This is the video for John Foxx’s Oceanic, track 1 from Cathedral Oceans III.

via karborn:

Track 1 – Oceanic from the Winter 2006 release of Cathedral Oceans III DVD from John Foxx. build by KARBORN

You can preview a section from the DVD below. It features Dieter Doepfer discussing his A100 modular synthesizer and the future of modular synths.

The film features an informed selection of inventors and artists alike, including

• Dieter Doepfer
• Junior Boys
• Cassy
• Ken MacBeth
• Anthony Rother
• Jessica Rylan
• Daniel Miller
• Wowa Cwejman
• Per Salzwedel
• Ricardo Villalobos
• Magda
• Marc Houle
• Max Loderbauer

Click here to view the embedded video.

Description:

Inside a crumbling socialist office block in former East Berlin, synthesiser store owner Andreas Schneider preaches the way of analogue to a loyal following of infamous electronic musicians, who flock to his store, ‘Schneiders Buero’, for unique boutique instruments. His business has prospered against the odds throughout the digital revolution in music, and in parallel, through a period of huge change in East Berlin. His is a haven for maverick instrument builders and passionate collectors alike. But as the twin forces of capitalism and digital technology seep through the last bricks of the Wall, how much longer can this analogue asylum survive?

The film features an informed selection of inventors and artists alike, including Dieter Doepfer, Junior Boys, Cassy, Ken MacBeth, Anthony Rother, Jessica Rylan, Daniel Miller, Wowa Cwejman, Per Salzwedel, Ricardo Villalobos, Magda, Marc Houle, Max Loderbauer and many more.

You can preview a section of the DVD below that features Ken Macbeth, of Macbeth Studio Systems. Macbeth talks about what inspires him, his vision for the M5 synthesiser, and making noise.

Click here to view the embedded video.

via TotallyWired, Matrixsynth

This is a preview of Justice’s A Cross The Universe.

The DVD of this release contains a documentary of Justice’s March 2008 North American tour. This documentary is directed by Romain Gavras, So-Me and the band themselves. The documentary is meant to cover less of the band’s live shows, and more of their personal experience touring.

The live portion of this release was recorded at a concert in San Francisco, California at the Concourse Exhibition Center, on March 27, 2008.

Here’s how the producers describe it:

A Rave is a Rhythmic Assault mixed with Visual Ecstasy and if you haven’t experienced one, you’re about to… It’s Saturday night in Los Angeles and 6 teenagers throughout the city are in search of the hottest Rave in the city– it’s the weekend and they’re ready to PARTY.

Over the course of less than one day, we see a portrait of these kids finding their way; their paths crossing in a universal setting…a big city with all the temptations, attractions and dangers.

Unfortunately, Rave is a craptacularly bad waste of film.

The movie fails to capture the attraction of electronic dance music and it fails to tell a compelling, believable story.

Here’s my plot summary:

A bunch of kids decide on impulse to go to a rave.

They all end up either: dead, mutilated, or traumatized for life.

Rave is just spectacularly awful, a heavy-handed anti-rave morality tale, devoid of even the cheesy appeal of something like Reefer Madness.

If you see this on DVD, it would make an excellent addition to your coaster collection.

Available in five different physical configurations, Voltaic is a loving look at the past two years of Björk’s Volta activities—her sixth studio album, which came out in 2007, and the subsequent two-year world tour.

Nonesuch Records will release it in the US. One Little Indian in the UK and Universal for the rest of the world.

Details below.

• Voltaic DVD 1 contains filmed highlights from the Volta tour, recorded in Paris and Reykjavik, with performances of songs from Volta as well as tracks from previous albums including Hunter, Joga, Army of Me, and Hyperballad.
• Voltaic DVD 2 features all of the Volta music videos, including the “Declare Independence” clip directed by celebrated Oscar winning French director Michel Gondry; the “Wanderlust” video directed by encyclopedia pictura; and the “Earth Intruders” video directed by renowned French animator Michel Ocelot.
• Voltaic CD 1 is a selection of songs from the Volta tour recorded live at the legendary Olympic Studios in London, just before Björk’s headlining show at the Glastonbury Festival in 2007. It was recorded in one afternoon, and the whole set was played live and captured in one take before being produced and mixed by Björk.
• Voltaic CD 2 features key remixes from Volta, with versions of “Earth Intruders,” “Declare Independence,” “Innocence,” “Wanderlust,” and “Dull Flame of Desire,” by the likes of Simian Mobile Disco, Matthew Herbert, Graeme Sinden, Ghostigital, and Modeselektor.

