Artists

Steve Baltes, who played with Ashra Tempel a while ago in Japan, updated the studio section of his website where you can find info on how he produces some of his tracks.  Check it out!

http://www.stevebaltes.com/studio/

Thanks to Les Fradkin for submitting this ineresting video from Japan.

Les Fradkin is one of the guitar legends of the 1970’s, a Guitar Synthesizer pioneer of the 1980’s and is now a 21st Century innovator on the Starr Labs Ztar. A classically trained musician as well as being an original member of the hit Broadway show “Beatlemania”, he has found success as a recording artist, composer and producer with MGM Sunflower, ESP-Disk, Bell, Arista, RCA, and Laurie Records. Les has written the well known French hit “La Chansons Des Souvenirs” (”Song Of A Thousand Voices”) for the famous French songstress Mireille Mathieu and the Latin Pop icon Roberto Jordan (”Donde”). He has played Mellotron, 12 and 6-string Guitar, Bass and Piano on dozens of Top 40 hit records throughout the early 1970’s , scoring many US and UK chart placings throughout his career.

More info about Les at http://www.youtube.com/user/lfradkin

Thanks to Pepe Mogt from Nortec Collective for sending this in:

Having fun with Percussa Audio Cubes, This is our First Test Ableton Live and some loops and filters, we will use this set up on our next gigs….stayed tuned
enjoy!
Bostich+fussible

Nortec stopped by our NAMM booth past weeks and decided they had to get the cubes.

More info about their work at http://www.myspace.com/tijuanasoundmachine

They are also Grammy nominees:

If you happen to be going to the Joshua Tree Music Festival in May, be sure to check them out: http://www.joshuatreemusicfestival.com/mayartists.htm. Alternatively you can see them at the MUTEK festival in Montreal, Quebec.

Nortec collective is not a band or a group but a series of compilations created in (and about) Tijuana Mexico where electronica, norteño and tambora music come together with visuals. See http://www.nortec.info/

Nor-tec has spawned audio imitators, Volvo ads, t-shirts, and indie films, popped up everywhere from art installations to MTV and HBO, and now Tijuana’s first-next-big-global-thing finally has its own full-scale scholarly book that lends a critical ear to border beats. With a focused and serious mix of theory, interviews, and lots of listening during long nights in Tijuana clubs, Madrid has done the music and the scene a great service by unraveling its histories and dissecting its meanings for fans and scholars alike.

–Josh Kun, University of Southern California, author of Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America

Thanks to Okudaira-san from Japan for submitting these nice videos. In the video, Reason 4 is used for live music performance together with Quartz Composer for Visuals. All software is controlled by Percussa AudioCubes.

One of our active live audiocube users, Kipp, sent in this video showing how he conducts his live DJ set and gives his audience an understanding of what he does through visuals.

www.myspace.com/runninthingsrecords
www.myspace.com/olias

Thanks!

Richard Devine designing sounds with AudioCubes

A while ago we went to Winter NAMM (in January 2008), to show the AudioCubes. We were lucky to hang out with our good friends Kyle and Ryan from Subtractive, they have a studio in Santa Monica and do a lot of great sound design and composition work, while at the same time producing film and working on their album (see the Test Short Starfish remix contest from a while ago, which was featured on Percussa’s main website).

Ryan and Kyle have been AudioCube users since the very beginning, I think they have serial number 10 on their cubes. They introduced us to Richard Devine, and naturally a discussion about his work and music technology emerged.

Click here to read the full article under our Artists section.

Our friend Kipp from the US sent in a video about his Controllerism setup:

Kipp has been building a DJ setup for a while consisting of quite a few interesting pieces of kit, such as the Korg Kaoss Pad, Ableton Live, and AudioCubes. If you’d like to learn more about Kipp’s work and setup you can visit http://myspace.com/runninthingsrecords

Thanks Kipp!

Guillaume Evrard sent me an email about his sampler application which he has been developing, check it out!
Guillaume also works with Puce Muse in France, an organisation to stimulate creating electronic music together.

More info:

http://www.guillaume-evrard.com/
http://www.pucemuse.com/

The Uruguayan singer-songwriter Jorge Drexler, a Hollywood Oscar winner, was live on Buenafuente’s Show a while ago, presenting his new CD titled “12 segundos de oscuridad”. He was accompanied by two musicians with laptops and several control surfaces. The AudioCubes were also part of the setup! Drexler demonstrates the passion for his work by using the most advanced technology to compose and show his music. Thanks to Daniel from Citriq for the story.

See the video here:

A while ago I was browsing YouTube and I found some videos by Splurt, a crazy guy who was using all kinds of portable music technology to create his own “mobile studio”. This included a boom box and Korg Kaossilator, among other things.

Seeing the video I was very impressed with how creative he was with a limited amount of portable devices, which shows that you don’t need a big studio full of gear anymore today to create interesting sound and music. These days you can do it all on a computer with software and a musical interface that stimulates your creativity as you use it.

Splurt lives in New York, and happened to be visiting his home country Sweden this summer, so it was an great opportunity to invite him over to Belgium and hear about his music career, his obsession with portable devices, his opinion about music technology in general and of course, about the AudioCubes. Here is the video series. Enjoy!

Some background info about Splurt’s work in music:

I began as a DJ on college radio, then started a live soundsystem and paid and arm and a leg to ship all my vinyls and speakers to Hawaii . I heard some early jungle records from some japanese DJs and found myself back in New York City at some drum and bass clubs. I worked as a drum and bass MC and got to travel to some interesting places with the music. At that time I was purchasing samplers and drum machines and experimenting with music production. I ended up in sweden, scored a few hit tunes and eventually a record deal. Then came 911, so things kind of crumbled. I went back to Sweden and re-invented myself as Splurt. Lately I have been experimenting with music technology and started a YouTube channel called Splurt Technology. I coined the term nanoband and have begun to give lectures at schools and seminars about the future of music interactivity. I also am busy managing a reggae singer and perform myself on ocassion, both moonlighting as a reggae artist and a live electro DJ act.

Some older videos:

More info about Splurt:

http://www.youtube.com/user/SplurtySplurt
http://www.myspace.com/splurt