Jeez Louise’s Tribute to Them Crooked Vultures and Joe Perry Project

We’ve given the keytar a hard time once or twice in the past – but we may have to take it all back.

I don’t know what the hell keyboardist George von Staden was doing to that microphone – but I think it may have melted my face off.

Badass or not badass? Let me know what you think! Read more…

DJ Tech Tools takes a look at the best laptop DJ stands, including laptop DJ stands from Crane, Odyssey and Uber.

While their focus is DJing – the stands should work equally well for other live laptop performers.

via eangolden

Eban Schletter’s Cosmic Christmas is described as a yuletide odyssey – but it’s also bizarre theremin-filled exotica that’s likely to find fans among curmudgeons and send people hoping for a little old-fashion Christmas running from the room.

Schletter has a varied background – ranging from music for SpongeBob SquarePants to playing with System Of A Down or acting as the drummer for the all-girl band Stone Fox (dressed as the skanky “Debbie”).

While other artists are looking to the past, Schletter has created a concept album based on the idea that “a military satellite finds itself in the midst of a musical “transmission” which forces it to rethink its primary directive.”

The album doesn’t hit you over the head with the concept, though.

Instead, Cosmic Christmas combines original songs and instrumentals with modern electronic exotica takes on Christmas classics. There’s some great “spacey” theremin work on Schletter’s versions of Christmas Time Is Here, We Three Kings and It Came Upon A Midnight Clear. Read more…

Check out this bizarre multi-iPhone instrument. It features iPhones mounted to a custom-cut plex body, with tubes to channel the player’s breath to each mic.

If you know anything more about this oddity, leave a comment!

via Make

John Dilberto, of the Public Radio International show Echoes, has published a list of 20 Icons of Echoes to celebrate the shows 20th anniversary.

In his profile of Icon Steve Roach, Roach talks about the artist and music that inspired him to choose a life of electronic music making, Klaus Schulze’s Timewind:

I think when I heard Timewind, it was really the album that hit the switch for me.

There’s just a sound and a quality of the sound and a feeling that the sound gave me went so deep and cut through so many layers and was so direct, the experience of that music was so direct, it was so familiar.

Timewind is a 60-minute electronic epic, dedicated to Richard Wagner, that is made up of two (side-long) half-hour tracks, Bayreuth Return and Wahnfried 1883.

Off topic: Fredo Viola is a multimedia artist and singer whose work frequently involves vocal improvisation with delays or loopers. We’ve previously featured his hypnotic vocal looping piece, Wood Smoke.

In this video, Viola doesn’t use electronics compositionally. Instead Viola takes advantage of portable electronics to capture an improvisation in an interesting acoustic space:

After the very last performance of our tour (my very first tour) in Lille I was feeling a little odd, a little mysterious and melancholic. Walking alone through the reverberant stairwell I made some sounds which I liked, so brought out my camera and started to shoot it. Suddenly my friends (the musicians I have been playing with) walked in a floor above me and spontaneously joined me in a vocal improvisation! It was quite exciting and I think there are many really lovely mysterious parts (as well as crazy bits too! hahah)

John Kannenberg describes his Flumen as an “Ambient video recontextualizing sonic and visual source material involving water and motion.”

This experimental video was created by Aleksandar Rodic. It was inspired by demoscene, “3D pipes” screensaver and sub-atomic particle collision images.

The name comes from the Higgs Boson prticle (The God Particle) which is expected to provide a scientific foundation for the origin of mass in the universe.

Music: Puryx aka Christian Rønde

Product specialist Eric McGregor is stoked about MixMeister Control – a DJ controller designed in partnership with Numark specifically for users of MixMeister Fusion and Studio.

The MixMiester Control isn’t a brand new product (here’s our initial report on the MixMeister Control) but Numark just released this video for it.

MixMeister Control contains 94 pre-mapped hardware controls laid out in identical fashion to the software it controls. No configuration or setup is needed, and the single-cable USB connection carries both control data and power from DJs’ Mac or PCs to MixMeister Control.

MixMeister Control retails for about $200.

If you’ve used the MixMeister Control DJ controller, leave a comment and let us know if you’re stoked about it, too.

via NumarkVideo

Johnathan136 plays the bagpipes – and he wasn’t going to let a little thing like having his jaw wired shut keep him from playing:

This was about a year and a half ago, I had my jaw wired shut because it was broken, so couldn’t play my actual pipes. These are Ross Electronic Bagpipes.

I kinda go psycho in the end.

If you’re not familiar with the surprising range of electronic bagpipes, don’t miss The Complete Guide To MIDI Bagpipes; Covering Practice Pipes, Robotic Bagpipers & The Frankenpipe.