Patrick Flanagan, the Meganome, and a delicious beverage. Image courtesy of jazarimusic.com

In late 2011 when I was just discovering controllerism, one of the most interesting things I came across was a piece DJ Shakey wrote covering this cool custom made horn claw controller that Patrick Flanagan made for use with his experimental electro band Jazari. Today, that “mechanical earwig” is enjoying life as a retired controller and in it’s place sits another custom made beast. It’s called the Meganome. It runs on an Arduino Mega, features 84 illuminated square arcade buttons, two pressure sensors, a proximity sensor, and an XY joystick.

The above video featuring the Meganome is the recording of a track on the recently released Jazari EP, The Human Element – an EP that features the Meganome extensively. The Human Element also features a voice processor (listen to Meteor Shower to hear it in action) written by Flanagan that ultimately became Vio – a voice transforming app for iOS that Apple has featured as “New and Noteworthy” overall in the App Store. It processes the voice through pitch correction, harmonization, spectral processing, wave-shaping, and stereo delay to result in a sound that makes your ears feel really nice.

The Human Element EP is currently streaming and available for free download on both Bandcamp and SoundCloud, so definitely go check it out for some really nice tunes. I’ve downloaded it and have been listening to it all day.