Shared System is Tony Rolando’s 2021 entry into the Make Noise Shared System series of releases that included Richard Devine, Alessandro Cortini, Robert AA Lowe, Keith Fullerton Whitman and Surachai. Despite the limited instrumentation, this cassette is another collection of Tony Rolando’s work that is familiar yet unique, catchy and hard to stop listening to.

Back in 2008 Tony Rolando was demonstrating modular synthesizers to anybody who would listen. A few folks were wildly curious--- most people asked, "How do you make music with that thing?" Tony’s lonesome journey into the vacant landscape of analog electronic music was like being reborn. He wanted people to understand and experience riding these electrical currents of music for themselves. In order to do so, he needed to convince them that the seemingly primitive analog modular synthesizer was a musical instrument capable of amplifying an artist's unique voice. Around 2010, outside the Empty Bottle with the artist Surachai, he surmised that sending a singular, modular synthesizer to five artists to record two tracks live would highlight unique results-illustrating the capabilities of the modular synthesizer as an instrument and the artists' distinct voices. 

Here is the original text that accompanied the release of these 5 records from Richard Devine, Alessandro Cortini, Robert AA Lowe, Keith Fullerton Whitman and Surachai:

"The Shared System Series compiles the separate recordings of several artists utilizing the same electronic musical instrument, the Shared System. At times it feels as though electronic music has become an overly automated form driven by simplified genre specific apps and software. What happens when the signal path is not pre-defined or optimized for a popular result? The Shared System is a modular synthesizer developed by Make Noise. It has no pre-determined signal path, and is not designed for any particular musical destination. In limiting the artists to this one instrument, we hope the Shared System Series of records will purely illustrate the intentions of the artists."