Rhubarb Orc. 19.53 Rev, the Remote Orchestra, and why this track is important

[zazen]

With Rhubarb Orc. 19.53 Rev now being a proper track on the SAW 2 Expanded Edition, this is a thing I've meant to write for ages explaining what this track is from and why the forward version of it is (arguably) one of the best things RDJ has done. I'm in mini journalist mode here, pulling info together from various places. You're welcome.

Firstly: The Remote Orchestra

in 2011/2012 RDJ was working on a Remote Orchestra concept, first for some interpretations of some Krzysztof Penderecki pieces for a gig in Poland, and then at the Barbican in London. The idea was: a 48-piece orchestra and a 24 person choir are all wearing wireless headphones. From a single laptop via some complicated kit and software, RDJ could send specific tones to the individual headphones of all 72 people - the tone they get through their headphones is telling them what note to play/sing, and when. There was also a big visual display with bars and icons telling different groups of people what volume and style to play. So essentially, the idea is to turn an orchestra and choir into a sortof synth that you can control from a laptop. Its a bonkers idea.

Above pics are from a Weirdcore video and blog post about the Poland performance.

If you remember the Barbican gig in 2012, which had a piano swinging on a huge pendulum (thread with reviews by mcbpete and other watmmers here), the Remote Orchestra was part of that. But it didn't particularly make much impact at the time - here's a review of the gig from the Financial Times

Quote

It started with a bright idea, for James to direct an orchestra from his laptop using a complex set of visual and audio cues, but the result was perversely introverted and self-referential. Thick layers of sludgy strings, overlaid with zooming, booming, revving noises, were prompted by colour-block codes on the screen overhead and headphone messages that the audience were not party to. James held court from the back of the stage, while techies with camcorders crept among the musicians.

The piece was first performed at the 2011 European Cultural Congress in Wroclaw, and the Barbican concert promised to be even more ambitious. No doubt it was thrilling for those taking part, but for the rest of us it was – musically at least – about as interesting as an afternoon at Silverstone Circuit

Critics did really like the other parts of the show - the swinging piano, and the Interactive Tuned Feedback Pendulum Array piece involving pendulums and lasers. The FT ended their review with "With this work, he asserts himself as Reich’s heir apparent."

But the Remote Orchesta didn't seem to live up to its potential at the Barbican gig. Why not? Next stop:

The Syrobonkers interview

Just after Syro was released in 2014, a blog called noyzelab published a really long and interesting interview with RDJ called Syrobonkers. The interview was published with a load of downloadable mp3s including Rhubarb Orc. 19.53 Rev (this was a year or so before the track would be on soundcloud). The blog got taken down some time after that but here's some of it on the wayback machine.

In Syrobonkers, RDJ talks quite a lot about the Remote Orchestra:

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dave: are u planning any more live dates? how was the barbican remote gig for you, what were you actually doing for the parts of that show?

rich: none planned, phew..really wanna do some more live installation type events like Barbican though.
also really wanna work more on the remote orchestra idea.
Was a miracle anything came out of that as half the software broke down 5 mins b4 gig at barbican, had so much planned for that and it just didnt work right before show..so frustrating but lucky we got anything going, learnt so much though .

There's some more detail about the setup and what went wrong at the Barbican:

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We had code to take it so much further ,like analysis of live audio>translation to humans as partials , midi files, live keyboard input>players, chord memory like on a synth etc etc, shouldve kept going , if id done 10 of those type gigs in a row, would've have been insane by the end..but hopefully I will continue that, dont wanna talk about where I want to take it for above reasons but it should be dope.

Ok quick explanation of what we did/planned.

Remote orch, players have pitched saw waves in their headphones, they have to try and track pitch, i control the pitches via midi controllers and maxpatches and who gets what.

They also have visual cues that tell them how loud to play and what style of playing + other instructions like play as high as you can and as fast as possible, on the birdge of instrument etc etc, scream like a cat dying

none of these worked at barbican though they did work at the poland performance though, i did what i could with what was left working.

Poland was particularly nice as nobody spoke english and i don't speak polish so it really was remote , it became part of it as I had to devise graphical instructions that everyone understood which they pretty much did,

my fave part was rehearsals where nobody told them when to start, there was no conductor, so there was lush moment when performers were like do we start or what? and slowly they realised i had started and started to do it, was pretty magical.

