Moritz Simon Geist is a German-based performer, musicologist, and robotics engineer readying the first techno album made entirely by robots. Back in 2012, Geist built a giant (13’x6′) replica of the iconic 808 drum machine. Filled with various real percussion elements like a snare, kick, and hi-hat, Geist’s 808 was played by robots and was capable of performing live. Since that time he has continued to engineer and build various robotic instruments appearing with them at festivals like Mutek, CTM, and Moogfest–while also winning the 2017 Visual Music Award as well as a grant from Germany’s Initiative Musik. Geist is currently readying his LP Robotic Electronic Music for release on November 16th, with an introductory EP called The Material Turn due out on October 12th. Both efforts will be released via Sonic Robots Records–a newly established label (distributed by Kompakt) dedicated to automation, mechanics…and techno.
While both a classically trained musician and engineer, with an expertise in prototyping technologies and 3D-Printing, Moritz Simon Geist also teaches at NYU Berlin. His mechanical creations–and now the music that these devices create–are helping to push our understandings about the intersection between technology and society into new aesthetic realms. Blurring the lines between electronic and acoustic music through the mechanized physicality of his sonic creations, Geist explains:
“No beat is like the other, everything is played with actual acoustic physicality and thus the actual error. At the same time, the repetitive nature of the robots makes it perfect for playing electronic music. It’s industrial and organic at the same time.”
Below, you can watch Geist and his musical robots perform the track “Entropy“–a cut featured on both The Material Turn and Robotic Electronic Music. Using his Futuristic Kalimba, Pneumatic Hi-hat, mechanically controlled Drone Guitar, and various deconstructed hard drives to create snare and clap sounds, the musician/engineer returns acoustic physicality back into the realms of electronic music. Also included here is a peek behind the scenes in which Moritz Simon Geist walks you through how his various instruments work. It’s a playful and fascinating look narrated by Geist himself, and it just might have you ditching your computer and DAW in favor of your own mechanically triggered acoustic devices. As he explains, robots are the future of electronic music–and if you think about it, somehow, strangely too, they remind us of its’ past!