Björk’s band on the Volta tour included Mark Bell (LFO) on computers and keyboards and Damian Taylor on keyboards and programming. Drums and percussion were played by Chris Corsano (Sonic Youth, etc.); Jónas Sen played piano, harpsichord, and church organ; and Björk’s all female Icelandic 10-piece brass section rounded out the group.

This is a promo for the DVD Jean-Michel Jarre – Live in Your Living Room, which is highly recommended for synth music fans.

via jeanmicheljarre

This is a trailer for People Who do Noise, a film about experimental music in Portland, Oregon. 

Description:

Extensive interviews and intimate performance footage provide an intense portrait of the motivations, emotions, and ideas that go into this uncompromising, sometimes brutal musical form. Unwavering in its focus, the film brings to light an art form unfathomable to many, with only the words of the musicians themselves providing any explanation for the pulsating sonic chaos they create.

The film takes a very personal approach, capturing the musicians working alone with no interference from a live audience. What often took place in crowded basements or dark smoky venues was stripped bare for the cameras, providing an unprecedented glimpse of the many different instruments and methods used.

Covering a wide range of artists and styles, the film features everything from the absurdist free-improvisations of genre-pioneers Smegma, to the harsh-noise assaults of Oscillating Innards and everything in between. Many of the artists in the film, such as Yellow Swans and Daniel Menche, have performed and sold records all over the world. In spite of such successes, noise music remains one of the least understood and most inaccessible of genres.

With an unflinching cinematic style, the film defies any trend-setting or commercial representation, opting instead for a stark portrayal of a musical underground at its most genuine and vital. For the subjects of the film, noise music is a way of life; a life in opposition to the tidy, orderly, and vacuous pop-culture experience.

via Califaudio

This is the trailer for the Notes on Breakcore documentary film, by Austrian directors Bert Könighofer and David Kleinl.

The film features many many many activists of the scene, from Venetian Snares to C.Fringeli and Rotator. 

via Califaudio

A preview for As the Technics Spin (to be released in February 2009). 

As The Technics Spin is the second movie release from DJ Rob Swift (X-ecutioners, Ill Insanity).  In this latest installment, Rob embellishes on what it took to create his unique style of Djing.

via CrateKings

Tokyo-based d.v.d is a trio with two drum players, Itoken and Jimanica and visualiser Takashi Yamaguchi (ymg) on the hardware front.

While the two drummers furiously beat two drum kits in front of a huge screen, their sounds trigger geometrical shapes with processing, Pong-style game settings or bizarre drop landscapes that interact, transform or collapse. 

Jimanica explains how it works:

An audio generating computer and a second one that generates the visuals exchange signals through LAN using OSC. The tracks are played with max/msp. The drum sets are attached with a sensor called trigger and that transmits the vibration of the drums as signals to the midi interface. Those signals are then converted into midi note numbers. That midi data is then sent to the visual PC and creates the actions in the animations generated by processing software.

Basically, we as the two drummers perform on top of an audio track and sometimes we follow the score depending on the tracks. The tracks all have set duration so we never improvise the ending sounds and patterns — we just have a grasp of the finishing point from the composition and the monitor. Sometimes we add sound effects by hitting the drums during the tracks so that’s why you can hear all kinds of organic sounds as well.

Details at pingmag. Via picdit

In GLASS: A Portrait Of Philip In 12 parts, Academy Award nominated director Scott Hicks (”Shine”) documents an eventful year in the career and personal life of distinguished composer Philip Glass as he interacts with a number of friends and collaborators, including Chuck Close, Ravi Shankar and Martin Scorsese.

Below, director Hicks offers his insight into the documentary:

Here’s Hick’s explanation of the origina of the movie:

In 1984, my then teenage son Scott took me along to a midnight screening of “KOYAANISQATSI” in Adelaide, and a new addiction was created. From that moment I became a fan of Philip Glass music.

In 1997, while I was editing “Snow Falling On Cedars” I used a track of Philip’s music as “temp” (what filmmaker hasn’t?) for a powerful sequence we were working on. I made contact with his publishing company Dunvagen to enquire about licensing the track, and formed a connection with his manager Jim Keller. It was Jim who encouraged the start of a relationship between Philip and myself, and over the next few years I enjoyed a number of his performances from Los Angeles to Sydney, taking both my sons to see Philip and his Ensemble play live to screenings of movies.

