sound and laser lighting to create „an immersive multi-sensory environment".