THE LAPTOP SUPERGROUP
Conceived by producers Ricardo Villalobos and Dimbiman (both have released recordings on Perlon), Narodniki is an 8-way improvisational laptop tag team by some of minimal techno's all-stars. The event was first presented at the MUTEK festival in 2003, and has performed several times around Europe with slightly different lineups.
Narod Niki is a very simple setup. Eight producers, each with his own laptop, stand in a semi-circle. None of them is synced in anyway save for a known common tempo. One or two of them will take turns mixing the output of the other 7 into a wonderful mesh of deep beats.
Each time this has happened, the lineup has been different. Lineups are always kept secret before the event in order to keep the element of surprise. They all seem to have been some huge names in minimal techno, though. The first lineup consisted of:
A more recent performance in Berlin dropped Akufen, Dan Bell, Dimbiman, and Dandy Jack and replaced them with Zip (half of Pantytec), Substance and Vainqueur (aka Scion), and Max Loderbauer (half of Sun Electric).
Scuttlebutt says that plenty of these events of occurred before, just without a real name. Hopefully this concept will take off the same way Laptop Battle did.
Ableton helps promote for these events, as quite a few of these guys are users of their product Live. (Monolake designed it).
Oh, and for the record, my dream Narod Niki lineup would be: