Ames seems like the type of place that would embrace the techno scene whole-heartedly. After all, the needed components are here. Open-minded college students, plenty of establishments that host musical events, a diverse population. Yet a first glance would reveal that there are no techno groups in this city.

However, that isn’t entirely true. There is a synthpop outfit named Binary that calls Ames home.

Binary is the product of two students’ devotion and spare time. Those students are Aaron Hefley and Joe Benesh, who are studying computer science and architecture, respectively.

Hefley and Benesh are both from Newton, where they met in junior high school. As Benesh pointed out, they weren’t exactly friends at first.

“I moved to Newton in the sixth grade,” he explained. “Aaron and I were locker partners, and he hated me because I always stole his Nutty Bars. But we eventually became high school buddies.”

The two of them were always into music, even in junior high school. Benesh “had a viral effect on the people in Newton.”

He was the student who pressured his peers into buying various musical instruments and forming bands. He claimed that he was in “one million different groups that never went anywhere.”

“Some of the groups I was in had marginal success,” Benesh said. “We once had a gig to play a girls’ basketball game and a high school orientation—but they didn’t go over well. The people had a hard time understanding the concept of electronic music. They couldn’t see the guitar players or the drummer or anybody else because they weren’t there. They just couldn’t grasp that concept.”

Benesh and Hefley are hoping that people will be able to grasp the concept behind “Sparcy EP,” the CD the pair put together using a sample-based program on a Macintosh computer. The CD isn’t available in stores yet, although the dynamic duo are hoping to arrange that in the near future.

Right now, it is only available on the group’s Web site http://www.public.iastate .edu/~ahefley/binary.html.

The CD is currently in rotation on KURE, where Benesh and Hefley host a program (“we act like idiots on the air,” Benesh boasted) from midnight to 3 a.m. on Thursday nights/Friday mornings. But interested people can call in at any time and request to hear a song from the CD (although Hefley isn’t sure that the request will be honored).

“Sparcy EP” (which was originally supposed to be titled “Sparky” but the c looked cooler when it happened to pop into their heads) contains four songs (“Sparcy,” “Any Day,” “New Class of Man” and “Relate”) and more than a half dozen remixes of them. Some of the songs contain external and vocal tracks that were recorded at the Peffsonics Studio in Ames by producer Jeff Vallier (who also worked on CDs for Craig Lurey and Good Things).

But most of the songs were recorded on the Macintosh’s “virtual music studio” (as Hefley calls it) and then transformed to tape with the assistance of a tape recorder.

Binary is hoping to play more live gigs in Ames, but the group is not too enthusiastic about how the audience will respond.

“We’re working on ideas to make it more accessible to a viewing and listening audience,” Hefley said. “With electronic music, it is hard to get into the show.”

The group played at the two Bowlapaloozas in Newton (which were organized in part by Hefley and Benesh) to a “tepid response,” but that steady gig may be over. Benesh said that financial difficulties will make a third one nearly impossible.

In the meantime, Binary will be working on a new CD (tentatively titled “Move Your Feet”) for release by the end of this semester (also tentative). The forthcoming CD is slated to have multi-media capabilities.