Milkcrate is an interesting site/project, maintained by Sebastian Tomczak, that explores making music with minimal source materials:
Milkcrate is not a band or a particular group of people. Milkcrate adds a further set of constraints of space, time and materials to create music within.
The rules…
- The objective of milkcrate is to write, record and produce as much music as possible, creating a completely finished product within twenty-four hours of beginning the session
- No member of the group is to leave the environment, within reason
- All materials and raw sources used to create music must be explicitly non- musical
- All the materials must fit inside or on a milkcrate
- There is a limit of one milkcrate per person
- At least one member of the group must be productive at all times
These rules are modular in nature; milkcrate sessions may have additional constraints, so long as they do not break the existing ones.
The results are very interesting, with a huge amount of variety. Use the site as a source of inspiration or just download some great free electronic music.
I’ve put a few previews below as teasers – but check out the site for some real inspiration.