I send which players recieve which cues and how loud to play them, effectively making one big fuck off human synthesiser.

All audio came from laptop with digico usb>madi box>digirack 48 i/o rack [serious bit of kit]

48 channels of audio all from a laptop, the uber clever girl who designed the maid box at digico told me you can get over a thousand channels of audio from thunderbolt, the mind boggles..

also all headphones were wireless, so the setup was pretty insane, much more complex than i originally thought.

radio signals bouncing all around the concrete room and modulating each other etc, insanity

Then a bit further into the interview:

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dave: do you have any outtakes from your barbican or polish robot orchestra performances?

rich: Yes many, not properly mixed down though but heres a couple for starters! this was the very first rhythmic tryouts, they got better before the sofware crashed, next time i will nail the bugger! 2nd is rehearsal for orc version of a saw2 track that never got performed...backwards..I really need to mixdown the others as they friggin amazing if i dont mind saying so myself, esp krakow pendulum piece which turned out way beyond my highest expectations, i felt god or someone was helping me out there, maybe it was just my amazing crew!

Syrobonkers also had parts of the instructions that were given to performers, e.g. "Try and concentrate on what you hear in the headphones and on your screen and what the other players in your section are doing as it will be the same as you[mode1 only] BUT not the other sections. [this might be very difficult, do your best!]"

So from this we know that something went majorly wrong just before the Barbican gig, and there were bigger plans for that performance. Also that RDJ really liked what was possible with the Remote Orchestra and wants to return to it at some point. And that it was a nightmare to set up, with 72 sets of wireless headphones, and complicated custom software. And that the Rhubarb Orc. 19.53 Rev track is from a Remote Orchestra rehearsal.

Listening to it forwards:

RDJ released the backwards audio as part of Syrobonkers and then on Soundcloud, so its the backwards version that is now going onto the SAW 2 Extended edition. It sounds good backwards but it was originally intended to be a live performance and performed forwards. I suspect RDJ didn't officially release the forwards rehearsal because its unfinished business that he wants to properly return to oneday. But here it is forwards:

It seems likely that the plan was to play this at the Barbican, and its such a shame it didn't happen because the concept of the Remote Orchestra and the actual sounds that result from it really come together in this. You can hear the slight hesitations and uncertainty in the performers, it gives it all a very strange but beautiful quality. You can hear the way it starts slowly, as RDJ mentioned - "my fave part was rehearsals where nobody told them when to start, there was no conductor, so there was lush moment when performers were like do we start or what? and slowly they realised i had started and started to do it, was pretty magical."

So there it is, IMHO one of the most interesting, ambitious and beautiful things RDJ has done, and all we have of it is one rehearsal recording. Hopefully he will return to this idea one day.

For more information please re-read.

Edited Monday at 12:43 PM by zazen

[droid]

Great post, thanks for all the details, I had no idea it was quite so epic.

[Friendly Stranger]

Great post, thanks for the deep dive!

[cern]

Love the track but I don't understand this "playing backwards" thing. What is the point? 

[hayhook]

As I said before. It’s a great track.
Glad to know more of its history.
But. 
It shouldn’t be on the SAWII reissue. It’s as jarring on there as it would be if it were a house track or drill n bass blaster. Aesthetically, it just doesn’t fit with the rest of the album where as Red Calx(slo) or any of the other outtakes - from the SoundCloud dump, or those still yet unheard… were obvious better choices  

 

 

[shelly]

As I said before. It’s a great track.
Glad to know more of its history.
But. 
It shouldn’t be on the SAWII reissue. It’s as jarring on there as it would be if it were a house track or drill n bass blaster. Aesthetically, it just doesn’t fit with the rest of the album where as Red Calx(slo) or any of the other outtakes - from the SoundCloud dump, or those still yet unheard… were obvious better choices  
 
 

Agreed. I was rooting for red calx[slo]. It’d be like the perfect final whisper after th1[evnslwer]’s really cinematic conclusion. Rhubarb Orc Rev sounds completely different to anything on the album.

[phudoshin]

I love thta its on the vinyl -the track gives me chills

[beerwolf]

One of my favourite tracks of the SCD