FREE TRIP INTO THE RAINBOW VEIN: REALITY-ENHANCING IPHONE APP RJDJ FREE WITH SOCIAL UPDATE
Though clearly not explicitly a game, one of my all-time favorite iPhone apps, RjDj, is celebrating its latest update — which concludes a long undertaking to bring more social elements to the app — by giving away both the full RjDj Album app [iTunes link] and its motion-sensing RjDj Shake followup [iTunes link] for free for a limited time.
What’s RjDj then? Allow me to cut and paste a bit from my pre-Offworld blog post:
Pick apart the acronym — Reality Jockey, as much as Disc Jockey– and it shifts a bit more into focus: it’s a compilation-album-like framework divided into song-like “scenes” (each with its own cover art and individual composer), but as opposed to passively listening to each, RJDJ acts as a reality-altering real-time audio processor that modifies and enhances your surroundings.
Frank Barknecht’s Gridwalker, for instance, generates harmonious bleeps not entirely far off from Eno’s Bloom, but modifies their intensity based on the volume of the input. Sit quietly and Gridwalker slowly drips out its subtle tones, but move into a noisy crowd and it responds in kind with a more hyper pitched composition.
What’s genuinely surprising is just how potent its comparatively mild hallucinogenic powers are, particularly the ’scene’ from New Zealander (and former Sidhe staffer!) Damian Stewart. I’m (mostly) sure it’s not just the latent techno-hippie in me that’s suddenly shot into full bloom, but taking it for a test drive with a late night cigarette break was a revelation: his ‘Eargasm’ transformed every exhale into a glittering swirl of reverberating air and distant suburban dog barks into sudden colorful bursts. Essentially, if you’ve ever wanted to live directly inside that warm nostalgic analog echo that molasses-drips from every Boards of Canada album, your magic key is an App Store download away, as witnessed by this demo video above.
RjDj’s latest version allows you to open your own personalized RjDj.me homepage and share your recorded songs directly with the website, and will soon connect with social networking services like Facebook and Twitter and support blog widgets for spreading your creations.
The RjDj team will also soon support iPhone 3.0 for in-app purchases of new ‘scenes‘, and frequently host new “sprints” to build a new community of scene creators and artists.
All in all it’s a brilliant undertaking from one of the original founders of web-music mainstay last.fm, and couldn’t come more highly recommended. Be sure to share your creations with us!
RjDj home [RjDj Album iTunes link, RjDj Shake iTunes link]
Previously:
RjDj: Live ambient soundscape generator for iPhone, which is way …
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