“This hardware and software gives you limitations,” says Polyend CEO Piotr Raczyński (no relation to Bogdan Raczynski, the musician he collaborated with). “When you have a DAW nowadays with any computer, you can have thousands of tracks and thousands of effects. That is tempting, and it can be a little intimidating. But here you don’t have any fancy graphics. You have to listen to it; the main receptor is your ears. This limitation gives you a kind of freedom that you don’t have to think of the process anymore.”
Trackers first emerged in the late 1980s. Karsten Obarski, a online game sound designer, created a program known as Ultimate Soundtracker for the Commodore Amiga as a method to streamline the means of scoring video games. The idea proliferated from there, inspiring comparable applications like OctaMED and Renoise. The signature 8-bit sound samples of trackers turned a staple of online game soundtracks and had been used to attain video games like the unique Deus Ex and Unreal. Trackers additionally turned instrumental to the ’90s rave scene, due to the ease with which customers had been capable of shortly whip up frenetic, danceable beats utilizing only a laptop computer keyboard. Polyend’s selection to mix that performance with retro enchantment to make a slick {hardware} controller was impressed by not a small quantity of nostalgia.
“If ‘retro appeal’ is code for ‘nerdy,’ then yes, trackers are (not exclusively) for geeks,” Bogdan Raczynski says. “Musical evolution owes an immeasurable debt to the nerds who have moonshot electronic music to where it is today.”
Raczyński and Raczynski met at a 2019 live performance in Poland the place Bogdan was performing. (Incidentally, Legowelt was enjoying at the identical live performance.) Polyend’s Tracker was nonetheless in the prototype part then. Bogdan, who had been utilizing tracker software program since the ’90s on albums like Samurai Math Beats and Rave Till You Cry, supplied recommendation that formed how the {hardware} developed.
“He showed me what was going good, what maybe needs improving,” Piotr says. “That was a very, very important point of the development of this.”
For Bogdan, the inspiration for his customized Polyend tracker—a shiny yellow design named “BANANS”—got here from a sequence of Instagram posts that featured the titular fruit. He wrote on his web site that the design was meant to “evoke a sense of joy” that will encourage customers to gleefully discover the machine.
“The wonderful thing about every instrument, from trumpets to trackers, and the Tracker, is that they’re just a medium,” Bogdan says. “Anyone can pick up a saxophone, but nobody will ever sound like Gato Barbieri. It is misguided to hope to sound like anyone else. The Tracker is an instrument that empowers you with an opportunity to express yourself in a way that you aren’t able to with any other instrument.”
If you miss out on this spherical of Polyend’s limited-edition {hardware}, bear in mind that the firm can be growing one other new product with inventive enter from the digital musician Aphex Twin. Expect that collaboration to return out subsequent yr.
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