Streaming hasn't killed physical media. It's made us crave it more. CDs are back in rotation, showing up in record stores, apartments, and design studios with a renewed sense of purpose.
The allure of the project is that the magnetic tape doesn't reproduce audio cleanly because the oxide coating introduces a slight instability in playback speed. But these are the 'flaws' that Iulius Curt is after, allowing the resulting sound to have that lo-fi warmth that's ideal for ambient listening.
In Braque's paintings, collages, and prints, the polymath set out to distill bucolic landscapes and rural village scenes as broken up and then re-assembled geometric compositions; decidedly abstract yet still slightly recognizable representations. Through this revolutionary approach, he examined how objects could be depicted from multiple perspectives-multiple sources of light-as if superimposed portrayals of the same setting rendered at different times of day.
The TTT-W magnetic modular wall rack is flushed against the wall, featuring four circular magnetic pads that create a vertical design piece, unifying the audio devices.
R&B in the 21st century has been in a constant state of flux, tugged between safe traditionalism and blurry attempts at progression. For the last decade-plus that "progression" has seen R&B music become more indebted to trap records and the moody atmospherics of alternative bands like Radiohead, Coldplay, or My Bloody Valentine.
He didn't know the power of this thing. He just wanted it for its accordion sounds. Still, the instrument fascinated the burgeoning musician, and by the time he was five, he had stumbled on an old VHS concert doc that showed him the real power of analog machinery. I was completely consumed by the mystery of how these things were being made.
The collection includes two wireless speakers that both feature Bluetooth 5.5 with Auracast support, an IP67 rating so they can survive the occasional short dunking, 24 hours of battery life, neon colored buttons, and multicolored LED lighting. Cassette tape functionality hasn't been carried forward from Philips' original '80s Moving Sound devices, but both speakers have color LCD screens displaying a stylized animation of spinning cassette reels, and other playback details.
The vocoder was never supposed to be a revolution in music. Its development began a century ago, when an engineer at Bell Labs was looking for a simpler way to send phone calls across copper telephone lines.
The Phase8 uses a new form of "acoustic synthesis" that combines acoustic sound generation with electronic control. Takahashi says the synthesizer is "beyond analog vs. digital" and "beyond electronics" altogether. It features chromatically tuned steel resonators, which creates an acoustic sound similar to that of a kalimba. These signals can be manipulated via onboard effects and sequenced like a traditional synthesizer. Here's a video of the synth in action.
Casio showed up to NAMM (CES for music gear nerds) this year with a prototype sampler called the SX-C1 that looks every bit the lovechild of a Game Boy and an SP-404. The top has a directional pad and four buttons just like you'd find on a game controller, flanking a 1.3-inch OLED screen. But at the bottom, there are 16 rubberized pads for triggering samples with crunchy pixelated number labels on them.
The unit can run on three AA batteries (a set is included) or on the included USB-A to DC adapter (you'll need your own wall charger). The included instruction manual helps you make sense of what the heck all the knobs, levers, buttons, and lights mean.
Junho Park's graduation concept borrows all the right cues from TE's playbook, that modular control layout, the single bold color, the mix of knobs and buttons that practically beg to be touched, but redirects them toward a gap in the market. Where Teenage Engineering designs for people who already understand synthesis and sampling, the T.M-4 targets people who have ideas but no vocabulary to express them.
First of all, it offers four times the processing power of previous MPCs, which is enough to load up to 32 virtual instruments at the same time. This is assisted by a full 16GB of RAM, which is a whole lot in this era of AI tomfoolery. The XL can handle 16 audio tracks simultaneously. In my experience with previous units, this is more than enough for a full song.
Chances are this does exactly what you need. It will play your old CDs, your new CDs, your homemade mixtapes, the whole nine yards. You can even listen wirelessly thanks to onboard Bluetooth. It's got a decent battery life that can last you up to six hours, and it uses a USB-C to recharge. We usually have one of those on hand.
Pitch Shifter-910 is based on the iconic Eventide H910 Harmonizer from 1974, an early digital pitchshifter and delay with a very unique character. Arturia does an admirable job preserving its glitchy quirks. Pitch Shifter-910 is not a transparent effect that lets you create natural-sounding harmonies with yourself. Instead, it relishes in its weirdness, delivering chipmunk vocals at the higher ranges. There is also a more modern mode that cleans up some artifacts while preserving what makes the 910 so special.
This release is about connection. Not in a strategic sense, but in terms of feeling part of a scene rather than orbiting around it. There's a lot of really strong music coming out of Australia right now, especially in the underground, and this felt like the right moment to place something there.
