Latest Music industry news

The Necks live at WFMU (MP3)

In honor of the return of this Australian trio to New York, here's the full MP3 of their transcendent performance from my radio show back almost exactly one year ago (why do they keep leaving the warmth of the southern hemisphere?). For the uninitiated, the Necks hail fron Sydney, and since 1987 have utilized the piano/bass/drums format in a singular, unorthodox fashion that has left them uncategorizable, yet critically-acclaimed and in high demand from jazz, ambient, and avant-rock festivals. The trio of Chris Abrahams (piano) Tony Buck (drums, percussion) and Lloyd Swanton (stand-up bass) have performed their sprawling, dense, and tranced-out pieces in art spaces, clubs, the Sydney Opera House, and last week at Issue Project Room (where I caught the first night of a two-night stand). Issue's recording of night #1 set #2 has also been uploaded to the Free Music Archive, and is stunning; at one point it was somewhat like witnessing and hearing the ocean at work. Gentle, seashell-like percussion mixing in with sheets of other acoustic strings and keys. New Age? Someone mentioned that before the set, not sure what to expect, and in a sense there is a certain harnessing of organic, natural elements. Nature itself does seem to sit in with these guys. Overtones emerge as repetitions pick up ever-so-slowly (a normal "piece" can take an hour or more), individuals listening can hone in on certain phrases that maybe others don't concentrate on, the template the Necks present is precise, but open, and always hypnotic as any Spacemen 3 or Kompakt release. Their 2009 visit to WFMU, engineered by Irene Trudel, was a huge honor for me; getting to watch up close as the ideas rolled out and gather mass. Hope you enjoy it as well. Special thanks to Irene and Regina Greene.

Chime, Beautiful New Music Game on Xbox 360: Play to Philip Glass, for Charity

One Big Game is a charity assembled by game developers to raise money for children’s organizations. Musical games look to figure prominently in the series. Design legend Masaya Matsuura (PaRappa the Rapper, Vib-Ribbon), father of rhythm games and without whom there likely would be no Rock Band or Guitar Hero, has signed. And the first title out, from Zoë Mode, is musical in nature, too, in a game called “Chime.”

Chime is an elegantly-designed game and a lovely way to unwind, particularly with Philip Glass’ gorgeous “Brazil” in the track list. (”Brazil” has Glass’ usual musical furniture, but the cut, taken from the Aguas da Amazonia album, is executed by the extraordinary Uakti ensemble and takes on a new set of timbres.) One relevance to Create Digital Music – it’s not a bad way to take a break after a production and/or programming stint. The game is 500 Microsoft Points for Xbox Live, the lion’s share of which goes to children’s charities.

Fun as it is, Chime also reveals some of the limitations of musical gameplay; whether or not that’s a fault is really up to the user/gamer. The gameplay is almost a direct homage to Lumines, Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s puzzle game. As with Lumines, you place interlocking blocks into patterns, with the basic mechanics derived from Tetris. Chime is actually slightly simpler; there’s no color matching involved, only the creation of matching “quads” – areas of the grid 3×3. The more of the space you manage to fill up, the higher your score, which is oddly satisfying. (Sure, other animals have survival instincts and stuff like that imprinted in our brain; humans seem to be basically obsessive-compulsive as a species. Great.)

How is this a “music game” and not just a variant of Tetris? Well, again borrowing (liberally) from Lumines, Chime has a playback “wiper” that scrolls across the screen from left to right. In fact, it’s not so much that Chimes or Lumines are music games as it is that digital musical interfaces in general tend to use left-to-right, linear, step-sequencing grids. The tracks are all pre-composed, whether Glass or Moby, so the blocks themselves just add little musical “flairs,” kept in time to the music.

And that brings us to the limitation: it’s funny to me that these games tend to do so little musically. Lumines, at least, provides satisfying rhythmic cues that align with gameplay. Chime is so subtle, you’re barely aware that the blocks impact the music at all. Aesthetically, that works well: the addition of music feels seamless, focusing the user on gameplay – and this is a game.

But perhaps it’s not really game design that’s at fault. Music lacks a strong generative tradition, and musical interfaces are only now taking baby steps into anything that looks different from conventional interfaces. Indeed, it seems what’s urgently needed is for people who work on interaction design and people who work on music to start to work across disciplines. In fact, I’m seeing far more innovation with game interfaces than musical interfaces.