Early in 2005, Jim reminded me over dinner that Philip would be turning 70 in 2007. He asked what I felt about making a documentary about him. I decided right away to do it, without any thought of how or when.

Together with close friend and colleague, Susanne Preissler of Independent Media, my company started to cash flow the project. I bought an HDV camera and flew to Nova Scotia where Philip was on vacation with his family. This was intended as a stopgap until I could afford to hire a cameraman, but what happened was that Philip started a dialogue with me behind the camera. It became apparent that the low impact of minimal crew allowed for a real intimacy and immediacy, which I did not want to lose.

At the same time, I was directing commercials regularly for Susanne’s company, and whenever this work put me into the same hemisphere as Philip, I would seize the opportunity to spend more time with him. I would turn up at his house, knock on the door and see what he was up to. So in a real sense, the commercial work was subsidising artistic passion as the fees I earned were ploughed back into the Glass project. Madison Avenue turns unwitting Medici!

Finance remained a pressing issue but ultimately, the full budget was raised from a small group of private investors in my hometown of Adelaide, South Australia. And there were others who became enthused with my vision for this film, enabling it to happen. Oasis Post has hosted the editing of three of my movies. They devised a post-production path that allowed the film to be pulled together efficiently and with the best technology, despite being shot on multiple formats across three continents over two years. My son Scott Heysen, who had first turned me on to Glass some 23 years earlier, now applied his invaluable creative computer genius to the film.

Philip being Philip, there was never a dull moment. Every day there was something new: a fresh collaboration, renewal of an old friendship, rehearsals for a world premiere of a new work, recordings of film scores (including my own “No Reservations”), sessions with other film directors, time out with his infant sons. Gradually pieces of his rich and varied life revealed themselves as Philip generously opened the doors into his family and friendships, as well as the extraordinary tapestry of his evolution from early days in Paris to the downtown New York art scene of the 60’s and 70’s.

This was a story in which I wanted the participants to be the narrators. I always saw the film as a “mosaic portrait” – dare I say like Chuck Close’s work – where an arrangement of fragments form an overall picture. In fact, I called it “Portrait” precisely because it’s a highly personal, subjective look at a major artist known throughout the world – an intimate glimpse “behind the curtain”. It was never going to be the “definitive” Glass film, or a reverential retrospective of a grand career, or even the comprehensive life story – for that information you can go to the web or find a book. Cinema is not about facts, it’s about emotion.

From the outset, I thought of the structure being in 12 parts – like an hourglass or the calendar – a “Year In A Day” with Philip as it were. Of course there’s the obvious tongue-in-cheek tribute to his seminal work “Music In Twelve Parts” as well as a passing reference to “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould”. Ultimately, each “part” became a portal into the past, or into Philip’s process, or some other facet of his life seen through the prism of the present.

As the material accumulated – more than 120 hours of it – the pressing question for me became, “How on earth am I going to edit this thing?” Enter Steve Jess – a fine editor I had worked with in New York on various commercials. Steve offered to give up his day-job at post-production company Whitehouse for seven months (and they generously agreed) and applied his extraordinary energy to this project. Using CineSync software created in Adelaide by Rising Sun, we would lock our computers together and screen sessions of cuts across the globe – usually very early in my morning, which was late in the day for Steve. We also had face to face editing sessions when I was in New York, and then he came to Adelaide for a month of fine cutting. Steve proved to be a marvellous collaborator.

Recently, people have started asking me, “What is it about you and obsessive pianists?” I have no explanation to offer, except perhaps if I’d practised piano more as a child, this obsession would have been subsumed!

Originally, the film was intended as a tribute to a man I hugely admire on the occasion of his 70th anniversary. What Philip makes of it is another matter. When he first saw it, he remarked, “You’ve made a wonderful film, I just wish it wasn’t about me!” Oh well, as his manager Jim said to me at the outset, “If he likes the whole thing, it probably won’t be a very good film!”

All in all, making this film has been a return to my roots as a filmmaker – pursuing an idea of personal passion, living it by the skin of your teeth, figuring out the financing and maintaining the persistence of vision you need to realise the dream. I’ve enjoyed returning to the documentary form of story telling after more than a decade away from it – with all its unexpected developments, frustrations and delights.

