Latest / Electronic Music / The Resynator - Alison Tavel
Transcript
- 00:00 Rob Puricelli Hello and welcome to the Sound On Sound podcast channel about electronic music and all things synth. I'm Rob Puricelli, and in this episode, I talk to Alison Tavel about her film Resynator. Born 10 weeks before the passing of her father, Alison grew up knowing little about him, but did know that he had invented a synthesiser of some description. 25 years later, she resolved to fully understand what her father had achieved, but didn't bank on the emotional journey it would take her on, a journey of discovery, pain, friendship, and creativity. Back in May of 2026, Alison was finally able to organise a screening of her award-winning documentary in London, so I jumped on the train to meet my friend and find out more about her and the film. Right, so you find us in a little hotel just off of Bloomsbury in London. I'm with Alison Tavel. Hi, how you doing? Alison Tavel I'm so good. How are you? Rob Puricelli I'm very well. Are you enjoying our country and our capital city? Alison Tavel I sure am, yeah. I wish I could be here forever. Rob Puricelli That's not your first time here. You've got family, right? Alison Tavel Got some family here. My mom's side's from here and my grandma came over to America when she was 18, but we've still got some family here. Rob Puricelli So we can claim you as one of our own. Alison Tavel Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. 01:28 Rob Puricelli So tell us first of all, why are you here this week? What brings you to London? Alison Tavel I'm premiering my documentary feature Resynator for the first time here in the UK. Rob Puricelli Excellent stuff. We've been, I mean, so excited about getting this over here and getting people to see it. It's a fantastic film. I've been very lucky to have, have watched it and it's a real rollercoaster of a film. It's not what I expected, which I think people will find out when they see it. We don't want to spoil it too much, but let's start off with you. Who is Alison Tavel? What's your background? Alison Tavel I'm originally from Ohio, and I've been in LA for the past 17 years, and I've always worked in music. It's just, you know, music and food are my two favourite things in life I'd say. And I grew up with my mom and my older sister in Ohio and my dad passed away when I was born, in a car crash and I knew he was very musical. He was a musician. I'd heard he'd invented a synthesiser and I'd heard a lot of other kind of wild and crazy and outlandish and amazing stories about him that I couldn't really relate to because he seemed like this perfect person that was an academic and a scientist and an inventor and, you know, and a phenomenal athlete. And so I grew up, I worked in music, I was a music supervisor. I toured for a long time working for an artist as an assistant, a tour manager. And while I was on tour, you know, sometimes it would come up in conversation, people talk about gear and the latest synths and you know, lighting rigs and everything, you know, technical and I'm not a musician, I have a great appreciation for music and I've got a pretty good ear, but I'm not, I don't play any instruments or anything. And so for me to be able to contribute to these tech conversations, I'd be like, you know my dad invented a synthesiser. And they'd be like oh, really? Well, where is it? Is it for sale? Is it on the market? What was it called?" And I never knew how to answer any of these people's questions. And so like, after two years of touring and getting to that point in the conversation where I couldn't answer any of their questions, I was like, you know what, maybe I should find my dad's synthesiser and go see what it's about so I can answer these questions. And I'd Googled it, you know, every so often, and there was like, a flyer on eBay, you know every once in a while, but there's really no information out there about it. And I knew that his prototype was in my grandma's attic in Indianapolis, Indiana. And so we had some time off tour. Coincidentally, it was Father's Day weekend and I decided to fly home to Ohio to see my mom and then drive to Indianapolis, see my grandmother and go get his synthesiser out of the attic. And when I was in the attic, I didn't know what to look for. I was looking for a keyboard because I thought synthesisers were keyboards with buttons. Again, I'm not technically, I don't know much about synthesisers at this point. I still don't. And so I was looking for a keyboard. I couldn't find a keyboard and then I see this box and I'm like oh man, I bet this is it. And I open it up, and it's this black rectangular metal box with a bunch of knobs on the front of it. I was like, is this it, you know. And so, long story short, I decided I was gonna film kind of a mini documentary, like a mini doc about the resurrection of the synthesiser and my goal at that point was to get it working and use this hopefully cool thing as an excuse to reach out to all my musical heroes and have them make music with it. And so I was like, I'll get it fixed. I'll record, I'll document the resurrection of it, put out this little mini doc and then maybe make like a compilation album or something to go along with it. So that was the goal of like why I was filming. And I had this idea that if I could be a part of the resurrection process, because I didn't know anything about synthesisers and to be quite honest, the synthesiser community is very intimidating, especially for a girl, you know, who's 25 years old, who doesn't have a musical background like that. It was hard to