Last week, Epic Records recording artists Modest Mouse released their much-anticipated album "Strangers to Ourselves," giving fans worldwide access to their first new music in eight years. To continue the celebrations, the band also launched the Strangers Linguistic Remix Generator, a groundbreaking interactive project developed by The Uprising Creative which lives online at http://strangers.modestmouse.com.
Conceived by Uprising's Brian Schopfel and Benjamin Miles, this first-of-its-kind site uses nearly 100 stems from "Strangers to Ourselves" and earlier Modest Mouse releases, and allows fans to type in phrases (up to 96 characters) to generate custom remixes. The unique results also combine imagery from "Strangers to Ourselves," producing highly original audiovisual content that can easily be saved and shared online.
As explained on the official site (which is designed for desktops and optimized for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox), the underlying algorithm compares common letter frequency data and generates stems and patterns to match, while also analyzing the sentiment of the submitted text and setting each remix's BPM accordingly.
"We all are really big fans of Modest Mouse, so this didn't even feel like work," said Schopfel, who just participated in the SXSW "Viva Album Art!" panel along with executives from The FADER, Tumblr, Loma Vista Recordings and Soundcloud. "We just wanted to create something truly unique and awesome for the band."
Uprising's Benjamin Miles provided more insights into the company's development process that also involved project manager Cat Chiang and developers Ron Gierlach and Keith Hoffmann. "On a broad stroke the concept seems pretty simple, but when you dive in, it's actually quite a complex undertaking," he began.
"Honestly we were a little uncertain how an algorithm remix tool would sound, specifically one that didn't alter the stems themselves, but even in our early tests we found the results to be fun and interesting," Miles continued. "A difficult hurdle was figuring out how we were going to stitch each pattern together in order to make a progressing-sounding song. In the end, we decided to have phrases build up to three loops, then stitch those loops together in a A-B-A-B-C-B pattern to illustrate a verse, a chorus, and a bridge."
As Miles explained, the visualizer was another big challenge. "We wanted it to have a sort of fragmented feel to illustrate the idea of 'Strangers to Ourselves': It needed to be chaotic yet trippy enough to get lost in without giving you a headache," he added.
Key technologies for the project include Node.js, Ampersand.js, Timbre.js, Hello.js and Sentiment.js.
The band's official website is http://modestmouse.com.
About The Uprising Creative
In 2013, LA-based creative company The Uprising Creative merged with Chicago-based interactive agency Eyes & Ears Entertainment, creating the force that's now providing integrated creative, production and interactive development to a growing list of top-tier entertainers and brands. An integrated creative company committed to keeping things real and always stepping up, from its offices in LA, Chicago, Nashville and London, Uprising is constantly expanding its expertise in video production, design, branding, creative strategy, experiential activations, and interactive development. Driven to create and destroy, Uprising concepts, designs, builds, produces and creates in every dimension. http://theuprisingcreative.com.
