Austin is whirling with South by Southwest excitement, so why not make some swirly radio noises? Yes, Handmade Music Austin does have a big blowout party in the midst of South by, with a huge music lineup. Wish I could be there, gang, but I’ll be staying here in NYC. On the docket: FREE performances […]

Can you hack it? Yes. Yes, you can. Screenshot (CC-BY) Hens Zimmerman / 37Hz. Even before Max for Live was available, hackers had found a way of interacting with “secret” APIs inside Live for custom control, allowing them to customize Live’s behavior and make it work more seamlessly with hardware. That included providing something Ableton […]

Record giant Universal Music Group is cutting prices on the CD, as analysts clamor for still-lower prices. But as for actual records – the kind made of vinyl – odder and odder innovations flourish. If the CD is dying, the vinyl record is an undead, sexually-alluring vampire. Two recent releases not only treat the record […]

Via comments, here’s a wonderful video by Brazil’s Conrado Almada (both directing and hand-illustrating the work) for the band Skank. (And, indeed, Skank are in fact better known than the likes of OK Go – at least if you’re in Brazil.) It’s in keeping with this week’s (unintentional) stop-action theme, and a reminder of the […]

Kraak & Smaak – Squeeze Me from Kraak & Smaak on Vimeo. Kraak & Smaak are already on my good list. The Dutch duo/DJ team have contributed not only terrific music, but also wonderful videos like the flipbook-animated “Squeeze Me,” seen again above. (It’s one of those videos that can elicit that scream of “Argh, […]

OMT in San Francisco #3: ‘Let it beep’ from One More Thing on Vimeo. The legend of the early sounds of the Mac remains, apparently, an alluring one. Here, Jim Reekes talks to a Dutch documentary crew (though in English) about his thought process in designing sounds for the Mac, including the famous Mac startup […]

The Sandpit from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo. “The Sandpit” is a stunning, tilt-shift stop-action reflection of a day in New York City. It warms my heart, especially, as a lot of it is the world steps from where I live and work (which, by virtue of all these tall Manhattan buildings, I can’t actually see […]

A dancer celebrates OpenFrameworks … and we celebrate OpenFrameworks goodness meeting up with FreeFrameGL flexibility. Photo (CC-BY-SA) aniara. The folks at Resolume have given us a fantastic gift: now, you can make your own FreeFrameGL plug-ins with OpenFrameworks. Say wha? Okay, so, first, let’s consider the problem. You want to create a cool visual effect. […]

David Byrne is, of course, a legendary name. But part of what I love about music is, for all the hero worship that sometimes accompanies music writing and fandom, there’s always something to learn from musicians whose work you enjoy – whether famous or obscure. David Byrne has been singularly open in talking about his […]

Mark of the octopus. The mystery continues. Photo (CC-BY-ND) Allen Elliotte. With Germany’s Messe trade show just a week away, buzz is pretty well focused on Swedish boutique machine maker Elektron, that beloved manufacturer of the Machinedrum. They’re about to launch something, and it’s a product with “octa” in the name, but that’s about all […]