get into that community. And so I was like well, if I could maybe be the face of this person who wants to learn about synthesisers and wants to learn how to solder and wants to learn about diodes and resistors and capacitors and, you know, how these circuit boards are put together, maybe other people who are interested but intimidated could follow along with and they can learn with me. So that was the goal. So I like brought my friend, hey, can you hold this camera while I go meet this engineer who worked on the Resynator with my dad? I found him. Actually, I think it was my uncle Larry who put me in touch with him. He had a contact or something, and his name's Mike Beigel. And again, I don't know much about gear. I look up this guy, and I'm on tour with the band and I'm like, this guy's name is Mike Beigel. I'm going to see him tomorrow. He's the founder of Mu-Tron. And everyone's like Mu-Tron? Like, the effects pedals? And they're like, Jerry Garcia, Stevie Wonder? I'm like yeah, I guess, you know? I was like, I guess he like, engineered this thing for my dad. So that's how it started. I met this guy, Mike. He had been my dad's partner in this product and he helped me kind of get this project off and running. And through this process of resurrection, he would tell me these little stories about my dad, or I just, I don't know. I was picturing my dad, because again, I'd never met him. My dad died in a car crash when I was born. So I was starting to picture my dad in this different way as a 25-year-old, never having known him, and starting to finally be able to relate to him, not because I could understand the technical side of things, but I'm standing with Mike and we're looking at a schematic and he's asking me to read some numbers off of it while he tinkers, you know, and tests some stuff. And I'm just thinking like oh man, my dad was in the same kind of spot. Working with him in the same kind of situation and it made him real for the first time. And I was like wow, I've never cared really to know about my dad or ever taken the time to think about him as a human. I'd always just thought of him as an academic or a, you know. So it was just this, it was a moment that gave me pause. And then I met a few other friends of his and this is all in the film, there's this moment where I meet my dad's other friend who was the founder of Musician magazine. And I went to him, again not to talk about anything personal, but there were ads, like Resynator ads that I found in Musician magazine from 1980, '81, and they're really iconic. Like they say awesome, awesome, awesome, you know? And it's just so '80s and like futuristic for that. And so I was like, well, maybe this guy Gordon Baird would be able to tell me what my dad's intentions were for the market and for sales and I initially went to him for that and what he ended up giving me was something I wasn't expecting. It was very personal. It was very dark. And after that day I called my mom and I was like well, I'm done filming. This is not the story I'm trying to tell. I don't need to tell my dad's personal story and I don't need to tell my family's personal story and I don't wanna know this stuff. But after talking to my mom, and then she tells me like, there's more to the story now, you know, now that you're asking. I've got some stuff." And I was just... I remember going back to tour, and I talked to Grace a lot, and I talked to my mom a lot, and I just was like, "Should I keep filming?" You know, "Is this really what I'm trying to do?" And I thought about it, and I just, I figured that maybe I should keep filming because if these were real issues that I was facing, and I was gonna figure out how to get through them, and I knew I would, maybe it's like okay to be vulnerable, maybe it's okay to be transparent about the situation because if I'm going through this, other people have gone through this. Maybe not the exact same way, maybe not a car crash and a synthesiser and, you know. But family issues are universal. Mental health is universal and trying to learn about who you are through your own identity, through your parents' identity, like those are all universal things. And I was like Well, I've gotten this far, let me just keep filming and see what happens, and let me just keep saying yes to things and then I own all of this footage. If I decide down the road not to use it, then fine. And so that's where I kind of changed and the story changed and this film ended up taking 10 years to make, mostly because I was paying for it myself and I was never able to be a full-time filmmaker. I was always having to have a, a primary job and have this be a supplemental project. So I toured for a really long time until I couldn't tour anymore. The film was taking over, and I needed to figure out how to stop touring and stay in LA to finish the film. So I had to get a job that kept me in LA. So I stopped touring, changed careers essentially, became an archivist. I started working for the Tom Petty estate, archiving. I did that for a long time and slowly finished the film. And so what you have at the end of the day is a very, very personal story that is driven by a synthesiser, but it's actually not you know, if anybody, and so I think like, the reaction you had, which is a lot of people go into this film thinking I'm gonna watch a music history doc about a synthesiser and what you end up with is, like, a few tears and some laughs and you get to learn about synthesisers in a very organic way as I did. Rob Puricelli Because the thing, I wanted to sit down and watch it on the big screen at home and I