“Panzer” is beyond any mobile studio you’ve ever seen. It’s basically a tank with speakers and a cockpit containing beat-making gear. (Mackie mixer, Roland sampler, Akai MPC, Korg KAOSS, as near as I can see, plus … the machinery to drive the tank.)

From the description:

Minidumper, Holz, Stahl, Kunstharz, Glasfaser, Audioequipment, Sound
2011

And to make sure it’ll fit in your garage:
H 250 cm x L 350 cm x B 140 cm

Nik Nowak, born in Mainz and based here in Berlin, has a whole portfolio of re-imagined speakers and motorcycles and flames and I’m glad I’m not a curator or art critic because I would be tempted to use phrases like “installations made completely of awesome.”

Nik, if you’re out there, please tell me you still have this and can drive it out to an event. Otherwise, I’ll come to you. Just don’t shoot … or … boom or whatever.

I was going to add the images to this story, but I’m not sure I want to see a takedown notice from Nik. It might actually set me on fire.

Also, Alesis IO Dock: eat your heart out.

http://www.niknowak.de/
http://www.niknowak.de/images/panzer.htm

1. ShwoN (AJ Prasad) – Track 4: Lunar Preserve (3:48) – ShwoN Drop (2010)
2. ShwoN (AJ Prasad) – Track 3: Rage – Original Mix (4:00) – Ghengiz ShwoN (2011, High Chai Recordings)
3. Nucleya – Track 2: Chandan Sa Badan – Nucleya Remix (6:55) – Horn OK Please | Nucleya Remix songs (2010, SaReGaMa)
4. Nucleya – Track 1: Khandit Nayaka (4:54) – EP Khandit Nayaka (2011, High Chai Recordings)
5. B.R.E.E.D (Ritesh D’Souza aka DJ Nasha) – Track 2: Kandit Nayaka – B.R.E.E.D Remix (PRECISE MASTER, 4:35) – Khandit Nayaka (2011, High Chai Recordings)
6. B.R.E.E.D (Ritesh D’Souza aka DJ Nasha) – Track 2: SCHEME OF STRINGS (4:49) – EP Incu-Bass (2011, High Chai Recordings)
7. Piyush Bhatnagar – Track 1: Fireball On The Move (5:52) – EP RAD 002 (2011, RAD – Rub A Duck)
8. Piyush Bhatnagar – Track 2: Ultrasonic (7:02) – EP RAD 002 (2011, RAD – Rub A Duck)
9. Ranvir Bassi – Track 5: our clouds (6:32) – EP Cut Lip (2011)
10. Ranvir Bassi - Track 15: Untitled Yeti (7:04) – EP There are no maps to find (2011)
11. Das Racist – Track 4: Rainbow in the Dark (3:56) – Shut up, Dude (2010, Greedhead Entertainment)
12. Das Racist – Track 14: The Trick (3:01) – Relax (2011, Greedhead Entertainment)

… see all playlists here.

—

Relisten now…

There's a live webcast happening on Oct. 11 with Thom Yorke, Jamie xx, Caribou, Lone, and Illum Sphere.

If you just want to fire up Renoise, the modern tracker/music production app, and not worry about the fact that its innards are hackable, you can. But for a reason why you might at least want to explore customization of this music tool, give the video above a look. It starts sleepy and slow … and then, part of the way through, as creator Dac Chartrand starts demoing the tool, something really special happens. (Anyway, that’s what I think. See if you agree.)

Dac explains his work, completed at the recent Montreal Music Hackday:

My Renoise hack was Grid Pie. One of the new trends in our community is the concept of a meta-interface. In essence, programmers use the Lua API to transform Renoise into something else, hide the Renoise window, and work with hardware interfaces connected to their own scripts. Three current examples: MPE, Step Sequencer Lauflicht and Duplex. Grid Pie is “yet another meta interface.” It turns Renoise into a live performance audio recombination machine. Still in alpha, but people were into the demo I gave. I got a lot of handshakes and positive feedback.

