There’s no need to imagine the history and conception of music as beginning and ending in western Europe. The history of music is far older, richer – and stranger than that. Here’s a glimpse of some of that and more resources to help broaden our sense of what music can be.
Music
Live radio from Gaza, Khan Younis and Bethlehem-Hebron choirs meet
Music December 24, 2024
Liz Pelly’s Spotify book reveals how company uses ghost content
Music Tech Web December 19, 2024
Liquid Sky d-vices V4CO & GLITHc: deep, glitchy, bendable wavetables
V4CO is more devilish proof that in Eurorack, anything is possible – even the improbable, unruly, and joyfully unwise. More than just an oscillator, it’s a demented, destructive voice combining 8-bit wavetables, sub-bass, overdrive, and VCAs, adding patchable circuit-bending mayhem with the GLITHc expander.
Amigo Sampler, Amiga sampling in plug-in form for £10, plus skank music
How about Commodore AMIGA-style sampling – complete with pixel UI, lo-fi sampling styles, vintage time-stretching, and both modern and Amiga file support – in a plug-in? It’s Amigo Sampler, it’s got a price point from a fish and chips shop, and it sounds wicked. (The plug-in, and the music from the folks making it, too…)
Roland and Universal Music Group partner on “AI for Music”
The world’s biggest music company has now teamed up with one of the world’s leading instrument and music creation tech makers to weigh in on the growing AI boom. Mostly what we get is a set of general principles – but talking about who made music for the data sets is central, and it could be an indication of musician/instrument/music industry partnerships to come.
James Blake is pitching “Vault,” a subscription download service
Diagnosing the problem is easy – streaming is fundamentally broken and opposed to artists’ interests and no one likes it. But finding a solution? After going viral with a rant about streaming, James Blake has revealed his answer – but it’s one we’ve seen before.
Mr. Glass: Minimal Audio’s Flex Chorus is geared for rich, modern enhancement
Minimal Audio continues its straightforward standalone effects series with Flex Chorus. This is a thoroughly modern take on the genre with two very different-sounding modes, each calibrated for timbral character enhancement and big stereo.
Visco is a warped drum machine that lets you squish sound like goo [hands on]
Between samples and synth, sound design and performance—and with a heaping dose of machine learning—Visco is a new way of imagining a beat construction plug-in. But what you’ll probably notice first is that you get to squish around a futuristic blob of goo like it’s space-alien Silly Putty.
1Uesday: BBCV FM Radio module, 29€ infrared KMNDR, more
In celebration of eccentric artists inventing tiny unexpected things to fit into single-row Eurorack, it’s again 1Uesday. And we’re extending our antennas to pick up FM radio broadcasts on this episode.
Hungry maw of big data, dreamt as ghostly video for Dustin O’Halloran
Artist Owen Hindley, working in TouchDesigner, tackles the dense, pulsating track “Harmonic Dream Sequence” by Dustin O’Halloran (A Winged Victory For The Sullen). It’s a dark contemplation of the insatiable appetites of Big Data and AI, translated into strangely beautiful clouds of particles for an equally gorgeous track.
Go watch Polygonia’s videos on Ableton Operator hi-hats and more
Polygonia, aka Lindsey Wang, is expanding techno into imaginative blossoms of percussion and pattern. But she’s also doing some terrific tutorials. Where to start? A terrific breakdown of constructing high hats from scratch in Ableton’s Operator might inspire you.