(Paris, France) - 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.

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.