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Here’s the second part of the interview with Goldfrapp’s Will Gregory. 

Goldfrapp Interview pt. 1

Señor Coconut is a Latin music side project by the electronica artist Atom Heart.

His recently released album, Around the World, garnered a lot of attention for his Latin remakes of tracks by Prince and Eurythmics.

I’m not sure if it’s the Latin lounge take on Trio’s synth-pop classic that does it for me, or if it’s the contributions of the “exotic performance unit” Romantica, but I love this groovy video!

Let me know what you think!

There’s an interesting interview with electronic music pioneer Laurie Spiegel over at Tokafi. 

In it, she discusses her initial experience working with classic modular synthesizers:

The first time I saw a synth (side note - we didn’t like that word then because of “synthetic” implying false or artificial instead of real music made on real instruments), the first time I saw one, a Buchla modular in Mort Subotnick’s old studio over the Bleeker Street Cinema, it was a mind blow and I fell madly in love with it.

After starting to work with it I began hearing everything differently, music, traffic noise… It was a revelation. Of course that was unlike most of today’s “synths”, not being based on a keyboard model or such concepts as notes. That was an instrument meant for working with the nature of sound itself. When I tried to communicate my excitement to others usually it fell flat.

Spiegel goes on to comment on the emotional relationship that she developed with old-school synths:

It’s not just that those are physical instruments that you have a long history of physical contact with and that live with you in your home and are part of your emotional life, like a guitar or a fine old violin whose every scratch mark and wear pattern and physical sensation you know.

It’s that in the early days each electronic instrument was a unique custom system that you participated in designing or configuring. Or if not, as with the early more mass produced instruments I have such as the alphaSyntauri or McLeyvier, they are heavily customized and personalized, and by modern standards few were made and far fewer still survive.

 

Remember the news about David Byrne’s latest project, Playing the Building?

Playing the Building, a 9,000-square-foot, interactive, site-specific installation by David Byrne, will transform the interior of the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan into a massive sound sculpture that all visitors are invited to sit and “play.”

Byrne’s project will consist of a retrofitted antique organ placed in the center of the building’s cavernous second-floor gallery that will control a series of devices attached to its structural features—metal beams, plumbing, electrical conduits, and heating and water pipes. These machines will vibrate, strike, and blow across the building elements, triggering unique harmonics and producing finely tuned sounds.

Byrne explains, it is an elaborate system for “activating the sound-producing qualities that are inherent in all materials.”

BoingBoingTV caught up with Byrne and got an personal tour of the installation.

Got an extra $24,000?

Then you might be able to afford the Avid Acutus turntable.

Description:

The Acutus turntable is radically different from current design theories. In brief, this is a belt drive, sprung subchassis design and this is where similarity with other designs stops.

Vibration caused by the stylus during playback is transmitted to the subchassis directly through the bearing and not absorbed into the platter. This is achieved using a unique matting material and clamping system. External vibrations are isolated by a unique suspension system, now conveniently adjustable from above. A purpose designed power supply coupled to a unique hand made motor, 10 times more powerful than normally used, drive a massive 10Kg platter. Recently improvements to the suspension, now allows adjustments from above, making set-up easier.

Here are the specs, if you’ve got the $24k to drop: Read more…

The Sound of eBay is a net art project by Ubermorgen that translates scraped eBay user data into electronica music.

Here’s an example - generated from eBay user basketofkittens:

 

 basketofkittens [2:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

According to Ubermorgen - “The Sound of eBay is the affirmative high-end low-tech contribution to the atomic soundtrack of the new peer-to-peer hyper-catastrophic shock-capitalism.”

Note: the site includes 8-bit NSFW sexed-up images.

via boingboing

Allen & Heath has unveiled a sweet new DJ mixer/controller - the new Xone:4D performance DJ controller.

Evolved from the revolutionary Xone:3D, the Xone:4D has an updated feature set, combining a professional analog DJ mixer with 105 MIDI controls, and a new 96 kHz/24bit 20-channel USB 2.0 soundcard.

Features:

The mixer section is based on the Xone:92 and features 4 triple-input stereo channels (soundcard, phono and line), 3 band total kill EQ, 2 stereo effects sends, 2 analogue VCF filters with LFO, VCA crossfader and dual-rail channel faders, DJ mic and cue monitoring system.

