When not terrorizing
Mr Bond, from the late 1970s until 1994, Mike Mangino and Chris Shepard were in a basement full of musical toys, novelty space microphones, a
TR-606, and a
SH-09 in
Piscataway, NJ recording cassettes as the band
Smersh. In 1981
Smersh released their first cassette under their own label of
Atlas King. They never rehearsed, they couldn't read music, and they never played live, and they
contributed to far too many compilations throughout the known world. In the early eighties they
established a unique sound that is known and loved, combining cheap electronics and wild guitar sounds with distorted vocals. By trading cassettes they garnered international acclaim
leading to releases on dozens of other labels.
[more inside]
posted by wcfields
on Dec 22, 2011 -
5 comments
Singer, knob twiddler and bass player MNDR has had a great year, especially considering that she hasn’t even finished her first full-length solo recording yet. MNDR is best known in the pop world so far for her collaboration with Mark Ronson and Q-tip on
Bang Bang Bang, a song that plays with the french children’s song alouette with a double entendre squeezed out of the consonants in “plucking feathers.”
[more inside]
posted by umbú
on Aug 16, 2011 -
12 comments
Adachi Tomomi,
Alex Baker,
Ian Baxter,
Ithai Benjamin,
Lesley Flanigan,
Lorin Edwin Parker,
Peter Blasser,
Phil Archer,
Todd Bailey,
Tommy Stephenson & Patrick McCarthy,
Tuomao Tammenpaa, and
Vasco Alvo are all featured in Nicolas Collins' extraordinarily good book
Handmade Electronic Music.
posted by mhjb
on Jan 21, 2011 -
14 comments
folktek do beautiful things with sound and sculpture that are so unique as to defy description
posted by mhjb
on Dec 20, 2010 -
10 comments
Gijs Gieskes is an astonishing inventor/hacker/bender/maker of electro/mechanical/audio/artistic devices.
posted by mhjb
on Oct 7, 2010 -
4 comments
Synth Britannia "Documentary following a generation of post-punk musicians who took the synthesiser from the experimental fringes to the centre of the pop stage.
In the late 1970s, small pockets of electronic artists including the Human League, Daniel Miller and Cabaret Voltaire were inspired by Kraftwerk and JG Ballard and dreamt of the sound of the future against the backdrop of bleak, high-rise Britain."
posted by vronsky
on Nov 19, 2009 -
14 comments
The Tone Generation is a radio series by Ian Helliwell 'looking at different themes or composers in the era of analogue tape and early synthesizer technology'. The original globe-trotting series:
Great Britain,
France,
Germany,
Italy,
Holland,
Scandinavia,
Eastern Europe,
USA,
Canada,
Rest of World. Bonus programmes:
Expo 58,
The RCA Synthesizer.
All links are to MP3 files, except the first one. Alternatively, you can slurp down the lot in one go by subscribing to the podcast feed.
posted by jack_mo
on Nov 21, 2008 -
4 comments
It seems almost incredible that Ursula Bogner's musical talents should have remained undiscovered
until now.
posted by jack_mo
on Nov 1, 2008 -
20 comments
Imagine a massively multiplayer music studio, connected
worldwide over the Internet. Log in, and everyone sees a set of
synths,
effects, sequencers, or
other custom patches. Everyone’s looking at essentially the same screen, and can add beats,
trip out effects,
slide the bpm up and down,
and reprogram synths — all at once. That’s the basic idea of
netpd.
posted by bigmusic
on Oct 25, 2006 -
19 comments
Have you ever seen a synth and said "Man, what this needs is cartoon eyes?" A bit similar to the
Buchla Box or
theremin in that they don't have a keyboard to control the sounds -- it's probably closest to the Booper, invented by
The Weatherman from
Negativland (or, well,
Circuit Bending), the
Thingamagoop is a photosynthesizer... which means it basically uses light sensors to generate sounds. The signal's run through a couple oscillators and, well, it comes out as somethin' that's
pretty dang awesome. I'm on the fence on pickin' this one up. On one hand, it's a really neat toy that makes noise... on the other hand, um.... um.... I dunno. It's not made of candy?
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me
on Jul 8, 2006 -
18 comments
