Algorave is made from “sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive conditionals“. These days just about all electronic music is made using software, but with artificial barriers between the people creating the software algorithms and the people making the music. Using systems built for creating algorithmic music and visuals, such as IXI Lang, puredata, Max/MSP, SuperCollider, Extempore, Fluxus, TidalCycles, Gibber, Sonic Pi, FoxDot and Cyril these barriers are broken down, and musicians are able to compose and work live with their music as algorithms. This has good and bad sides, but a different approach leads to interesting places.

This is no new idea, but Algoraves focus on humans making and dancing to music. Algorave musicians don’t pretend their software is being creative, they take responsibility for the music they make, shaping it using whatever means they have. More importantly the focus is not on what the musician is doing, but on the music, and people dancing to it. Algoraves embrace the alien sounds of raves from the past, and introduce alien, futuristic rhythms and beats made through strange, algorithm-aided processes. It’s up to the good people on the dancefloor to help the musicians make sense of this and do the real creative work in making a great party.