Creating PULSE.

Manchester’s connection to electronic music is rooted in its industrial heritage and innovative spirit, with its warehouses fostering a cultural revolution driven by the pulse of house, garage and techno.

Perhaps the most significant contribution Manchester made to electronic music was through the Hacienda nightclub, which opened in 1982. Owned by Factory Records and New Order, the Hacienda became a hub for house music in the UK. It played a pivotal role in popularising acid house and dance culture, influencing the entire dance music scene. 

The experimental roots in Manchester can be traced back to the post-punk era, with bands like Joy Division and The Fall. These groups pushed musical boundaries, incorporating unconventional structures and electronic sounds that influenced generations of experimental musicians. 

In recent years, artists like Autechre, Demdike Stare, and Space Afrika have continued the tradition of experimentation, blending elements of electronic music with ambient, industrial, and dub sounds. Their work often involves complex textures and moody atmospheres, maintaining Manchester's reputation for pushing boundaries in audio. 

Manchester has long been intertwined with the realm of electronic innovation. The city's contributions began with Alan Turing, whose groundbreaking work in early computing established Manchester as a pivotal hub in the study of waves and oscillations. This legacy continues to influence the city's technological landscape, fostering advancements in electronic engineering and digital technologies. 

The advent of synthesisers, which transformed the music industry by enabling the creation of entirely new sounds, can be seen as a direct descendant of the computational theories and electronic experimentation that Turing and his contemporaries developed. 

Adidas and it’s connection to Germany also holds resonance to this aspect of the project. Cities like Berlin mirror Manchester in their love for electronic music, study of waves and occilations and philosophies on sound and culture. Our sounds have taken influence from the Adidas Original’s Ziet Giest: from the sampled tapes of Run DMC to the dub techno influence of Berlin. Adidas has constantly merged the industrial and organic in understanding narratives on sport, health and ‘the will’ to achieve.  

During the team’s commission with Adidas we met with many incredible figures in the Manchester electronic scene and technology such as Joshua Inyang, Joshua Tarelle Reid from Space Africa and Antonio Roberts. These forms of music bred some of the inspiration for the soundscapes developed for the Pulse project.

In pulse, we use running, a primal activity intrinsic to human nature, as a canvas to explore narratives of health and achievement. The heartbeat motif, working as the root ‘pulse’ of the modular soundboard. We incorporate data from fitness technology where the modern runner takes note of their physical exertions—speed, bpm, distance, calories, heart rate. 

But these simple metrics of health fall short of capturing the full spectrum of human emotion experienced during these moments of physical push. 

The ineffable feelings of transcendence, growth, and euphoria felt in running and physical sport elude digital quantification, highlighting a boundary between what is measurable and what is felt.

To run outside, or with a crowd of others connects us to something separate from the digital landscapes we spend more and more of our time in – the run reconnects us with our physical bodies and external environments.

Pulse uses a modular soundboard, that each listener can construct a sound score piece by piece. We mentioned that in the digital world, we are given metrics that define our physical state in running. But does running at sundown, at 140bpm, with a group of marathon hopefuls on a spring night equal = “bliss?” 

The calculation for transcendence, growth, and euphoria might be any combination of these physical things. Perhaps, a combination of any such random physical facts can drastically alter a mood or state of mind in a moment. 

Music, similarly can be measured in physical facts – pitch, key, tonality and bpm but it’s impossible to calculate the ‘feeling’ a certain piece of music can give you purely based on the data it’s made of. 

There is only a limited number of keys on a piano keyboard and only a certain number of frequencies on the on the audible spectrum. But these countless configurations of organised sounds can evoke feelings of levity, joy, introspection, triumph, accomplishment. These high level feelings from music, are made from finite components - instruments, melodies, beats - but in rhythm, timing and pacing - each element’s stacking transforms into many moods, shapes and atmospheres.        

Taking the modular perspective further… the human body itself and each individuals mind is a product of core components. Our DNA, our organs our neural wiring are the foundations of every human being. However, each persons configuration of these components makes them unique, each person is made of similar substance but different to the next.