According to legend, on Christmas Eve animals magically gain the ability to speak. If there’s a similar date for sound-making machines, it may have coincided with the work on the latest of two releases from a Mouse on Mars-curated netlabel. Mouse on Mars have quietly started “Recommended Records” as an online-only outlet of free, full-length […]

“What’s creative coding?” At last, we have a five-minute video that, in rapid-cut wonder, explains the answer to lay people – and can be a serious dose of inspirational adrenaline to people doing it. (If designers and artists had locker rooms, watching this before tackling that next Processing tutorial might be in order.) Cover the […]

Bored by buttons and pads? Want something a bit more organice? BeetBox turns root vegetables into interactive percussion instruments, finally answering the question of “how can I work musical controllers into my five a day?” BeetBox is a simple instrument that allows users to play drum beats by touching actual beets. It is powered by […]

I hear it all the time – people want something that just plugs in and visualizes musical inputs. But then, on the other end of the spectrum is a crowd that wants that and powerful editing capabilities. For both, this could be a compelling development. Image-Line, the developer behind the Windows music tool FL Studio […]

The desire to be a little different in a band might drive someone to choose a custom guitar, or maybe, you know, change their hair. For some, it drives them to build a giant flying saucer they can play like an instrument by waving their hands. No, MIDI controller, don’t destroy Earth. Klaatu barada nikto. […]

A wintry afternoon sometimes calls for putting the work on hold and spending some time jamming. So, this week (in approximate celebration of Sinterklaas), I headed around the corner to the offices of Koma Elektronik, the boutique all-analog gear producer. Here’s a few minutes of combining digital with analog, each with its own timbres and […]

Over 13 minutes. BT’s “13 Angels On My Broken Windowsill” playing. And nothing but timelapse footage of starscapes above fields and farms on Planet Earth. All of this could be corny, and yet… Nope. It’s a breathtaking virtual-stargazing love song to the Milky Way. Clever use of DSLR cameras makes the unseen realm of our […]

Over 13 minutes. BT’s “13 Angels On My Broken Windowsill” playing. And nothing but timelapse footage of starscapes above fields and farms on Planet Earth. All of this could be corny, and yet… Nope. It’s a breathtaking virtual-stargazing love song to the Milky Way. Clever use of DSLR cameras makes the unseen realm of our […]

We’re in the final hours of the crowd funding campaign for Mouse on Mars’ handheld effects instrument, WretchUp. We’ve been really amazed at the level of support – we quickly reached our funding goal for the iOS app’s budget. But now we’re pushing in the final hours for just a bit more funding. It’ll allow […]

Sometimes it’s what’s at the margins of the event circuit that’s the most promising. Outside the known names and big-budget pieces, artists are experimenting with audiovisual expression, hacking together projects and improvising with light and sound. And in Europe and other continents, this scene is increasingly expanding beyond the cities once known as hubs – […]