Beyond the viral-ready novelty, listen to the serenades of defunct hard drives, flatbed scanners, and garage sale-rescue computers and you might just hear a sense of urgency. As the discs whir, the chips bleet, and the solenoids ping percussion, this chorus of obsolete electronics seems to plea, save us from landfill doom. The latest breakout […]

German maker Mode Machines has been busy in the cloning laboratory. The latest hardware melds the classic chip sounds of the SID chip with an x0x sequencer a la the Roland TB-303. That surely qualifies as the synth nerd equivalent of combining chocolate and peanut butter.

Animator Clement Picon, best known for producing a video for Radiohead’s Reckoner, here weaves a beautiful imaginary digital landscape, in textured storybook layers. Leaves explode into rectangles, and the music wends its way from mountainside to underwater sea. We’ve seen some music video charm from j.viewz before in a 2000-photo stop motion masterpiece, and they […]

“Blah, blah, I use Acme MusicStation Pro because it sounds completely dope – I love that compressor.” Okay. Before we begin, you’re not alone. Yes, a lot of artist profile endorsements, even some well-meaning ones, can wind up being rather useless. But at the risk of being redundant – since many of you get their […]

In speaking about iPad apps this week, I mentioned the possibility of music made by cats. And, of course, today we look at the possibility of going inside Machinedrum’s musical technique. So, it’s only appropriate to offer you the opportunity to produce music with a sonic toolbox … developed by a cat. (Apologies, Mr. Stewart […]

Making new sounds means doing more than just making new sounds. Artist/composer Mark Fell (also known as half of SND) dives directly into the thorny question of form. And when he looks for new forms, he literally looks. The visually-trained artist speaks about making “non-representational” music in the same way an abstract artist might. (No […]

Δ Aurigæ from depart on Vimeo. Depart produces undulating geometries, sacred and mystical and surreal, that vibrate with sound and music. Earlier this year, I looked at Eric Wahlforss’ project (as Forss), which included their visual contributions in the iPad app and live show, an audiovisual opus: Church-Inspired Electronic Music, in Album and Interactive, Gothic […]

Two DAWs, announced earlier this year, are now shipping this week. One is Cakewalk’s SONAR X2 for Windows, which extends the new user interface overhaul – loved by some, despised by others – unveiled in X1. But PC stalwart Cakewalk has new competition on the Windows platform. MOTU’s DP8, apart from being a fairly significant […]

Brian Eno’s influence on music, particularly music termed “ambient,” is such that it might itself blend into the background. But make no mistake, work like Music for Films and Music for Airports has left an indelible impression on the sound of a lot of music, and moreover in how we think about sound and structure. […]

Daedelus’ saturated electric rhythms themselves have the kind of blinding quality of light, so recent visuals fit that sonic aesthetic nicely, from the shards of reflected projection that blaze from motorized mirrors in his touring “Archimedes Show” to this, the new music video for “Platforming.” Perhaps taking on a new life as renegade tag artist, […]