This is the trailer for A Fistful of Patchcords, a DVD of a live electronic music performance from 2006 featuring Jordan Rudess and Richard Lainhart.

I missed this when it came out in 2006 – but I saw it over at Matrix‘ site and thought it was worth noting for readers into a little “Moog space jamming”.

MVD Video, the good people that brought you Beer, Bikes, Boobs & Polish death metal have announced a new Kraftwerk DVD, Kraftwerk & the Electronic Revolution.

The video is a career retrospective that features rare performances and photographs, obscure footage, exclusive interviews and more.

Looks like it could be pretty fantastic. It’s set for release September 2, 2008.

Here are the details:

Description:

As innovative as they are influential, Kraftwerk’s contribution to the development of electronic music since their formation in 1970 remains unsurpassed. Having inspired everyone from Bowie to Coldplay, Siouxsie to Radiohead, this bizarre collective have also proven partly responsible for entire genres to develop – electronica, techno and synth-pop to name but three.

This DVD reviews the career and music of Kraftwerk, from their inception in the late 1960s (as pre-Kraftwerk ensemble Organization), through their most celebrated period in the mid 1970s, and culminating with their resurgence during the 1980s with the popularity of synth-pop and techno. The film further explores how Kraftwerk both fitted in and pulled away from the electronic wing of what is often lazily referred to as ‘Krautrock’.

Sparing time also for many of the groups’ contemporaries from the same field, and tracing the unfolding of electronics in German contemporary music generally, this program presents a fascinating story previously untold on film. It features rarely seen live and performance footage of Kraftwerk and of other Electronic and ‘Krautrock’ bands – much from private collections, rare photographs of Kraftwerk and others, exclusive and extensive Interviews with ex-Kraftwerk members and other German ambient and electronic musicians, contributions and enlightenment from German academics, writers and journalists, live and studio recordings of many of Kraftwerk’s pivotal tracks, plus live and studio recordings of many other bands form the ‘Krautrock’ movement.

Track Listing/Features:

• Ruckzuck
• Kling Klang
• Autobahn
• Antenna
• Radio-Activity
• Trans Europe Express
• Computer Love
• The Robots
• The Model
• Metropolis
• Pocket Calculator
• + many others

Bonus Materials:

• Extended Interviews
• Special Feature ‘The Dusseldorf Scene Vs. The Hamburg Scene’
• Full Contributor Biographies

The movie follows the two Daft Punk robots, Hero Robot No. 1 and Hero Robot No. 2, on a road trip across the US Southwest.

The film explores the idea of what it is to be human.

While the movie got respectful reviews, it only got limited showings because of the nature of the film and the fact that the movie doesn’t feature Daft Punk’s music.

Here’s the official trailer for the film:

The Daft Punk Alive 2007 DVD looks like it will be the Cloverfield of concert DVDs. It will feature high-quality sound recorded by Daft Punk synced to audience footage.

A preview is available at TheWorldIsDaft site.

DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist have released a new video promo for their concert film, The Hard Sell.

The DVD is the third part of their Brainfreeze DVD trilogy. Unlike previous installments Freeze and Product Placement, which were filmed at small clubs, The Hard Sell was shot at the Hollywood Bowl.

The package also includes interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, a bonus featurette called Live in Arcata, and a 40-page booklet with photos.

Sound Advice’s 3 DVDs encompass:

• Synth programming techniques
• An exhaustive parameter-by-parameter guide
• Digital effects

The DVD’s navigation system allows you to use Sound Advice in many different ways: As a complete master class tutorial, as a work of reference (you can search individual sound parameters), or as an encyclopedia of techniques and sound types (creating pads, modifying sound FX etc).

“All you need to know about oscillators, filters, envelopes, dynamics and effects that will enable you to produce the sound that you are looking for on your synth – totally from scratch,” says legendary producer and 2007 GRAMMY nominee Alan Parsons.

DVD Contents

Using the Yamaha Motif ES as its demonstration platform, Disc 1 starts with how to create simple sounds; breaking down examples into three main categories: decaying sounds, sustaining sounds, and non-pitched sounds. The next section shows you how to tweak a series of classic sound types: brightening up a piano, changing the tone of an electric guitar, modifying the envelope of a brass patch, and many others.

Disc 2 comprises an exhaustive look at all the major analog-style synth parameters from Amplitude Scaling to Velocity Curves. Perfectly watchable from start to finish, with diagrams, text boxes, and plenty of real-world musical examples, Disc 2 is primarily designed as a reference guide.

