Mark of the octopus. The mystery continues. Photo (CC-BY-ND) Allen Elliotte.

With Germany’s Messe trade show just a week away, buzz is pretty well focused on Swedish boutique machine maker Elektron, that beloved manufacturer of the Machinedrum. They’re about to launch something, and it’s a product with “octa” in the name, but that’s about all that’s known. Of course, that hasn’t stopped the Elektron fanbase from getting well worked up in an increasingly hilarious set of message threads. (Bless you, fora.)

First, the rampant speculation:
Are we expecting a new Elektron product at Musikmesse?

User Atiko, however, notes in a video of Elektron assembly a button labeled “Octatrack.” (That’s “button” as in “the kind you wear on your shirt at Messe.”)

http://vimeo.com/9879569

That in turn leads to another crazy thread:
Re:Mistery [sic] OCTATRACK: new from Elektron?

Elektron, for their part, hints at the upcoming launch with the text: “SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: THE OCTASHARK BITES” in the corner of their site. (Octashark?) They’ve also emblazoned their site with a Messe banner that reads, in text that suggests they’re about to release a prog rock album, “The New Dawn.”

Konkrete predicts this site will somehow enter the fray. What to do… do I fulfill the prophecy?

what I’m hoping for is a XXXCSHDRRT but we’re probably going to get a FFFRPPPI!!ING and then everyone who was right will be like ZZZWWWAARRW and all thoze who were wrong will be like OH ACTUALLY I’M REALLY DISAPPOINTED. Then there’ll be lots of BWWAWAWAWAWA maybe even on peter kirn’s ‘ELECTRONIC CABBAGE SPROGGIT PSEUD’S CORNER’ where the ‘a new butter based USB massage enables DIY multiple dorkgasms’ hook will lead into many a DEEP PENETRATIVE INSIGHT into the Oktospastik Cyclotron everyone’s all be waiting for and lathered up about. BUT I WANTED A FSFSSRRRGGRLL, and I’ve been saying that since 2004 when the first… they moan nonetheless. Then someone will complain that it’s too expensive and that anyway therez a plug wot can do all that anyway like. Cue nuclear flame festival and rotten tomato in the stocks hurling, bunion scraping, cheese rolling, caber tossing, frollicking Glastonbury mud orgy of a thread while we all save up the quids for DA TING with its 8 TRAXX of SEXX, which we can’t really justify to the better halves anyway cos it’s just a BOX THAT SEZ “MOOO!” (albeit repetitively), and it seems that there’s no way that that could possibly be worth more than a hair sandwich, EVEN if it’s set off in glorious brushed aluminium, COMEZ WITH STICKAZ and says moo REALLY LOUDLY when plugged into those expensive expansive high end tweeters in our sound proofed cave. But one thing is for certain. When we have TURBO MIDI, there ain’t gonna be no USB, especially not without no stinking Sepia Officinalis CONNEXION, dig?

Thanks, Konkrete. I’m … uh … flattered?

elektron.se