It’s an alpha, so your mileage may vary, but I’ll bet this whets some appetites for people who hadn’t yet realized the power of the Renoise API.

http://wiki.musichackday.org/index.php?title=Grid_Pie

Ed.: Hacking Web databases to search sounds, remixing tools to automatically create dub tunes, cameras to sequence and analyze images in new ways, Montréal hackers have been busy. Trevor Knight writes from the event with full coverage from Canada, latest outpost of this global music coding phenomenon:

Music Hack Day made its first appearance in Canada at the end of September, painting the event with a Montréal flavour, complete with bilingualism, Montréal-style bagels, and even an appearance of Stephen Harper in a hack. Over the Saturday-Sunday event, musicians, programmers, and hackers scramble to create any sort of new music project.

With the help of dozens of laptops, gallons of coffee, several APIs and staff from such companies as The Echonest, Soundcloud, and Grooveshark, the assembled hackers churned out and presented 24 hacks in 24 hours.

Bruno Angeles took home first prize for his hack, FaCeQuencer, which uses computer vision and a webcam to control a squencer/looper and at the same time, outfit the user appropriately to the style of music.

Free Assembly, the hack from Graham Boyes, took second prize and recreates a target sound using a database of samples. It uses The Echonest Remix API for the analysis and finds target sounds sourced using Freesound.org’s API. The power of this hack was clear when Graham demonstrated using a drum and bass track as the target sound and a recording of a dog playing in water as the sample.

With a heavy presence of students and researchers from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media Technology (CIRMMT) and McGill University, several of the hacks incorporated data-mining. For example, David Weigl, Hannah Robertson, and Andrew Hankinson created wuzhear, a venue-based database of historical concerts in Montreal from the Montreal Jazz Festival website and last.fm’s API, including set information and playable with a Grooveshark widget.

The Wub Machine 2.0, from Peter Sobot, automatically creates Dub or Electrohouse remixes of an audio sample, while The Beatbox Machine allows one to record beatboxing and return a drum sequence replaced with actual drum samples.

For a complete list of hacks, check out http://wiki.musichackday.org/index.php?title=Montreal_2011_Hacks

Now that Canada has tasted the sweet Music Hack Day nectar, there’s already buzz for a hack day in Toronto.

Dac Chartrand (Renoise) writes with more details. Dac has his own set of hacks, but I’m excited enough about it that I’ll put that in a separate post -PK:

Other "Renoisers" were on site, but used the 24 hour session to try new ideas, but not present them. For example Steve Sinclair (Radarsat1) tried to port Mark Zadel’s Different Strokes to Android. Different Strokes resembles a freehand drawing application. The drawn strokes create animated figures whose motion is mapped to sample playback. The musician performs by assembling networks of strokes live, generating audio patterns. Steve got drawing and particles working but not enough time to hook into the Android audio subsystem, so he didn’t bother presenting.

Longtime CDM readers Studioimaginaire were also on site hacking away at their multi-touch table. They were there the full two days but also didn’t bother presenting. I tried to talk them into it several times, saying that the crowd would obviously vote for them just on cool factor alone and that they would walk away with a prize, but they stuck to their principles. Something to be said about the vibe of the event. Hackers were there to have fun.

David Viens of Plogue made am appearance for the demo session Sunday afternoon.

Good times had by all.

Having begun as a joke dropped into the London duo's live performances, Nero's refix of the '80s classic "Crush On You" from the family band known as The Jets has quickly become a festival anthem. It's not the first time Nero's pulled off success by remixery; their work on the MJ Cole classic "Sincere" has become one of the biggest tunes in dubstep's history. After several successful wins with singles, Nero's long-awaited debut album, Welcome Reality, arrived in the middle of August and has enjoyed a rapturous reception. Check out the video we've featured here, as it exploits Nero's playful mix between the blissful melody of the original and the overwhelmingly ominous basslines of their own craft. We've provided the video to the original Jets tune below the jump, just in case you need a wholesome cleanse after Nero's version. Nero's "Crush On You" drops on October 17; for now, don't miss their single "Promises," featuring remixes from Skrillex and Calvin Harris, or their own remix for SebastiAn's "C.T.F.O.."

Watch this video on Beatportal

Sweat Lodge Radio chats to Markus Lindner from the city's OYE Records about the new event which will be taking place in Berlin alongside the Fly BerMuDa Festival on November 5th.