Disc 3 is entirely devoted to digital effects – now an integral part of the sound design landscape. All major DSP effects – from reverbs and delays, to chorus, flanger, and phaser, to EQ and compression – are examined in minute, parameter-by-parameter detail.

Who Needs It

Talking ‘in plain English,’ Sound Advice is aimed at the novice to intermediate user who has a keen potential interest in sound, but who doesn’t exactly want to study the subject at college. Applications include computer-using musicians of all persuasions, technology-enabled DJs, to students and teachers in music education.

“There’s so much scope for creating new sounds today between powerful workstations like Motif, software applications, and plug-ins,” says KEYFAX founder Julian Colbeck. “But programming has become a dark – or at least lost – art for most people. We hope that Sound Advice will inspire a whole new generation to experiment with sound and unleash the full creative potential of the tools now at their disposal.”

Musikmesse: Steinberg announced a new DVD-ROM tutorial series that offers a complete guide to digital audio mastering. The new three-part series covers almost every aspect of producing a professional master, and provides both digital audio essentials and expert techniques, supported with practical examples throughout. Audio Mastering will be available in Q2 2007.

“This series offers one of the most complete step-by-step tutorials on audio mastering in digital environments that are available today,” states Frank Seidel, Steinberg’s Product Manager for Audio Mastering. “This series opens up areas of mastering and digital audio technology in a very accessible way to anyone who wants to produce their own masters, and offers an immense resource of detailed knowledge for both newcomers and experienced engineers.”

Audio Mastering offers a complete, authoritative library of mastering knowledge, all the way from fundamental principles behind digital audio through to highly specialized mastering techniques and strategies. Using Steinberg’s industry- standard WaveLab 6 mastering software as its reference application, Audio Mastering also provides practical examples that make the expert knowledge and techniques contained easily accessible.

About the author Friedemann Tischmeyer has been working professionally in audio mastering and mixing for more than 15 years. Being an engineer for countless well-known artists and the owner of his own independent mastering facility, Friedemann has also published his two extremely well-received books ‘Audio Mastering with PC Workstations’ and ‘Internal Mixing’.

Content Overview:

Volume I
“What is mastering”
Defining the goals of mastering
CD mastering of stereo tracks
CD mastering from groups
Time management
Studio acoustics & room acoustics testing and calibration
Choice of speakers & speaker layout
Equipment requirement for mastering
Cabling
Operation system settings
Audio interfaces
Frontend & backend
Our sense of hearing
The Fletcher-Munson curve
Listening strategies
Ear training
Frequency distribution
Metering for mastering

Volume II
Loudness and peak levels
What are interleaved sample-overs?
Headroom for encoding
Normalization
Judging loudness
Reference values for loudness
PCM – the principle of digital audio
Basics of bit resolution
What is truncation?
Sample rate basics
Sample rate conversion (SRC)
All about dithering
What is jitter?
AES/EBU & S/P-DIF
Wordclock and houseclock
What is DC offset?
ISRC / EAN
Redbook & DAO/TAO
Optimal workflow
Phase 1: Preparation
Batch processing

Volume III
Phase 2: Creative sound processing
Optimizing the best-sounding track
Using the leveler for A/B comparisons
Saving master section settings
PQ editing
Editing CD text & EAN / ISRC
Final master montage
Phase 3: Follow up
Verification master
Error elimination
Choice of master medium / DDP versus CD-R/CD-ROM
Audio CD report
Creative Processing: Basic strategies
Order of processing steps
Working with EQs
Fletcher-Munson curve and EQing
Important filter types
Compressors
Typical examples and strategies
Practical editing examples with master section

Price and availability
Audio Mastering will be available in three volumes priced at €49.00* each.

“Atlas Dei is currently in the final phase of preparation before manufacturing,” says Rich. “The creative work is done, and we hope to have copies available for purchase by May.”

I was able to catch a live performance of Rich to a working copy of Atlas Dei when he performed in Des Moines last year. The work is a landmark combination of surrealist paintings in motion and Rich’s alternate-world ambient music.

Here’s a preview of the DVD:

A companion CD, Music from Atlas Dei, will focus on the new pieces recorded specifically for the film. It will also include older compositions that are edited, layered, remixed and augmented from previous releases.

Atlas Dei promises to be one of the most important electronica releases this year.