Jaap Blonk, Namesake of the blonkorgan, performer, sound poet. AaaaaAAAøøøøøøøøøAEEEeeeiiiIIIIIiiiüüüüüüüüüüieeeeooooOUUUUUooooooo. [more inside]
posted by idiopath on Nov 23, 2009 - 26 comments

Luigi Russolo was a futurist painter, experimental composer, and instrument builder. In his 1913 manifesto "The Art of Noises" he declaimed the death of traditional Western music and foresaw the dawning of a new music based on the grinding, screeching, moaning, crackling and buzzing of mechanical instruments. He and his assistant Ugo Piatti built the Intonarumori to bring these new sounds - "the palpitation of valves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of a tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags" - to life. Listen to them, then and now.
posted by fire&wings on Oct 28, 2009 - 10 comments

"For decades, hundreds of people worldwide have been plagued by an elusive buzzing noise known as "the Hum". "
posted by Aetius Romulous on May 24, 2009 - 52 comments

Phil Minton | Jaap Blonk | Ami Yoshida | Maja Ratkje | Henri Chopin | The Littlest Sound Poet
posted by Beautiful Screaming Lady on Dec 3, 2008 - 8 comments

I Am Not Sitting In A Room With Reynols. [more inside]
posted by jtron on Feb 25, 2008 - 13 comments

HOMOPHONI
posted by hama7 on Oct 7, 2007 - 37 comments

Powernap MP3s.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jun 21, 2007 - 16 comments

The idea of treating everyday, ambient noise as music is not terribly new, but Noah Vawter's device turns ambient sounds into music (in a somewhat more traditional sense of the word):

Ambient Addition is a Walkman with binaural microphones. A tiny Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chip analyzes the microphone's sound and superimposes a layer of harmony and rhythm on top of the listener's world.

posted by 2or3whiskeysodas on Dec 18, 2006 - 33 comments

20Hz not low enough for you? Aching for 5Hz notes? You need the rotary woofer.
posted by mr_crash_davis on Sep 28, 2006 - 38 comments

Sonic Postcards - winner of the New Statesman New Media Award. Explore sound. Via the Sonic Arts Network, UK exponents of Electroacoustic music.
posted by nthdegx on Aug 2, 2006 - 1 comment

A Piano In A Gallery. David Cunningham (the guy behind The Flying Lizards! Wikipedia because the main at-least-quasi-official site's down, but while you wait 16 days for that, why not read this interview with Deborah Lizard for your FL Fix) and his new project... A Piano In A Gallery. No, he's not actually PLAYING the piano -- the visitors are. It's a sort of similar thing to both Brian Eno's gallery work with ambient tape loops on different time cycles, creating an ever-shifting collage of sound and David Byrne's recent Playing The Building. The room is mic'd, and the sound is run through a piano, and amplified, both bringing background noises to the foreground AND creating feedback-style loops, as those sounds are also run into the mics and so forth. So... if you happen to be in London.... [via WFMU]
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me on Jul 15, 2006 - 5 comments

David Webber makes awesome sound art things from christmas trees, pot plants, household stuff, food blenders and hard drives. His good friend Ray Wilson builds awesome modular synths. Ray will also show you how to make your own Weird Sound Generator.
posted by nylon on Jul 5, 2006 - 8 comments

What? From WFMU: "What happens when a man covered in microphones walks into a room covered with speakers? Feedback. Lots of it." (might be NSFW)
posted by minkll on Apr 7, 2006 - 91 comments

The Hitachi Hard Disk Drive Knowledge Base does very little to distinguish itself from other knowledge bases, except that it includes some fantastic examples of what your hard drive may sound like when it's dying or dead. Note: all links except first are .wav (via)
posted by furtive on Jan 23, 2006 - 20 comments

Making music entirely from non-musical things: McDonalds Happy Meals, Henry Kissinger, Bread, Salad Tosser, Fluorescent Lamps, the Bible, Hearts, Dot Matrix Printers, Photocopiers, Volkswagen [possibly nsfw], The Postal Service, Blank Tapes, Eiffel Tower, Deportation Orders [scroll down], Cakes, Cucumbers, Furniture [scroll down to #12], Skin, Roads, Underpasses, Frogs, Vinyl Run-Out Grooves, Radios, Natural Geophysical Phenomena, Carly Simon and other stuff.
posted by nylon on Aug 7, 2005 - 16 comments

Happy 10th Birthday "What? is Music".

This year's the 10th time around the block for Australian festival "What? is Music", which showcases new (and not so new), unusual, fascinating and strange directions in contemporary music and sound exploration.

Starting today such outfits as The Residents, Dead C., Black Dice, Chicks on Speed, and members of Boredoms and Sun City Girls tour Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Labels like Last Visible Dog, Touch, ElectrO-CD and Corpus Hermeticum are represented, and last year's festivities saw Whitehouse and Merzbow rip up the stage.

So MeFites, what other events are there out there like this that have tickled your collective pickles? Which festivals or bands have unduly influenced your aural development and/or rearranged your head musicwise?
posted by soi-disant on Mar 1, 2005 - 16 comments

bits & pieces a sonic installation for the web! my friend sez, "it's not random. it's complexity" :)
posted by kliuless on Mar 22, 2002 - 7 comments