Milkcrate is an interesting site/project, maintained by Sebastian Tomczak, that explores making music with minimal source materials:

Milkcrate is not a band or a particular group of people. Milkcrate adds a further set of constraints of space, time and materials to create music within.

The rules…

• The objective of milkcrate is to write, record and produce as much music as possible, creating a completely finished product within twenty-four hours of beginning the session
• No member of the group is to leave the environment, within reason
• All materials and raw sources used to create music must be explicitly non- musical
• All the materials must fit inside or on a milkcrate
• There is a limit of one milkcrate per person
• At least one member of the group must be productive at all times

These rules are modular in nature; milkcrate sessions may have additional constraints, so long as they do not break the existing ones.

The results are very interesting, with a huge amount of variety. Use the site as a source of inspiration or just download some great free electronic music.

I’ve put a few previews below as teasers - but check out the site for some real inspiration.

 

 Singapura - uses only glass as source material [0:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Dawn Bells - uses only a blank sheet of paper as source material: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Of Daedalus, Part A - Empty, solo milkcrate: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download