said to my wife can we watch this film? She goes what's it about? I said it's about synthesisers. And she goes oh yeah, maybe I'll go to bed. I said no, honestly, I think this is gonna be a bit more, I think this is, it's so much more than that. It's a human story about a daughter discovering her father through his legacy. And that's got, I mean it was, I mean I had tears when I was, she had tears in her eyes. It was all very emotional and it really is, if I can, you know, sort of promote this film to anyone, it's a film about a girl discovering her father and her family and her identity that's kind of wrapped around this tale about a piece of music technology, which in itself is very fascinating. But it's a much more human tale than that, so it has a much more broad appeal as a film, rather than just a whole bunch of nerds sitting in a cinema munching popcorn and going oh yeah, circuits, yeah capacitors, that kind of thing. 12:41 Rob Puricelli So what is the Resynator? What does it do? I mean, you say it's a rack-mounted unit with stuff on the front. There's no keyboard. There's an input, but what does it do? What is it? Alison Tavel So it takes up two rack spaces and it's a monophonic instrument-controlled pitch-tracking synthesiser. So he wasn't a keyboardist, he was a guitarist primarily and so yes, it's a guitar synth, but it can track the pitch of anything. So I don't play any instruments, so I track my vocals through it and what is unique about it is it was '76 when he started kind of making some software for this. The tracking specifically is digital and kind of like fine-tuned it. First it was a pedal board like a briefcase that you open and it's a pedal board and half sits on, like, a stool, and half sits on the ground. You have your pedals on the ground. And then he met Mike Beigel and they were like OK, the industry's kind of heading towards racks, so we should do a rackmount instead. So they never actually marketed the pedal board. There was one ad from '79 marketing the pedal board, the pedal. And then they changed the name to Resynator and they made it a rack space, a rackmount. And so it tracks the pitch digitally and my dad invented this code that is meant to track everything from the lowest note of a bass to the highest note of a piccolo, so it's got some pretty good range. But you can also attach a pedal and filter out certain things. If you're gonna play a certain instrument, you can filter things out so it's more accurately tracking. But then there's a DAC, so it converts it to analogue. And so it's kind of the best of both worlds because you have digital tracking, so little to no latency and then you have analogue oscillators, analogue filters. They're Mu-Tron filters, so it's very like Mike Beigel stamp of filters. And so you have this warmth and this human approach to the way it sounds, but you have digital accuracy. And so digital brain, analogue heart. And then there's also another digital element that my dad invented called the Timbral Image Modulator section, which is eight shapes and each shape is supposed to emulate a different type of acoustical instrument, so you have the normal wave, right, the normal sine wave or whatever. And then you have a percussive wave, a woodwind-type wave, a brass wave, something that emulates the fluttering of a flute. You have something that's very otherworldly. He combined two different types of shapes together and invented a sound you know, like, he did a whole AES paper in 1981 on Timbral Image Modulator. And so that's a digital section and then it gets converted back to analogue for the filters and the output. And it's got, I don't know, maybe it's like 20 knobs on it, so you think it's pretty simple, but it's not. But it's great. I mean, it's such a special instrument and it has a lot of novel concepts, and I think his thinking behind these presets before there were presets essentially is just really, it's a beautiful approach to sound. And he crafted this thing from his brain and it's just, you know, he made maybe six of them total with plans to make about 200 and he did his best to reach out to all these artists and get these demos and he got three units to Peter Gabriel. Peter had a synth distribution company in the early '80s called SyCo Systems that was run by Peter's cousin Steven and they, I found all of these back and forth letters of them confirming the purchase and asked Peter specifically requesting one and so yeah, it was just, it had this little brief history, and then in the film you find out why it kind of stopped and then he died. And so the project kind of, you know, fell apart but it was always this thing that was really special to him, and when he met my mom he said, I just need to make my first million and then I can go back to doing what I loved, because he gave up this project and started working for his family and he didn't want that. He wanted to work in music, but then he died, so he never got to. And so I feel a bit of a responsibility now that I've been in his world and understood his side of this story, that I'm gonna do everything I can to figure out how to get the Resynator to market. There's too many obsolete parts in this unit that I have to be able to recreate a rack mount, but we are able to update and modernise aspects of it. The two, you know, 8048 Intel chips that have the code on them for the digital frequency analyser and the temporal image modulator, combine those into one microprocessor and make a semi-modular unit similar to like a Moog Mother-32, like that kind of shape, to where it can fit in a Euro rack, but it's also a