THE BUREAU: Part Two, "The President Is Visiting at Noon!" — with Soma's Lyra-8 Organismic Synthesizer

Welcome back. This second installment of The Bureau has you out of your Morning Meeting. It is now 10:03am.

Listen carefully to the AB6700 Broadcast System for an important announcement, followed by instructions for administering your compulsory joy to the GB12-B Sincerity Monitor.

The Bureau is a comics and music project that tells you a story in real-time. If you missed the first post last week, you have clocked in late. The posts appear here on Boing Boing at the time of day the story is occurring, with a timed soundtrack, covering electronic music for every comics panel.

This is Part Two. View all Bureau installments

Here is this week's playlist. Press play at 10:03am:

[soundcloud url="https://api.soundcloud.com/playlists/637172850" params="color=#ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=false&show_user=false&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true" width="100%" height="450" iframe="true" /]

FEATURED ITEM: THE LYRA-8 ORGANISMIC SYNTHESIZER

Each week we'll also be spotlighting instruments used in the music of The Bureau. This week focuses on Soma Lab's Lyra-8 Organismic Synthesizer, an incredible eight-voice tone generator from Russia. The exact Lyra-8 used here in these recordings is one of their original Moscow-based factory models, though it is easier now to acquire one in the U.S. or Europe from Poland. More information at SOMA Labs main site.

The Lyra-8 was originally designed by its brilliant inventor Vlad Kreimer. Among other attributes, it is also capable of communicating with whales. This is best explained by Vlad himself with this prototype video:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krQGkPufZHs&w=560&h=315]

DID YOU KNOW? The following exact dial settings, indicated below, unlock a secret ghost mode that will cause the Lyra-8 to levitate on its own, up to 35 feet in the air!

A Levitating Lyra-8

TRY IT AT HOME! (Be sure to be indoors, or the Lyra-8 might lift into the sky. You can prevent the device from floating away by properly tethering with a patch cable into its HOLD GATE input.)

You'll hear the Lyra-8 in many tracks on this album. It assists the initial mood of "The Unconscious Ride", the sound of harsh fluorescence in "The Light in the Bathroom", the pluck of the ambulance jetting away in "Medics" and with a voltage controlled panner, became a nice stereo source for the concluding segment this week on "Looking Away From the Window".

More information at http://www.ep.tc/bureau

See you next week for Part Three, 10:53am, "Assessing Others".

View all Bureau installments