The early days of January – the email inbox is still quiet, things are for many still moving slow. But if musical perspective is possible only with hindsight, it’s a moment when the picture of a moment in musical history has first crystallized. The zeitgeist of an era starts to reveal its footprint. This isn’t […]

You have to love German. In English, I can string together whole paragraphs that try and fail to capture the potential of electronic sound. In German, we get to call an event Technosphärenklänge – a word whose utterance is a timbral adventure in itself. And in an event with that name promising to be a […]

I’ve just gotten lost making my computer sing. And now I can’t stop. You see, a funny thing happened on the way to the future. As speech synthesis vastly improved, it also became vastly more boring. Intelligibility robbed synthesized words and singing of its alien quality, which was what made it sound futuristic in the […]

It’s called Max for Cats. But you don’t play it with a laser pointer and your feline friend. (Note to self: project idea.) The latest from sonic mastermind Christian Kleine, Ensemble and DiGiTAL are in fact terrifically-rich string and digital synthesizers, respectively, for Ableton Live and Max for Live. Getting to know their creator is […]

Dense, dark, packed, young and fresh. No, not the club – this mix. We invite Electric Indigo (Vienna’s Susanne Kirchmayr) to tell us about her new, freely-downloadable podcast with Linz, Austria’s Houztekk Records. It’s a shadowy, labyrinthian journey through the newest and most adventurous sounds in techno. And by techno, she means a wide range […]

Electronic music, once the exclusive domain of secluded art laboratories, has now made the connection to clubs inseparable. The rhythms of dance music draw a line from popular to research; the software and gear marketed for dance musicians cross-pollinating with more experimental tools, as music styles, textures, and timbres mix, as well. But now, finding […]

As has been widely reported, the UK’s largest independent entertainment distributor, PIAS, suffered the complete loss of stock in an enormous warehouse in North London amidst rioting in the neighborhood. Impacted is stock not only in music, but independent film, too. The warehouse is owned by Sony DADC, but the impacted stock is owned by […]

Hindsight normally gives perspective to history, but in the case of the 20th Century, even looking back, it’s hard to fathom the sheer magnitude of change in human thought and technology. Composers faced the twin revolutions of electronic sound — recorded, synthesized, and eventually computerized — and new systems for organizing pitch and rhythm from […]

iOS has proven some of the appeal of on-demand interactive artwork and audiovisual toys. But even the iPad is limited to a 10″ screen; these days, the biggest screen in the house that isn’t a TV is often attached to a computer. (In fact, I regularly run across people who use a large computer monitor […]

iOS has proven some of the appeal of on-demand interactive artwork and audiovisual toys. But even the iPad is limited to a 10″ screen; these days, the biggest screen in the house that isn’t a TV is often attached to a computer. (In fact, I regularly run across people who use a large computer monitor […]