standalone. So there's eighth inch and then quarter inch. So you could do, you know, you can use it however you want. And I've teamed up with Indiana University, this university in Indiana where my dad was actually a music professor at the end of his life. And the director of this center that is named after my dad, he really loved this project and championed it and brought on this grad student, Harry, to kind of run this modernisation and so that's been in the works for, you know, five, six years. We finally have prototypes and they're being tested. But then, you know, there's also the idea of software and there's this amazing human being who I met, how did I meet him, how did I meet Rob? There's this guy Rob Rampley who runs a company, he owns a company called MOK Music, M-O-K and he has been developing a plug-in, a fully software VST version of the Resynator. So it'll look exactly like the rackmount and will have, you know, my dad's presets and stuff built in, and that's also in testing mode, where we're switching from alpha to beta, whatever that means. Rob Puricelli Yeah, it's moving ahead. Yeah. Alison Tavel It's moving ahead, yeah. And I just, the last test, we tracked a guitar through it and it was starting to really sound like the real thing, which is really fun. But I have to say, after playing the real thing and then playing the plug-in, I'm like oh, this sucks. Like, I hate turning knobs with a mouse. Are you kidding me? But I think people who aren't me, who use plug-ins all the time will love it. Rob Puricelli Yeah, and there are ways to control with, you know, with actually... Alison Tavel Keys and stuff. Rob Puricelli Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Alison Tavel So yeah. There's some Resynators that will hopefully see the light of day and come to market eventually. I'm gonna do everything I can. I'm not gonna change my whole life to be able to do it. My goal has been the film and then I'll do as much as I possibly can to get products out, but it's, you know, I never in a million years would think that I would be a manufacturer or a distributor of synthesisers. 20:05 Rob Puricelli I know, right? Because in the film we see you in, I guess it's a loft space at your grandparents' house with these boxes of bits and parts and components. Did you literally just gather them all up and take them to your dad's partner and say how did you put this together and just kind of reconstruct it from that? Alison Tavel Yeah we, that warehouse scene where I'm laying all the parts out, we rented a warehouse space, actually. I moved all the boxes from my grandma's house, shipped them to LA, rented out this warehouse space, because I just wanted to be able to see everything and I wanted to learn. You know, I had my dad's bond, the bill of materials and I would literally go through line item, do we have this and I'd Google what is a diode, what does it look like? And then I'd look in the boxes and I'd be like, that looks like a diode, you know? And then it's like, okay, this is a diode. And learning about the little colour codes on the resistors and stuff. Like, I had to learn what those mean and what they do and how they function and I don't know everything. But I just, I wanna learn as much as I could as a layman and so that was the first step for me, was just to identify how many, you know, SSM2030 chips, you know, and make a little inventory. And so that's what I do in the warehouse scene, is I'm just getting an inventory of what I have. And then yeah, took it all to Mike Beigel and his partner, Richard Lingenberg, who's a real, real mastermind as well. Like, he helped Mike and I with every aspect of this as well. He's a genius. And so we just figured out what parts we had, tested all the parts, make sure they're still good, and then you know, all of the DAC or the digital frequency analyser, the 8048 Intel chips. I found a guy in New York City, one of Mike Beigel old friends actually, who I had to go find 8048 chips on eBay, because we didn't have any more, wiped those, the ones that are like, reprogrammable with the little windows, fly to New York, give him the empty blank chips and then give one DAC, so out of the pedal board Resynator and then the one rackmount that I had, and then Mike Beigel actually had a half-built one. So we tested all the DACs and only one worked. So that was the one that I flew to New York with. He copied the code off of it and programmed a dozen new ones. So we had the code, we had the code saved and then we also had it programmed onto these chips. And so I was like OK, we can make 12. But then after we looked at all of these parts, it's like OK, we can make three. And then we ended up only resurrecting my dad's unit and Mike's unit, and then two, three, four, five, and then there were three more units that we built, but it was actually not from, it was from spare parts but it was also, we deconstructed, so to add to this complicated story, the Resynator's monophonic and then my dad also invented a polyphonic version that he called the Hexinator. Six Resynators. And his prototype was just him thinking how could I make this polyphonic? So he literally took six Resynator units and stacked them on top. Well, he took five Resynator units. High E and low E were the same unit. I don't know how. That's his thinking. Five Resynator units and then just hammered this thing on top of all of them that said Hexinator. And he sent that to Mike, and Mike and him figured out how to actually make one of those. So there's one Hexinator for sure, only one. And then one, like, brainchild, which is just