Starting tonight, and continuing over nine more dates in October, the freshly-inaugurated Morphine Raum will host events exploring invention and practice of one-of-a-kind musical instruments. You can watch – and you should, with a dizzying array of utter legends who are normally never in the same room.
Music
In Tbilisi, music is on pause because democracy is on the line
Music Stories October 25, 2024
In music video, Lebanese duo Rust captures emotions of “Diaspora”
Music October 11, 2024
We can be “Heroes,” with Tony Visconti, Erin Tonkon as tutors for Eventide Tverb plugin
We talk less about plug-ins as classics than we do hardware, but Tverb – replicating Tony Visconti’s “Heroes” setup but hugely versatile elsewhere – might just be that. And not one but two Bowie collaborators did how-to videos for Eventide recently.
Stingray is rebooting electro, in an even more fresh and futuristic form
DJ Stingray 313’s latest sounds are powered by science, brightly colored synthetic synthesized wavelengths beamed from the future. So don’t sleep.
DuckDuckGo search hack – it’s an instant bpm calculator (and finds frequencies, guitar tab)
Another reason to switch search engines – privacy-centric alternative DuckDuckGo also has a clever little bpm calculator built in.
As Facebook reveals fundamental flaws, music tech might reexamine the platform’s role
In just 48 hours, we’ve been treated both to whistleblower testimony that questions Facebook’s impact on society – and a massive technical outage that shows our dependence on it (and its fragility). Maybe it’s time for the world of music to stop treating Facebook as inevitable and entirely benign.
With Oramics’ Cut the Wire, Polish and international artists in plea for crisis at Belarus border
At the border of Belarus and Poland right now, all the fault lines of the world’s overlaid human catastrophes seem to come together. Artistic collective Oramics has assembled a musical response to the crisis and an urgent call to action.
Rymdigare for iOS combines FX in a fanciful UI and makes everything fuzzy and wonderful
There’s a gently pastel-colored hand-drawn interface, a backstory involving extraplanetary mining. It’s a reverb, a degrader and multi-effect, but also a drone maker. But whatever it is, Rymdigare transports everything you do to a warm, happy place. It’s like drizzling stuff with warm chocolate.
Iranian Duo Temp-Illusion has assembled a perfect sampler of bleeding-edge production
The duo of Shahin Entezami and Behrang Najafi has produced a tape/digital release of reworks that buzzes and screams with the emotion-packed sounds of futuristic, electronic protest.
Tour Berna3, a complete 1950s electronic music studio in software – tape loops to test oscillators
While everyone else modulates the 70s, 80s, and even 90s, step back to the 1950s – with a complete array of test oscillators, vintage sound equipment, mixers, patching, and tape. It’s Berna3, and it’s possibly the most retro electronic music software … ever.
Erica Synths LXR-02 drum machine playtest: brutal sounds, live jams, 1.2 firmware
I’ve been playing with the LXR-02, the new digital drum synth from Erica Synths and Sonic Potions. Verdict: it’s versatile, loud, and brutally violent when it wants to be. Here are some sounds, plus more tips for LXR-02 players, and the latest on the just-out 1.2 firmware update.