Pigeon Spins Featuring an Interview with Max MacReady

Max MacReady - Holding Pattern

Holding Pattern is a pulsing, analogue-infused piece about reading all the right signals, but hesitating at the edge of connection. It’s emotionally grounded, yet steeped in sci-fi imagery like a cassette broadcast from a lost timeline. If you are into dark but positive neon vibes, vintage tech aesthetics, or the kind of track a sci-fi protagonist might stumble across on a forgotten console, we’d love for you to check it out.

Max Macready is a musical transmission from a lost future — where analogue tech, neon-lit spaceports, and pulsing synths converge. Hailing from the UK, the duo crafts a sound rooted in synthwave, electronic, and post-punk, pulling deep influence from the progressive ambition of Yes and Rush, the rhythmic energy of The Police, and the cinematic textures of John Carpenter.

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Interview with Max MacReady

(º)> How did you two meet and decide to form Max Macready?

We have been friends since childhood and grew up together watching the same movies, listening to the same music, and formed a college band in our late teens - performing in local pubs and clubs for a couple of years. It's tough to know what kind of genre we were back in those days - we are still not sure now - but it was great fun. We decided to make music together again about a year ago, and decided to explore that late 70s era of world-building - somewhere this music might have come from and could exist within.

(º)> What drew you to the blend of synthwave, post-punk, and electronic styles?

The 80s were truly such a unique era of excess, style, pushing boundaries, and experimentation across music, film, fashion, and emerging technology that its influence was inevitable upon us. The punch and rawness of punk, the feeling of being uplifted and sharing an unspoken yearning from Wave and Synthwave, the dystopian scifi films of urban decay and promise - and then bringing it all together with electronic tech and sounds from inside a machine - we wanted to make something familiar but stretched across a few of our favourite genres. There is such an enormous library of music out there these days, and we wanted to find an identity.

(º)> Can you explain the concept behind your debut track Holding Pattern?

“Holding Pattern” is a dark wave electronica track — an 80s-inspired, futuristic hybrid built around shimmering synths and cinematic textures.

It alludes to a story of two people caught in a vibrant, urban/future dreamlike cityscape — a neon maze where connection feels close but just out of reach. The track explores that universal limbo between desire and hesitation — a moment almost everyone has lived through, consciously or not. Though its sound world belongs to an alternate, sci-fi future or world elsewhere, the emotion at its core is certainly human. “Holding Pattern” is about the beautiful frustration of almost-connection — a rhythm that keeps turning, looping, and waiting for release.

(º)> What role does vintage analogue technology play in your sound design?

The sense of discovery. Every time you sit down with a synth, it's an adventure into sound. You might have a rough idea of what you want and be humming something all day to try out, but something different could arrive by just turning a few knobs and dials. We wanted to keep our guitars within our sound too - harness their classic sound but massage them into the electronic mix. That music can be formed by circuits and power. Man and machine creating art.

(º)> How do sci-fi themes influence your songwriting and production?

That's a great question and difficult to distil down into a single answer. Often it's simply what feels right. What sounds would we expect to hear from a sci-fi world,d and how would it make us feel to actually be there? A classic example would be the work of Vangelis - not just on Blade Runner, but across all of his film score work. He channelled the visuals into his synthesizers and somehow produced music that sounded like it had created the visuals.

We wanted an identity to accompany our music, like we are characters transmitting our songs from a sci-fi world. We intend the production on vocals and sounds to feel like transmissions, slightly distorted, warped,a nd like a cyborg stepped in to contribute a sound it came up with. We added in some samples to add some texture - a tanoy countdown to open up the beat and a sort of test announcement sitting in the mix at the end - like the whole signal and night out was just a test all along.

(º)> Which artists most directly shaped your musical direction?

Aphex Twin, NIN, and the android-like sounds of Gary Numan's early work - sound design pushed to its limits. Opening our understanding of what can be done with synths and vocal sounds. The Police - fantastic rhythm, interesting chords and infectious grooves coupled with lyrics both catchy and meaningful - each instrument harbouring its own identity.

The albums Rush produced through the 80s are often considered their less popular work, but it was stuff filled with synths, strange lyrics, and squealing guitar harmonics. And of course, the cinematic work of John Carpenter - whose self-created scores started as a practical necessity, but evolved into a signature of his films. Some of his tracks harnessed an entire world with just one or two layers of textured synths.

(º)> How do you balance the emotional and cinematic elements in your music?

Well, they're kind of related. Music is often used to communicate and push emotions in film. We like music that tells a story. You can close your eyes and allow your mind to conjure scenes from the sounds. The album Zoolook by Jean Michel Jarre had this effect since childhood. A story unfolded as the tracks played out.

It's always tempting to layer more and more of those sounds up - so it's about finding the right moment.

(º)> What was your approach to creating the Holding Pattern music video?

The video was an interesting journey and began before we had actually completed the track. There was an almost derelict and unusually empty multi-storey carpark in town that we discovered one evening that had a great urban scifi vibe to it, and Kurt shot some footage and assembled a rough cut to the track - just for fun, really. It had about 11 floors and felt like a maze, so the idea of the camera floating around Steadicam/John Carpenter style stuck quickly. Kurt has a background in visual effects and has worked on a number of high-profile music videos over the years, so we made some concept frames, returned to the location a couple of times, and waved coloured lights around in the dark for references and some actual shots!

We wanted it to look like a hologram transmission - like the camera/viewer was witnessing a test or faint signal that was trying to get through from our suggested lost future.

The neon colours that the figures cycle through are a 'neutral' cyan blue, orange for interference/breakdown, red for a fail, and an occasional green - all kind of representing the mixed signals or red flags one might get in communication. The patterns that form the figures also resemble a maze-like layout in some shots - so it was all these things on top of it being us actually performing and dancing around to the track captured on 3D cameras and then processed and tracked into the edit.

(º)> What’s the meaning behind presenting your music as transmissions from a lost future?

It's an aesthetic we've loved since childhood. Escape from New York, Blade Runner, Alien, Robocop, etc.

Earth's transmission of radio waves travels out into space all the time, so what would it be like to hear songs from a distant galaxy or universe transmitting from another dimension? Obviously, we don't know what beings from other worlds might listen to, so we wanted to create music that felt otherworldly and like it might be on a sci-fi protagonist's cassette tape console, blinking with orange lights - but still felt familiar and could resonate with beings from the same but different world.

(º)> What can listeners expect next from Max Macready?

We are working on a new track for release early in the new year. More synths, more textures with lyrics that interpret the 'thrill of the chase'. Would you cross the universe or planet-hop to find the one? Maybe they don't want to be found... It's another world-building one with an all-live-action music video to accompany this time.

It's tricky to decide which track to work on next, and we may release an all-instrumental/synth track in the meantime as a kind of intermission track. It's been fascinating to see how our debut release has been received and with whom it resonates.