like, the five units. And so we took these five units apart, even though I was like ugh, do we do this, do we take this apart? But I was like, I think it's more important right now to preserve the finished Hexinator. Take photos of the original one and break them down and use them. And so we did that, we broke them down and we ended up building two, three units out of those five Yeah , so then we had five Resynators and they were all working. One original, you know, four rebuilds and then years and years and years later, and then Richard got the Hexinator working. So it works with a Roland G-707, you know the one with the weird bar on top? Which, why is there that bar? Rob Puricelli Because it's the '80s. Alison Tavel Yeah. And so it only works with that, and there's a 24-pin cable connector that goes from the guitar to the Hexinator. And so that always worked with the guitar and it's so fun to play chords, you know? But then we were like oh, it'd be really cool if you could hook up a keyboard, because I found my dad's user manual and it says dear Hexinator users... keyboard. And I go, this is meant to work with a keyboard. So Richard rewired it and redid it, so now it can work with a guitar and then you have to like, do a bunch of things and then it can work with a keyboard. And the keyboard's really fun, too. So yeah, we have a lot of versions. And then the last and final Resynator, because I have six now, came from eBay. Rob Puricelli No way. Alison Tavel So Peter Gabriel bought three, his company bought three units in 1980 and when I met with Peter and I asked him if any of these still existed, he didn't know where they were and the company dissolved and got sold or whatever. And so I knew that they were kind of out there and I did a bunch of online research and I found an old forum from 1995 of somebody who had gotten a Resynator. It was broken, looking for the inventor. At that point my dad had passed. Tried to reach out to that guy, email, MIA, like doesn't work anymore. He's coming to the premiere, I found him. Rob Puricelli Oh wow, awesome. Alison Tavel But anyway, so I knew that there were three units around. I traced one to La Frette Studios in Paris, where SyCo Systems had, like, a demo house. Jon Anderson at one point from Yes had played that unit, or he had it at one point, so I was able to like, find a lot of stuff, but I couldn't find the three units. So when was this, it was Christmas Eve three years ago, I had done a Kickstarter campaign in 2019 and one of the Kickstarter backers had reached out to me saying hi, you know, Merry Christmas, I don't know if this is legit but I found a Resynator on eBay and he sends me the link. I go what? Ships from London, £2500. And I was just like well I have to, there's no world where I don't buy this, so here we go, most expensive purchase of all time £2500. So I bought it and I reached out to the person that sold it and I said where did you get this and she was like, my husband and I collect old gear. We acquired a bulk of gear from the BBC in the early 2000s and it's been sitting in a storage unit ever since and we're deciding to offload it and this was among that. So maybe the BBC acquired SyCo, or maybe the BBC acquired a company that acquired SyCo, I don't know. But either way, it was in a storage unit for all these years, wound up on eBay and I bought it. She shipped it to me, Richard fixed it up, and now we got six units. 27:32 Rob Puricelli Fantastic. It's funny you mention, I mean obviously Peter Gabriel is one of the numerous artists that you feature in the film. But I think he's quite, you know, he's quite up there in terms of you know, technology and using this technology. But it's obviously difficult to get somebody like that to sit down on camera and talk about that. I wanna ask you about that itself, but you mentioned SyCo Systems and there's this connection that I have with that because I'm a big Fairlight guy and of course Peter set up SyCo Systems with Steven just to distribute the Fairlight. And then of course, he was distributing all of these other weird and wonderful projects and the Resynator just seems to fit in there perfectly with their ethos. So getting in touch with Peter, how did that all come about and how agreeable was he to talk about, you know, this thing on camera? Alison Tavel I mean, he flat out told me that he and Steven started SyCo Systems because he wanted a Fairlight and didn't wanna pay for it. Rob Puricelli Yeah, exactly. Alison Tavel And what a genius idea. Yeah, so I think him being agreeable to be a part of this project, I think was entirely because it's a father-daughter story and his daughter's a friend of mine and I know her through my sister. It's so random. They knew each other from living in New York and having mutual friends and stuff. So, so much of this story is very kismet and fated I think because you know, how else, like that's just so random. You know, like I'm looking to get to this mega huge artist who says no to a lot of things and I just, you know, I'm talking to my sister about the project and she's just like well, I know his daughter. I'm like, really? And you know, I also hate to say that because I'm sure people ask her a million times, can you put me in touch with your dad, can you put me, you know, I wasn't expecting her to do anything, but I think she could see the real heart in the story and I wasn't trying to get his friggin' autograph. I was trying to learn about my dad and I think she knew that and she was such a great champion of the project and actually was in London when I flew over here and she filmed a lot