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.
By making it possible to bypass traditional media and distribution channels, the internet has proven to be a powerful medium for bands and music fans to connect. New artists willing to put in the effort can now reach mass audiences without a record deal, and established acts who might not get the media attention they once did can easily reach long-time fans. But what if you happen to have a name that actually makes it more DIFFICULT for people to find you?
Before the web as we know it was in wide use, Chaos Control Digizine was published in Macintosh HYPERCARD format. It was cheap (actually free until the color version came out) and provided a lot of possibilities for interactivity and multimedia. These issues were posted on various online and BBS services, as well as distributed on disk (floppy!) Looking at these Hypercard issues again, they stand up pretty well (despite an overuse of Kai’s Powertools in the color editions!). To provide a peek at the origins of Chaos Control Digizine, we’ve posted issues #2 and #8 for downloading. Of course you’ll need a Macintosh to view them, as well as the Hypercard player (follow the link below if you need it.) Unfortunately, Hypercard was never updated for OSX, so it will launch classic mode. Please ignore any weirdness, such as text occasionally getting cut off due to font issues , as these ARE over a decade old!
Thanks to independently developed software such as Nanoloop and Little Sound DJ, the Nintendo Gameboy has turned into the instrument of choice for a growing number of electronic musicians. While the Gameboy’s 8-bit soundchip is somewhat limited, it has a warm, crunchy sound that works well when taken beyond the context of simply supplying video game soundtracks. Musically, Gameboy tracks run the gamut from energetic electronic pop to weird, often scary-sounding experimental stuff. On the more danceable end of the spectrum is New York’s Josh Davis, aka Bit Shifter, who will soon embark on a 
