Released in 1994, Plastikman’s Musik was a game-changer. It was like a study of the 303, and ranged from swirling, creamy dreamscapes to piercing acid – and it did it without sounding haphazard. Given the breadth of its dynamism, it’s hard even today to understand how it’s so cohesive. But [...]
HISTORY: Modern minimal can be traced back through early Detroit techno to Steve Reich’s experiments with tape-loop phasing in the 60's. Even then, it was a rebirth more than the dawn of something new: minimalism is a meta-genre, a framework, and it usually blooms when overelaborate pomp and opulence are [...]
Atomix’s VirtualDJ has worked hard to position itself as the DJ rig that’s not just professional enough for Carl Cox and Coldcut to take on stage, which they do, but so versatile that it should be the tool of choice for anyone with the slightest interest in playing live – [...]
Competition among DJ controllers is really hotting up lately. From the cheap and highly portable, like Vestax’s Spin to Allen & Heath’s monstrous Xone:DX, every manufacturer even remotely engaged in DJ tech seems to have an offering for us these days. It’s a fast-moving scene, too, so despite the sheer [...]
Today we’re going to take a trip through time, back to your first trembling attempts to work those wheels of steel. How old were you? Back then, you knew amyl as something you used to clean vinyl, not stick in your nose; you were spinning wild tracks that make you [...]
I remember using Deckadance once, a couple of years ago, not thinking much of it, and then forgetting it altogether. Apparently Image-Line, the makers, have done no such thing and the Deckadance 1.93 Club Edition I opened up to review is completely unfamiliar. It’s beautiful. It has a sleek elegance [...]
Deciding how important it is to keep your bitrates under control will be much easier if we brush up a little bit on the technical side of things. An MP3 is compressed audio, and the compression is achieved by chopping out the sounds we can’t, or don’t, hear – frequencies [...]
The American economy is all over the news at the moment and for good reason – it affects all of us, from the Wall Street brokers teetering on the edge to homegrown bedroom DJs from the land down under. If you live outside the States, you’re probably rejoicing in the [...]
It’s “all about aligning incentives between DJs, recording artists and music fans.” It deifies the mixtape, exalting the streaming content it hosts as the 21st century incarnation of every urbane music fan’s favorite adolescent pastime. Behind the screen, it offers a framework for DJs, promoters and venues to interact and [...]
Love the hype or loathe it, the iPad is happily changing the way a generation of musicians interacts with sound. From new implementations of classics, like Korg’s iMS-20, to mainstays like GarageBand, to a growing number of interfaces for existing performance software, the touchscreen input is redefining our [...]