of what we did. So it was just so wonderful to have his family and talking about my family's. So it was, I was super nervous for that interview, but I think it really had nothing to do with the synthesiser at the end of the day. I think he was doing it as a favour to his daughter and because he watched my trailer and he saw what I was trying to do with it. Rob Puricelli Yeah, he saw the heart. Alison Tavel He decided to support it, which was very, very cool of him. And he, you know, allowed me to film at Real World and invited, you know, some really great musicians to come over and check it out, and it was wonderful. So I'm very appreciative of his time and you know, I don't think he, he didn't remember a lot. I mean, it's so long ago you can't remember anything, you know, asking these people to remember something from 40 years ago is insane that they remember anything at all. But he did remember having it, he remembered using it, but it was brief you know, it was like a brief thing, but it did fit in quite well I think with SyCo's, you know, ethos and stuff. So it was cool that it was a part of it and I found a newspaper clip or a magazine clipping, I can't remember the magazine name, but I got the article off eBay, I bought it. It's a SyCo Systems company profile and it talks about all of their clients you know, Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney and then it mentions some of their, it highlights some of their gear, and they talk about the Resynator. 31:28 Rob Puricelli Wow, that's cool. And it wasn't just Peter that, you know, he wasn't the only artist that you roped into the film and took the Resynator to, to show them. You also got a lot of other artists from around the place, around the world and you were in Colombia? I mean, there's some brilliant footage of you with these people in places where you just wouldn't expect studios to exist and there they are making amazing music. How did that all come about and also how did they react to this piece of 40-plus-year-old music technology that they'd maybe never even heard of before? Alison Tavel Colombia was maybe the best part of this 10-year journey for a lot of reasons. One, because those musicians down there who I met with are so colourful and just vibrant people, but they're also world-class musicians and they're also just, they just love weird, you know and so they were so accepting and embraced the Resynator so well. It was wonderful. So I was on tour at the time with this musician Grace Potter and she had a festival in Florida, two weeks off and then a festival in Australia. So the tour will fly you, if it's international, from anywhere. So I was like what am I gonna do for these two weeks? And I love The Rolling Stones and Grace had opened up for The Rolling Stones, so I knew some of those guys. I forced my way into their world and made them like me. And they always said, you know, if you ever wanna come to a show, let us know. So I was like well, let me look at the tour. I've got two weeks off, where are they gonna be? They were gonna be in Colombia. They were playing in Bogotá and I was like, I've never been to Colombia, I've always wanted to go. I'm just gonna take myself to Colombia and I'm gonna go see The Rolling Stones because why not? I'll book an Airbnb, I'll figure out how to get around and I'll go see the show. And so two weeks before I left, I was in LA packing for Florida and like, that small little trip and also packing for Colombia and my friend Milosh had just been to Colombia. So I reached out to him and I was like, give me all the restaurants, give me all the places. Do you know anybody over there who you can like, you know, so I have a buddy because I'm going by myself? And he gave me all these places I should visit and he was like, I also heard about this synth guru producer guy that lives in the jungle. His name's like, Christian Castano. He's originally from Brooklyn, he's like, a Grammy-winning producer but he moved to Colombia to be with his wife or, you know, you should check him out. So I looked him up and I found him on Facebook and we actually had one mutual friend. And it was my friend Peter, who works in film, who speaks Spanish and I was like well this is amazing. So I reached out to Peter. I go Peter, there's this Colombian producer, this American producer, lives in Colombia, his name's Christian Castano. You are friends with him on Facebook, can you make an intro? And he's like oh man, I worked with Christian a long time ago, yeah, let me reach out. So I talked to this guy Christian. We set up a call I think through Facebook, like an audio call or something. This is 2016, 10 years ago. And I tell him about my project and he goes, you've gotta bring the Resynator to Colombia. And I was like OK, I can bring it on an international trip, sure, why not. It had just started working, too. Like, it took a long time to get it working, because I started in 2014 and it was, you know, took a while. So I'm like OK, I guess I'll bring the Resynator with me to Florida and then I'll fly with it to Colombia, and then I guess I'll fly with it to Australia, but whatever, I'll just figure that stuff out. And so I'm like well, do I just bring the Resynator or should I bring the, I should film this, you know? And I'm like oh my God, I don't have any money for this. Like, this was gonna be a free trip, you know? Like, I was gonna pay for an Airbnb, but my flight's paid for and the tickets, the Rolling Stones tickets are paid for. So I was like well, I guess I can fly Peter, because Peter speaks Spanish and he's a filmmaker and I was like