For the assignable LFO, a new editable step-filter function has been developed, designed for creative combinations of the tempo-detecting BPM counter and tap tempo. Each MIDI fader becomes a filter cut-off frequency, enabling users to “draw” their own tempo-locked LFO waveform.

There is also a new 16-bit tempo detecting circuit, which constantly monitors the BPM and outputs a MIDI clock to help synchronize MIDI-controlled music replay software with external source program material. Read more…

Etienne de Crecy does his thing live at the Transmusicales de Rennes music festival.

The clip’s music is pretty standard house - but the light show is nothing short of amazing!

If you know anything about de Crecy’s stage show, let me know in the comments.

via Today & Tomorrow

The New York City Opera has announced that American composer Charles Wuorinen has accepted the City Opera’s invitation to compose an opera based on Annie Proulx’s gay cowboy-themed short story Brokeback Mountain.

Mr. Wuorinen said, “Ever since encountering Annie Proulx’s extraordinary story I have wanted to make an opera on it, and it gives me great joy that Gerard Mortier and New York City Opera have given me the opportunity to do so.”

Mr. Wuorinen, who celebrates his 70th birthday today, June 9, won a Pulitzer Prize for his electronic work Time’s Encomium in 1970. He became the youngest composer ever to receive this award. Read more…

At the Apple World Wide Developer’s Convention, Steve Jobs highlighted Moo Cow Music’s Band for the iPhone as part of his keynote speech.

Band lets you record tunes on your iPhone or iPod Touch. It’s one of the many iPhone music software apps we’ve featured previously. Expect to see iPhone virtual instruments, iPhone virtual studios, iPhone samplers and more within weeks.

It will great for these apps to finally be officially available, on non-jailbroken iPhones.

Hobnox, the people behind the cool Flash-based AudioTool software studio, have announced a contest that offers a $30,000 prize for your awesome music project:

Could your band or solo career use a chunky financial investment? Upload your audio files and music videos and mobilize your fan base to vote for you. Now’s the chance to give your development a huge financial boost.

Here’s some background on the contest: Read more…

Thom and Jonny playing The Rip, by Portishead.

This is a cool idea: The August issue of Otona No Kagaku (Japanese for Adult Of Science) will be a synth themed edition called the Synthesizer Chronicle. It will feature interviews from Ryuichi Sakamoto, Tomita and Fumitaka Anzai.

With the magazine comes the SX 150 Gakken Analog Synthesizer - which appears to be a basic battery-powered synth toy!

Last year, the magazine published a theremin issue.

If anybody knows anything about availability of this magazine outside of Japan, let us know in the comments!

via SonicState

Future Audio Workshop has released Circle, a new virtual synth for Mac & PC that’s designed to be easy to use.

Features:

• Visually Design Sounds - Simply move colour coded circles around the interface to start creating your own unique sounds. Preview the connections by just hovering the circle beneath a knob. Explore sound in an intuitive way.
• Powerful Audio Engine - Choose from a large variety of effects and audio modules. Mix the classic synthesizer tones of analog modeled filters and oscillators with contemporary wavetables and digital bit crushers.
• Creative control - Assign your midi controllers in a simple and fast way with visual midi learn. Attach multiple parameters to a single controller.

FAW Circle is Euro 149. A demo version is available for testing.

Intua has introduced BeatMaker, a new iPhone virtual studio spired by hardware beat boxes, loop samplers and software sequencers

Features list:

• 16 triggerable pads with polyphonic control
• Automatic sample slicing on multiple pads
• Edit pads individually
• Duration and tonal controls
• Reverse
• Gain
• Output selection (Dry, FX Bus1, FX Bus 2)
• Graphical sample bounds editor
• Instant muting
• Muting individual pads makes your song breathing
• Sample accurate Sequencer
• Pattern step sequencer
• Step velocity editor per pattern
• Song pattern sequencer
• On the fly live editing
• 2 FX Busses, each rack containing
• 3 Band EQ
• Synchronized Delay
• Bit Crusher
• Live pattern recording
• Record grooves from pads to sequencer patterns
• #
• Browser
• Provided Sound Library
• Multiple purposes instruments
• Artist Kits
• Local Library
• Network share
• Load and save samples, kits and projects
• Song Export
• Export your songs to commonly used sample formats

Expect to see a surge of iPhone related music apps in the next few days!