All this week, I’ll be talking about the artists and events at Montreal’s MUTEK audiovisual festival. There’s nowhere better to begin than at the launch evening of their a/visions series. Natural landscapes are recurrent themes in electronic music and the metaphors we use to describe them – glaciers and jetstreams. But the Black Forest of […]

Renoise has already earned a passionate following among lovers of trackers. The once-forgotten alternative to conventional sequencers, these music editors were beloved for their quick workflow and vertical, atomic approach to assembling beats and patterns. But Renoise is increasingly poised to appeal to other kinds of music makers, too, not just tracker purists. 2.1 you […]

lights on from thesystemis on Vimeo. Digital visuals are often confined to a screen or a panel of wall. So there’s something magical about projects that get an entire building as a canvas. “Lights” is a live audiovisual performance for the Ars Electronica museum in Linz, Austria. The facade has some 1085 LED windows, controllable […]

For one of the final Game On performances, Melbourne’s “spiky electro pop” group Flamingo Crash came along and rocked out in front of a bunch of security cameras, and alongside their visual collaborator Simulcast with his Tagtool. They enjoyed the live footage so much that they commissioned me to edit it as an “offical” music […]

Part of what makes Resolume Avenue so compelling as a live visual solution is that it can mix, mash, and loop audio alongside video, in ways often resembling Ableton Live. But that, of course, doesn’t make Resolume nearly as deep a live sonic tool as Ableton. So, to combine two great tastes – live video […]

Novation has unveiled their revised SL line of controllers, dubbed the SL Mk II. The changes are subtle, but significant. Looks awesome: Fatar semi-weight “fast touch” keyboard action Touch-sensitive controls for immediate feedback on the LED screen Buttons are now backlit Encoders are ringed with red LEDs Dedicated buttons for enabling Automap and switching modes […]

GPU HSFlow port to Quartz Composer from vade on Vimeo. The Live Optical Flow Processing continues. Anton Marini, aka vade, is working on his own Quartz Composer patch, which will in turn be integrated with the visualist software he’s assembling, v002. More details once we get them, but you can see how nice parameterizing this […]

Sometimes, audio products come in sexy, exciting packages. But sometimes, they simply solve a set of problems. And the products that fit into the latter category can be as beloved (dare I say sexy), if not more so. Since I first saw a prototype in the fall, I’ve been eagerly awaiting trying out Cakewalk’s V-Studio […]

Look out, Akai APC40. There’s another contender in the emerging Controller With Lots of Buttons And Also Faders and Knobs and Crossfader product category. Livid’s Ohm64 combines the light-up button grid with faders, knobs, trigger buttons, and most importantly, unique customization options and a lovely wooden case. What’s unique about this one: High-end materials: anodized […]

PEMF Lessons: Bidule – Direct Cabling & Your Default Layout from Primus Luta on Vimeo. Ed.: Music creation is all about the special relationship we have with certain, powerful tools. And one app that gets very little attention is unquestionably the deep but elegant modular patching environment Plogue Bidule. CDM turns to power user Primus […]