After having spotted several of my favourite artists playing live sets with a Lemur including Stephan Bodzin, Richie Hawtin, Daft Punk, Modeselektor Björk, Kraftwerk and a host of others, it was about time for me to jump on the bandwagon as well and outfit myself with one. Therefore, this review is not as objective as it could be; I own one, but on the on the other hand, in the case of the lemur, it takes one to know one.

About the Lemur
The prototype of the Lemur emerged in 2005, as a demo for a young French company named Jazzmutant. A 'sibling' of Cycling 74, Jazzmutant is supported by the company that has brought us for instance Max/MSP software, which is widely regarded as the lingua franca for developing interactive music performance software.

Named after a rare monkey-like animal that originates from Madagascar, (which, like its hardware counterpart does not shy away from the human touch and has eyes that reflect light in darkness), the man-made Lemur first hit the market in 2006, as the world's first commercially available multi-touch performance tool. The development fits in the current trend of an increased emphasis on performing live with a computer, in line with software progress of companies such as Ableton on the sonic end, and for instance modul 8/ resolume for vj's.

Earlier in 2007, Jazzmutant added a second sibling to its multi-touch family: the Dexter. Whereas the Dexter is focusing on studio DAW's (digital audio workstations, such as logic, Cubase, nuendo and Ableton), the lemur is more flexible, and by all means designed as a fully customisable and experimental live tool.

Why is it interesting?
Some people ask me: why did you do it? Why not stick to your guns, in my case several behringer bcr2000 rotary controllers that have not let me down thus far. Why spend a whopping 2500 euro on a controller that replaces the two plastic beasts that together are roughly ten times as cheap? Fact is that the Lemur has more flexibility, more eye candy, and hell of a lot more options than anything else on the market. What is more, rather than most other midi-controllers, which essentially are 'extensions of your mouse', the Lemur has a processor of its own, allowing for true interactions with the software of the machine, one of the reasons why it stands out from rest. You can use it to control more than one laptop; and more than one piece of software or hardware at the same time; both on stage and in the studio. Moreover, it offers a new and very cool dimension to performing live and an almost unmatched uniqueness to it (unless you built your own controller of course, or if you are lucky enough to drop by the sonar festival).

The versatility of Multi-touch
What really makes the lemur shine is multi-touch, something you have probably seen on a smaller scale in new devices such as Apple's iPhone. Essentially, you can touch and control multiple parameters at the same time, rather than one, as in more traditional touchscreen applications such as pda's or other smart phones. The combination of multi-touch with your own tailored set of buttons, faders and other devices, essentially opens the door to a more customised and thus efficient experience, but also expands beyond a mixer's 'traditional' set of control elements. With built in physics emulation, you can for example mimic the effect of one or more bouncing balls to control a track's panning or filter settings, or assign samples to the bouncing/colliding screen elements. You can program your own sequencer, adding and changing events on the fly, with multiple fingers at once. In fact, you have the power to rethink and reprogram your own ergonomics, as several of the traditional obstructions have been taken away.

Fact is, that this all sounds really cool but does it work? In fact, the device does a wonderful job of tracking many fingers at the same time. In one of my multi-ball presets, I was able to track 8 balls with different fingers at same time, without any problems. Although I can imagine there are limits to the system, the restrictions of a 12' screen are all the more important as it is hardly feasible to work the device with more than two people and more than 8 fingers simultaneously.

The software
The device requires two software tools to run; first is the jazz daemon that should start up when your computer does, essentially a tool that allows the Lemur to communicate with (midi) hosts. Secondly there is the Jazz editor, which allows one to build interfaces, with all kinds of control elements, in the Lemur's typical Sci-fi style. Push buttons and faders aside, there are innovative elements such as the multi-ball control (ideal for controlling two dimensions on for instance a filter), the ring area (featuring attractors, that return parameters to their original position after release), with most certainly more to come.