what are you up to, you wanna come to Colombia with me? I'll fly you on points. And he was like, I'll come, that sounds fun. I'll produce it, I'll bring my camera, whatever. And then my friend Jessica had just filmed with me in Ohio and she lived in LA and she was all about the project and super supportive of it and she was like, I could do this. And so I was like all right, I got film, I got film, I got producers and I'll just do local sound, and we'll just, we'll film some stuff. So this free trip turned into, like, a $10,000 trip, you know what I mean, after I, it was just insane but I just, I knew it was gonna be worth it. We get down there and Christian has lined up all of these artists who he's worked with for years, and we were gonna film a few days in his home studio in Minca, north of Bogotá, and then fly down to Bogotá and then be in an official recording studio, White Lemon Recording Studios, and then I got them all tickets to the Rolling Stones. So we had the most incredible week and there was this band specifically, we had tons of artists come in, but there's this band, Systema Solar, Juan and Walter, Juan Pellegrino and Walter Hernandez, they came to Christian's studio in Minca and they had already been working on this track and Juan had wanted a bass part, but he didn't have a bass. So he was singing the demo, the bass part, with his voice. And he was like well, if the Resynator can sound like a bass and it has a really good bass sound, I'll sing the bass part into a microphone through the Resynator and make an actual bass sound. And so that's what they did. And so the whole bass of this track, plus a bunch of other decorations, you know, on it, are all Resynator. And the song's called Que Paso and it's just the most fun song you've ever heard, I'm obsessed with it. All of Systema Solar's music is great. There's another song, Yo Voy Gano, that's really, really like, one of my favourites. But obviously, I'm partial to Que Paso because it's all Resynator. And they even, when the album came out, they even thanked me and Resynator in the album credits like, it was just the coolest thing and it was the first time on a personal level that I ever felt like oh man, I wish my dad was here, because he would love this, and I'd never had that thought before in my whole life, you know? Like, I'd never thought about him being in the room, and I was just like, he's missing this. And then I was like oh man, he's kind of, I feel like something, you know, I feel like he's here though. And then Christian kind of cemented that. We went to the beach and he just solidified everything that I was thinking in my head, he said it out loud and I just got chills and it was this really, really pivotal moment in my whole life where I felt connected to my dad for the first time. In this foreign country where I'd never been, the Resynator had never been, my dad had never been, but I felt closer to him than I'd ever had before. And two weeks before that I was in Indianapolis filming and I went to his grave, I'd never visited his grave before and I was standing over his grave with my dad's cousin who he was very close with, and I was just like well, I don't feel much here. So why would I not feel close to him where his physical body is, right? But I'm in this foreign land and I feel closer and I was like oh, it's the Resynator. It's the Resynator. That's the point of this, you know. And that's when it all clicked for me. So it was just a moment I'll never forget. In the most beautiful place where the riverbed meets the ocean you know, surrounded by all these wonderful friends and new family, you know? It was really, it was the coolest thing I've ever done. Rob Puricelli Yeah and it comes across like that in the film, and it's just amazing you know, this connection you have with all these different people say, in this wonderful place, and it's a piece of gear that's done this. But it's your father and he's embodied in that machine somehow and you've connected with that. And it really does, you know, it punches you in the gut sometimes, this film, but in a good way and it's a really emotional and fascinating film because you learn so much, not just about a piece of technology, but about the human condition as well, which I think is really cool. 40:00 Rob Puricelli So you're here in London, you have a premiere coming up in a few days time and that's super cool. What are the plans now for the movie? Obviously, you're gonna show it over here as a one-off. Do you have any other plans to show it elsewhere in Europe, the UK? What about streaming? Because I know it's available on streaming in the US but not over here, so do you have any plans in that regard? How can we mere mortals get to experience this film? Alison Tavel Yeah, so the premiere I'm, OK so this is an indie project, right. I paid for it myself. I raised donations, but this is all DIY, basically and including a great team of friends who helped me put this together, producers, editors, everybody, animators, composers. But you know, financially it was my burden to bear and I got distribution in the United States. So I premiered this in 2024 at South by Southwest. It won the Audience Award, which was very, very fun for me. And then I did some other film festivals in the United States. I premiered it in Mexico. I premiered it in South Korea, it won the Grand Jury Best Foreign Film in South Korea, which was so cool and then it premiered in Germany at a festival. And I think that was it. I think. I mean, I submitted to a bunch of festivals, specifically in the UK and I got into none of them. Rob Puricelli