Brain Recordings is a bundle of 17 Max for Live devices for Ableton Push Controller and Push 3 Standalone, built for the practice of musique concrète, microsound, lowercase, and dissipative synthesis. And there is a surprise hidden inside.
Each machine operates as a self-contained sound ecosystem: feedback networks, chaotic attractors, granular textures, physical models, electromagnetic captures, and spectral interference, all mapped directly to Push's encoders for immediate, tactile control.
From the glass particle generator of Concrete Ph, a direct reference to Iannis Xenakis's 1958 piece, to the Van der Pol oscillator network of Isolarchy, these instruments are designed to evolve, drift, and never repeat exactly. They are not synthesizers in a conventional sense. They are processes.
More modules are coming.
Over the last few months I've started using the first modules from a new generative system I'm building specifically for Ableton Push 3 Standalone. More than a traditional groovebox, I'm beginning to see Push as a contemporary instrument in itself — something capable of hosting unstable, autonomous and deeply performative sound systems directly inside the hardware.
I genuinely think this could become one of the first larger sets of generative soundscape and noise tools fully compatible with Push Standalone, while still working perfectly inside Ableton Live as normal Max for Live devices. The project is heavily inspired by years of listening and research around musique concrète, lowercase music, contemporary noise and self-organizing electronic systems. Steve Roden's lowercase approach, microsound structures and feedback-based environments have all been a huge influence on the direction of these modules.
The focus is not on conventional sequencing or beatmaking, but on evolving drones, unstable textures, autonomous soundscapes and generative processes designed around direct physical interaction with Push itself. Everything is built entirely in native gen~ with no external dependencies. Every module includes dedicated parameter banks mapped directly to the Push encoders.
I also run the Reddit community r/musiconcrete where I regularly share experimental music tips, software explorations and discussions around contemporary sound practices.
Every module in Brain Recordings has been fine-tuned in terms of companding, output level, and stereo panorama to sit naturally alongside the others. This is the same approach applied across the entire Lucien Dargue Series — a consistent internal gain structure so that devices from different modules and different sessions can be combined without level conflicts or spectral collisions.
Those already familiar with the timbral character of the series will find Brain Recordings consistent with that same standard. The modules occupy different spectral registers, drift at different rates, and operate in different dynamic envelopes — they are built to layer.
In practice: loading all 17 devices into a single Live session and adjusting only the channel volumes is enough to build complex, evolving compositions. The numerosity itself becomes a compositional strategy — multiple autonomous processes running simultaneously, each contributing its own slow evolution to a shared field. No additional equalisation or gain staging is required to achieve a balanced result.
The bundle shares its name with this album — not by coincidence. Brain Recordings was released on Opal Tapes in May 2025 under the name PureData. Many of the generative processes that later became Max for Live devices were first explored during the making of this record: feedback networks, stochastic particle synthesis, electromagnetic textures, and self-organizing sound ecosystems. The album is a concept work built around acute febrile delirium — the recurring fever nightmare. Fifteen tracks to be listened to in one breath.
Listen on Bandcamp
