Years ago, when the phrase “controllerism” was still yet-to-be-coined and there was no official hardware for Ableton Live, DJ Sasha had one hell of a custom piece of kit. The Maven featured oversize, hard-to-disconnect plugs and beautiful metal hardware. Years later, it’d still make any Ableton user drool. What’s a Live user to do? Stop […]

Projection mapping live performance art – The Alchemy of Light by a dandypunk from a dandypunk on Vimeo. “The Alchemy of Light” makes projection mapping more than a sculptural, light-painting illusion. It allows the digital motion image to interact with the performer. And the human performer is a big part of what makes this work. […]

In the world of VJ apps, CoGe is an intriguing upstart – a semi-modular design, built around integrating Quartz Composer patches, lets you create customized VJ rigs on the Mac. Hungary has produced both the app and a passionate community of users. It’s time to catch up with this app, including a round of new […]

Watching a skyscraper go up is always fascinating. For a long time, the thing basically looks like a bit pit in the ground. After some time, you get the beginnings of a skeleton. Suddenly, the structure rises at a near-impossible pace, climbing into the clouds faster than you’d imagine. Then, it’s at a point when […]

Why is The Moogist playing in a pantry? It’s … unclear. (mmmm… Vanilla Almond Clusters.) But this performer, aka Tim Tsang, demonstrates that with some modulation, you can turn you keyboard shredding into something much wilder. Expect explosive flurries of atonal melodic flourishes and timbral mayhem. Using a Moog Voyager, he modulates those pitches into […]

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 […]