As far as customization goes, you can set pretty much anything to your own liking; whether its the colours, the shading, the sensitivity, the gravity effects, starting values etc. The software is relatively hassle free, although you can see that it is work in progress. Hooking up the Lemur is not so troublesome, as is connecting it to the jazz-editor. In turn having it working with your host software can be more problematic, and requires a proper order of starting programs, and a good configuration of midi-send menus.

Fact is that the firmware is fully upgradeable, and there is a development kit freely available, so ample of opportunity to add to the current offerings; as far as templates go, the user forums offer a host of examples for popular software packages, including Ableton, logic, blue glitch, NI Reaktor, traktor DJ, Cubase etc.

The device
Housed in sturdy black aluminium, the lemur has a 12' touch screen interface, powered by an ultra bright 'industry grade tft' and, logically given the fact that the majority of the parameters are controlled on the screen, only four buttons in the upper right corner. The back has space for a power supply, and a utp-connector, as you hook up your Lemur with a cross link utp cable (essentially a twisted Internet connection cable, a common accessory for any system administrator.

Why is that? The lemur essentially operates as a network device; you can hook it up to any normal network hub or router, and send messages to several connected computers; moreover it doubles as an ftp, allowing easy upload and on the fly adaptation of user designed templates for its countless applications.

The machine has a built in CPU, floating point processor and powerful gpu, to de-stress processing usage of your performance machine, and to keep it independent from the host. This is not always completely true, as I recorded some peaks in my macbook's processor, but most of the time, this is seemingly not the case.

OSC versus Midi
When using a controller these days, people tend to assume you are using MIDI as a standard protocol for communication between the controller and the computer. Essentially MIDI, a standard that was first implemented roughly 25 years ago, is a very simple and outdated 7 bit communication protocol, that nevertheless still finds a lot of employment these days. OSC, not to mistaken for an acronym for Oscillator, is an open standard (open sound control) that seeks to replace midi in the (near) future. It was designed with the Internet in mind as it works at broadband speeds, thus preventing MIDI's delay problems commonly known as midi-lag. Moreover, it offers high resolution time tags, and a pattern matching system, that can specify multiple recipients of the same message. Some software, such as Plogue Bidoule, but also Native Instrument's Reactor, and of course Max Msp already support the protocol, with more yet to come.

But in practice
First piece of advice, like with any instrument, practice makes perfect. To have your lemur work for you, you'll probably need some new routines, and you encounter new challenges. In my personal view, midi routing is the first obstruction to deal with, as especially mackie control requires a specific setup. In turn, getting your interface ready for a first performance, along with the right sensitivity, are a matter of careful tweaking, and you quickly notice that some tasks are better performed with a touchscreen than others.

Whether its the length of faders and their merits and restrictions, dealing with virtual rotary encoders for EQ-ing(which are the thing I miss most of my physical controls), experiencing a bit of latency when the unit's memory is almost full (the device has a relatively high latency of a few ms), there are some of the factors to take into account

Most of the time the unit is safe and stable, but make sure you have given your system a proper restart, and a test before hitting the road. Although the device starts up in a few seconds, getting midi working on the fly can be a hassle.

On the other end, ever since I have been using the device, bystanders have been amazed at the compactness yet the clarity of the device, which has been inspiring. Playing live, which for some sometimes resembles checking e-mail, is becoming visual again, to great effect. Besides, the device is seriously sturdy and well made; something I cannot say about most midi-controllers, which seem flimsy for the road, and cannot live up to the built quality of say, any decently built club mixer.

Essentially the device is making me rethink the way I perform certain tasks when performing live, and I simply get the feeling I am just touching the surface of it. The degree of overview and intuition is simply unmatched.

Mind you, the lemur is not perfect, yet, but what do you expect? The device is the first in its class that actually moves away from any traditional mouse-keyboard-controller setup, in style. If you are pioneering, want to control your media in a dynamic fully customised and intelligent way, and you have the cash to invest, I fully recommend it.

+visibility/ control
+customisability
+built quality

-price-tag
-connecting
-memory size