 

Hurricane Bells, a project by Steve Schiltz of New York-based band Longwave,  is putting out a new album entitled Tides and Tales (Invisible Brigades) October 25, 2011 and we're premiering one of the tracks "Possibilities" . Schiltz wrote, recorded and produced everything himself (with a bit of help from musicians for some instrumental elements). For just one week, FILTER is offering this Fall-playlist-worthy track which can be downloaded below. 

 

Hurricane Bells, "Possibilities" by FILTER Magazine

The track's ethereal tone in a bundle of anthemic lyrics makes for a short and sweet introduction to Schiltz's upcoming release. Keep an eye out of other tracks being premiered in the next few weeks leading up to the release of their sophomore album Tides and Tales (10/25).

Preorder 'Tides and Tales' Here. 

The UK producer tells teshno how some particularly eccentric school art teachers influenced his music making process and by extension his forthcoming full-length for NRK.

You’ve seen a musician or two, no doubt, jamming away on a Moog synthesizer. But German band KARAT’s keyboardist Thomas Kurzhals really tears into it. Chris Stack, formerly of Moog and now producing the Experimental Synth series we cover with some regularity, shot this video interview / performance set, and tells us:

I don’t think it shows in the video, but at one point I looked down from filming and saw that he was playing so hard he was bleeding on the keys of the Voyager Old School.

With the fall of the Iron Curtain – and the accessibility of the Internet – a generation of artists can become better known to a wider audience. Chris was inspired by the reflections of Czech inventor Standa Filip to send this in. The tip is timely — today here in Berlin, it’s Tag der Deutschen Einheit, the celebration of German reunification. (I’m literally typing this from a balcony overlooking Frankfurter Tor and the gleaming disco ball-on-a-smokestack that is the Fernsehturm, in the former East Berlin.)

At Frankfurt’s Musikmesse, Kurzhals talked to Moog about what it was like being synthesist in the former GDR – including smuggling a Minimoog keyboard through Hungary in pieces, and hiding the synth from the intelligence service when loading into gigs.

To me, though, it’s just watching the guy play that’s really humbling – and a reminder of how gifted we are with the accelerating exchange of musicians around the world. That growing access to culture may make you feel less good about your own chops, but it’ll make you feel really good about music.

Also, I’m glad synths – hardware and software alike – are now cheap. And clearly, a Minimoog is cooler than a Trabant.

Related content

Related EB TV (settings): 

Add automatic content

Related EB Radio (settings): 

Add automatic content

Related Articles (settings): 

Add automatic content

Related Reviews (settings): 

No automatic content

Related Downloads (settings): 

No automatic content

The very word “robot” comes from a Czech author, Karel Čapek and his 1920 sci fi theater work R.U.R.. In terms that resonate today, class, economics, and freedom play into that narrative, as Čapek introduced not only a word but the modern concept of android.

So, it’s fitting that the Czech Republic would be the scene for an artist carrying on the author’s legacy. Inventor Stanley Povoda doesn’t just imagine robots; he builds them and makes them into a musical band. Repurposing refuse, the robotic creations have eyes for knobs, and play percussion and other instruments. These are liberated robots, making music, not the oppressed, soon-to-revolt robots in R.U.R.

And yes, speaking of the Czech Republic, this is another case in which the once-unknown technological innovation and exploits are making themselves heard (literally) outside the nation’s borders. See, previously, the story that inspired this tip.

More importantly: dancers. On stilts. Shooting sparks and flame. This guy is a hell of an inventor. (See video, top.) Watch the interview below, then read lots more on his work in this article:

Stanely Povoda & His Robot Band [vivelesrobots-education.dk; site also in Czech]

And while I wish there were more documentation (time to hop Easyjet, perhaps), there are some short clips from his Prague kitchen:

The Guardian has the goods.

One part LTJ Bukem and another part new school samples of old school jazz piano riffs. Throw in a loop of drum n' bass rhythms with a soul-inspired vocal loop and BOOM! Soundtrack for a rainy day.

The Night Slugs, 3024 and Numbers producer has released a free EP of slow (we're talking 100 BPM here) house in celebration of reaching 5000 followers on twitter.