Electronic duo Irrelevant Devices discuss debut EP

Armed with two Game Boys, a guitar, piano (and now also a calculator), Irrelevant Devices released their debut EP, Here, earlier this year.

The ambient electronic act is the project of Josh Ryan and Rosie Bullock and developed out of the former’s previous project Little Bitboy - which saw the musician writing electronic dance music on the classic 1980s Nintendo handheld.

Talking about the transition to Irrelevant Devices, Josh said: “I started writing some newer music and it started sounding a lot darker and weirder so instead of incorporating that into Little Bitboy, I thought I'd lean into it and create a different thing.

“The whole idea was I wanted to make ambient beautiful ethereal music but using the harsh raw sounds of Game Boys and it’s evolved from there.”

Irrelevant Devices’ first gig was supporting Ed Dowie at The Lab in Northampton in March last year with Rosie subsequently coming on board to add an extra dimension to the initial songs which Josh had written.

As Irrelevant Devices continued to grow away from Josh’s previous project, it became clear to the musician expanding Irrelevant Devices’ line up of people and instruments was necessary.

“It needed a bit more. With Game Boys, you’re very limited to the amount of sounds you can make,” explains Josh.

“I wanted to be able to back that up and incorporate other elements to it but still have the raw harsh sounds of the Game Boy in the background but add extra layers.”

“I come from the classically trained piano position,” explains Rosie.

“I teach the instrument and I wanted to add some bits to what Josh had written.

“I started off only playing piano then I got myself a Game Boy and now I’ve got myself a calculator - because I’m also a maths teacher.”

“It’s kind of evolved in to incorporating our personalities into these ‘Irrelevant Devices’,” jokes Josh – who as well as playing in instrumental noise band 72%, runs the regular retro games night at the Garibaldi pub in Northampton.

Irrelevant Devices’ debut EP was released in April and features the tracks Degrees of Freedom, Things Of Beauty We Know, Petrichor and Error Interval.

It features additional instruments by Joel Harries who also mixed the EP and was mastered by Mark Cann at The Lodge in Northampton.

There’s numerous hurdles to overcome in order to get a three decade old handheld games console to function alongside what others may assume as more ‘traditional’ musical instruments.

Thankfully, an active scene of modders have developed software and hardware in order to help composers write using its 8-bit sounds.

Some have also gone to the extent of developing sound modules to help clean up the audio coming out of Game Boys and also altering the physical jack sizes.

“The first thing you really need is a backlit screen because the original Game Boy it's not backlit,” explains Josh.

“You can buy backlit screens and IPS screens - the same as you’d get on the Nintendo DS but made for an original Game Boy.

“The second thing is the original Game Boy used four AA batteries which drained very quickly.

“You want to replace it with a rechargeable battery. Modders have made a circuit board with a lithium battery and rigged it to work on a Game Boy, so you basically just slot that into the back and you can charge it with USB-C.”

However, add a calculator into the mix - to be specific the Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus - and, as Rosie explains, you suddenly find there’s far fewer people in the world trying to use it to compose music.

“You think a Game Boy is restricted until you try and play a calculator,” she jokes.

“A calculator is 1-bit because there’s no inbuilt sound.

“Someone very clever has written a programme called Houston Tracker which you can install onto certain calculators.

“It’s been coded so there’s a tracker on the calculator and it floods the signal with zeros and ones at different frequencies that make the speaker vibrate to produce a noise.

“The noise isn't coming from the calculator, it’s coming from the zeros and ones that have been flooded out of the signal.

“It’s not like there’s all these parts that have been developed for modding, it’s just a guy who’s written code which I happened to stumble upon.”

“The software is basically tricking the calculator to making sounds because it’s not built to make any audio,” explains Josh.

“The Game Boy has a sound chip so you’re getting the original sounds you get from playing games like Super Mario Bros. or Tetris, but the calculator has no audio at all.”

Unlike conventional music software such as Pro Tools and Logic which run from left to right, trackers run ‘up-to down’, triggering different sequences of notes as it progresses.

While across the four tracks on their debut, Irrelevant Devices weave piano and guitar into their music, Game Boys are closely associated with chiptune – a style of music made using 8-bit and 16-bit sounds predominantly found in video game consoles.

Josh’s first introduction to music being made on the Nintendo handheld was via a Brighton based Japanese artist called DJ Scotch Egg - who later started a band called Drum Eyes which played at The Labour Club in 2010.

“His stuff was hard, heavy, disgusting gabba all made on a Game Boy and it left me flawed,” explains Josh.

“I was amazed at how you could make something on a Game Boy. This was maybe back in 2008 and I found this entire world of chiptune.

“The thing about chiptune is it’s not necessarily a specific genre, it’s more like an instrument and that’s what fascinated me.

“There’s chiptune drum and bass, chiptune metal, chiptune punk - the possibilities are kind of endless.”

If using devices like calculators and Game Boys to make music doesn’t sound challenging enough, using them for live performances can pose further hurdles.

Again, a piece of hardware called the Arduinoboy has been specially developed to convert the Game Boy signal into MIDI which allows it to ‘talk’ to another instrument such as a drum machine to ensure they play in time.

With the calculator however, “There’s no way of MIDI-syncing the calculator,” explains Rosie. “We’ve got a new song using it but we have to listen to it and play in time with the calculator – we can’t sync up anything.”

Besides MIDI syncing issues, the pair also have to contend with the sheer age and reliability of the equipment being used.

If a mid-set ‘crash’ happens, it’s simply a case of rebooting and either starting again or from where they left off.

When you stop to consider the challenges of using a handheld gaming console more than three decades old to write music and then also overcome the subsequent challenges of playing live, the inevitable question is ‘why’?

“What fascinates me about it is there’s no limits as to what you can do,” explains Josh.

“You can do so much with all of this old tech which is supposed to be outdated now, but people have found a way of doing something fun with it.”

Irrelevant Devices are in the process of writing new music which they hope will be released this year and are continuing to work on integrating the calculator into their set up.

“We've got two, maybe three new songs and it’d be great to learn coding to see if I could solve some of the calculator problems,” explains Rosie.

“We definitely need to find a way to sync it – there’s some hacks we’ve thought about.”

You can stream and buy the debut Irrelevant Devices EP on Bandcamp via

https://irrelevantdevices.bandcamp.com/album/here

The duo are also hoping to play more live shows this summer.

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