Of course, that’ll require a lot of programming time. And that means you’ll need a break. And for a break, I still recommend Chime. Sure, the musical selections are a bit oddly matched, with Lemon Jelly’s Fred Deakin, Moby, Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll, Markus Schulz, and … Philip Glass. But it’s still quite fun. And you can say you’re doing it for the kids.

http://www.chimegame.com/

Chime, Beautiful New Music Game on Xbox 360: Play to Philip Glass, for Charity

One Big Game is a charity assembled by game developers to raise money for children’s organizations. Musical games look to figure prominently in the series. Design legend Masaya Matsuura (PaRappa the Rapper, Vib-Ribbon), father of rhythm games and without whom there likely would be no Rock Band or Guitar Hero, has signed. And the first title out, from Zoë Mode, is musical in nature, too, in a game called “Chime.”

Chime is an elegantly-designed game and a lovely way to unwind, particularly with Philip Glass’ gorgeous “Brazil” in the track list. (”Brazil” has Glass’ usual musical furniture, but the cut, taken from the Aguas da Amazonia album, is executed by the extraordinary Uakti ensemble and takes on a new set of timbres.) One relevance to Create Digital Music – it’s not a bad way to take a break after a production and/or programming stint. The game is 500 Microsoft Points for Xbox Live, the lion’s share of which goes to children’s charities.

Fun as it is, Chime also reveals some of the limitations of musical gameplay; whether or not that’s a fault is really up to the user/gamer. The gameplay is almost a direct homage to Lumines, Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s puzzle game. As with Lumines, you place interlocking blocks into patterns, with the basic mechanics derived from Tetris. Chime is actually slightly simpler; there’s no color matching involved, only the creation of matching “quads” – areas of the grid 3×3. The more of the space you manage to fill up, the higher your score, which is oddly satisfying. (Sure, other animals have survival instincts and stuff like that imprinted in our brain; humans seem to be basically obsessive-compulsive as a species. Great.)

How is this a “music game” and not just a variant of Tetris? Well, again borrowing (liberally) from Lumines, Chime has a playback “wiper” that scrolls across the screen from left to right. In fact, it’s not so much that Chimes or Lumines are music games as it is that digital musical interfaces in general tend to use left-to-right, linear, step-sequencing grids. The tracks are all pre-composed, whether Glass or Moby, so the blocks themselves just add little musical “flairs,” kept in time to the music.

And that brings us to the limitation: it’s funny to me that these games tend to do so little musically. Lumines, at least, provides satisfying rhythmic cues that align with gameplay. Chime is so subtle, you’re barely aware that the blocks impact the music at all. Aesthetically, that works well: the addition of music feels seamless, focusing the user on gameplay – and this is a game.

But perhaps it’s not really game design that’s at fault. Music lacks a strong generative tradition, and musical interfaces are only now taking baby steps into anything that looks different from conventional interfaces. Indeed, it seems what’s urgently needed is for people who work on interaction design and people who work on music to start to work across disciplines. In fact, I’m seeing far more innovation with game interfaces than musical interfaces.

Of course, that’ll require a lot of programming time. And that means you’ll need a break. And for a break, I still recommend Chime. Sure, the musical selections are a bit oddly matched, with Lemon Jelly’s Fred Deakin, Moby, Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll, Markus Schulz, and … Philip Glass. But it’s still quite fun. And you can say you’re doing it for the kids.

http://www.chimegame.com/

Mokafix Audio announces 6 New Distortion Effects

8th February 2010: Mokafix Audio has announced a new series of six distortion stomp-box emulations just a few weeks after the release of its first batch of seven fuzz and distortion effects. These new plug-ins will be a...

La Düsseldorf - Rheinita (video)

This is a very weird version of La Düsseldorf's hit "Rheinita", apparently a rehearsal for the German TV show "Szene 79" with host Thomas Gottschalk (who seems weirdly out of place introducing a bunch of tripping Electro-Krautrockers.) I am not sure if this was ever broadcast.

YouTube: [link]

There is a Quicktime version of this clip on La Düsseldorf's website, but the quality is not much better: [link]

SPL updates all Analog Code and MicroPlugs Plug-ins to v1.2 (incl. VST3 Support)

8th February 2010: SPL has released version 1.2 updates for all of its Analog Code and MicroPlugs Plug-ins. Changes: All SPL plug-ins support VST3 now. TDM support for Logic. Several small bug fixes, including MicroP...



>> View More News