I know, yeah. I tried. Alison Tavel And you were so wonderful, you know? I don't know, you know it's super competitive and it just, it is what it is. So I didn't get into any film festivals here and then as far as distribution, I got distribution in the United States, so it's on a platform called Criterion which, if you don't know Criterion, which a lot of people don't because it's very niche, but it is very cool. Like, I would have rather had my film on Criterion than Netflix or Amazon any day because the people who are reaching for Criterion are film buffs, you know, it's a very special platform specifically catered to filmmakers and actors and directors and of that nature. So as far as that goes, it couldn't be in a better, more respectable place than Criterion Channel, but that's just in the United States and Canada. Over here, I couldn't get a distribution deal. So my distributor in the United States, The Forge, is helping to release it on TV on demand. So Apple, Amazon, Google, YouTube, all of those places where you can rent it or buy it. And I believe so far Apple is the only place where you can rent it or buy it and it's starting on Tuesday. So June 9th, Apple TV, , you can rent it or buy it by searching Resynator, R-E-S-Y-N-A-T-O-R. So that's really exciting because I just want it available, I just want people to be able to see it. Of course I would have loved a theatrical run, but it's an indie film and I'm a no-name filmmaker and you know, it's just hard. It's so competitive these days and if I'm not here to be able to push it, I'm like, I only have the capacity to do this one screening one time and then hopefully that and this, things like this, thank-you again, will help spread the word because I don't have marketing, I don't have distribution. I don't have anything but word of mouth. So if people like the film, hopefully they'll share the film. And then maybe down the road, a streamer will pick it up. You know I'm gonna keep pushing for it, obviously. I just, and I don't even want like, I'm never gonna make my money back on this. So I don't care if people rent it or buy it. I'd rather people stream it for free you know. Like, I'd love for it to become available so that people, I just want people to see it. I want people to learn about my dad's story. I want people to learn about the Resynator. So hopefully it'll get on a streaming platform. But yeah, renting and buying is gonna be the way to see it in the UK for a little while. Rob Puricelli Any plans for a physical release, Blu-ray? Alison Tavel Oh, so also, yes. I gotta figure out, can you release something Blu-ray in the United States and it also, I don't know if formats are the same. Rob Puricelli Yeah, so with Blu-ray you have, there's a region formatting similar to DVD, but nowadays a lot of this stuff is just produced region free. Alison Tavel Region free, OK, because we are planning on doing a physical media, a DVD, a Blu-ray. I did a whole director's commentary, it's me and my partner Matt, Matt was really involved. He's a drummer and a musician and he was a big part of the score and a big part of the, he produced the end credit song, which is really special to me. It's a duet with my dad and I, but my dad didn't sing the parts that I needed him to sing, so we used AI and there's a whole story, I made a little commentary about that too. So all of that's in the bonus content. And then, like, I couldn't really show, there wasn't enough time in the film to show the SyCo Systems kind of research that I did and so I filmed a little, like, behind-the-scenes of that. That'll be in the bonus material. And then all of these musicians, you know, originally like I said, the whole film was supposed to be about the Resynator and all of these musicians. And then when you get into the edit and you start figuring out what the actual story is, it's the personal story. We condensed all the musicians down to this tiny little montage, you know, but there are so many great musicians, Mark Ronson and Fred Armisen and Gotye and Money Mark from the Beastie Boys and just Mike Gordon from Phish, you know, all of these great artists that gave me all their time. I really wanted to be able to flesh those scenes out and give them each a moment. So I did that with some commentary and so you can actually hear what the sounds they made with the Resynator. So each of them have their own clip in the bonus material too. So all of that will come out with the DVD, the Blu-ray later, probably later this year or early next year. Rob Puricelli Look forward to it. It's on my shopping list already. Alison, this has been an absolute pleasure to meet you in person after all of the time that we've spent going back and forth and unsuccessfully trying to get something done, but you've got it done and I'm so proud and so happy for you to have done this, it's a fantastic achievement. Thank-you so much for your time today, and the best of luck with the film going forward. Alison Tavel Thanks. I really, really, really appreciate it. It was so fun to be able to do this in person too. Rob Puricelli It's our pleasure. Alison Tavel Thank-you. Rob Puricelli Thank-you. Thank-you for listening, and be sure to check out the show notes page for this episode, where you'll find further information, along with web links and details of all the other episodes. Before you go, make sure you visit the Sound On Sound podcast page at soundonsound.com/podcasts, where you can explore all the other great content playing across the other channels. I'm Rob Puricelli, and this has been a FailedMuso production for Sound On Sound.