Chiptune music / experimental musician Bubblyfish has alerted us to a short documentary about the 2006 Bent Festival held last month in New York. The focus of the yearly festival is ‘circuit bending’ - creating musical instruments by creatively modifying small electronic devices such as toys, battery powered synthesizers and cheap effects units. In addition to featuring performances, the Bent Festival includes workshops where members of the public can try their hand at circuit bending. The documentary is very interesting, and viewable online! Follow the link below to check it out.

• Watch the video online
• Bent Festival website
• Bubblyfish website

Cellist Zoë Keating has written music for START MOBILE, a new service that sells 60 second song downloads for mobile phones. The service just launched and for the first month downloads are FREE! Keating had been a member of Rasputina, but recently left to focus on composing and performing her own material. She provided music for the new PBS documentary “Frozen Angels,” which airs this week. Zoë is currently on tour with Imogen Heap, providing accompaniment and also serving as opening act.
For more info, be sure to check out her website!

• Zoe Keating website
• “Frozen Angels” website
• START MOBILE website

On June 5 Underwold will release “I’m a Big Sister, and I’m a Girl, and I’m a Princess, and this is my Horse,” the third and final part of their download-only “Riverrun” series. The project began late last year with “Lovely Broken Thing” and “Pizza For Eggs,” both of which are currently on sale at underworldlive.com and include mp3 music files, photos and .pdf cover art files. The series will be followed by a 30 minute retrospective titled “Misterons Mix,” which will be a free download for all who have purchased the three releases.

“The Riverrun series has been a huge success for Rick and I,” said member Karl Hyde in a press statement. “Taking music from the studio and putting it out into the world in a matter of seconds has been something we’ve longed to do. Creatively we get to write and publish new work in ways that suit us, offering a much needed alternative to our traditional album scheduling.”

• Visit underworldlive.com

Having given up on record labels, at least for the time being, Halou is back with a new self-released CD, “Wholeness and Separation.” (street date of May 23, 2006) Their third full-length album, “Wholeness and Separation” once again features highly organic sounding electronic tracks and breathtaking vocals.

Based in San Francisco, Halou is comprised husband and wife Ryan and Rebecca Coseboom and Count. We recently did a phone interview with Count and have posted the first part of it online. Be sure to check back soon to read the rest!

• Read the first part of the interview

“Recommended by…” is a new column where we ask bands, musicians and DJs to recommended someone THEY feel the world should know about. In this edition, Alina Simone tells about Russian band Auktyon. If you’d like to contribute for future inclusion, please email us a paragraph or so about who you’re recommending, as well as some info about yourself. Be sure to include weblinks!

If there is one band that everyone needs to see, hear, taste and experience, it is legendary Russian rockers Auktyon. They just finished a short US tour this spring and have another planned for fall of 2006 — their live show is unmissable so don’t miss it! Auktyon is a six piece band, driven by two very disparate personalities. Musically, vocalist and guitarist Lenya Fedorov is the group’s anchor. But spiritually, Auktyon is led by Garkusha, a bizarre, clownlike man-child who contributes hand percussion and an occassional yelp. Horns blazing, the group blares through klezmer inflected numbers, with gypsy flourishes and washes of feedback that wouldn’t seem out of place on a Radiohead album. To date, my favorite Auktyon album is ‘Ptica’ and the title track alone made me an instant fan when I heard it in the background at a cafe in St. Petersburg.

As for me, I am a solo, singer girl who accompanies herself on electric guitar. I tend toward the grittier edges of indie rock. I am a big fan of passion and emotion in music. My songs tend to tell stories about places, rather than relationships, that didn’t work out; about moving on (and on). - Alina Simone

• Visit the Auktyon website at http://www.auktyon.com
• Visit Alina’s website at http://www.girlwithguitar.net

“I always have too many ideas that I don’t know what to do with, but generally we just go on the road and get drunk every night and the ideas fade after a while.” - Ross Godfry of Morcheeba (1998)

We interviewed Morcheeba back in 1998, shortly after they did a series of Lilith Fair dates. Things have changed a bit for the band since then. After taking a few years off, they re-emerged last year with their fifth album, “THE ANTIDOTE.” It marked their first without singer Skye Edwards, who was replaced by Daisy Martey, and a label shift from Warner / East West to Echo Record. Be sure to check out the official Morcheeba site to get more info and hear samples from the album.