Stories

Not sure if that interesting girl on IM is a girl? Use the Gender Guesser.

While on yelp.com I was in a thread where a few people thought a user had created a fake profile to promote his business, and someone mentioned there had been a study done that found gender differences in writing, and then created a program to analyze writing and determine the gender. I put the “girl”‘s comments in and it came out as “weak male,” but so did almost everyone’s posts. Either way, it’s an interesting…

Tractile: Acid-styled blippy glitch from Berlin

If someone was asked what it would sound like if all of the most frightening, most exciting and sexiest scenes in cinema history were spliced together and merged with a robotic dance score, “Tractile” would surely be the reply. Adam Young (b. 1983) and Joel Boychuk (b. 1985), with several years of miscellaneous music experience behind them and a few years as great friends and partners-in-crime, decided to reinvent their sound and call themselves “Tractile.”…

Coyote DG Live at Shiku Garu in Chicago

After I played a live set Subterranean in December (check out my live recording here), Coyote DG went on right after me, seamlessly melding his Ableton Live-orchestration into the end of my set. His set in December was decidedly of the gritty electro-acid sort, but with enough glitch and experimental tempo forays to keep it interesting. Here’s a live recording from a set he played at an art opening at Shiku Garu, courtesy of the…

Top ten vegetarian-friendly prisons

Should you find yourself incarcerated and vegetarian you better hope you get sentenced in Idaho, Massachusetts, or one of the other eight states listed in PETA’s guide to the Best Prisons for Vegetarians (Illinois didn’t make the cut, not surprisingly). Georgia offers vegan BBQ and peach cobbler, Tennessee has texturized vegetable protein ala king and a veggie burger, and Hawaii has grilled tofu slices and a vegetarian teriyaki burger. Check out the menus of the…

Cloud: Fly through the air

Don’t you just love those dreams where you end up flying through a foreign landscape? Wouldn’t it make a cool video game? That’s what Thatgamecompany–the same people who brought us the lovely, abstract protozoic flOw game–thought. Cloud is their action flight game that allows you to realize your lifelong dreams of imaginative flight, at the same time you can manipulate clouds to create weather. “A childhood dream simulator” is how many of its fans describe…

The army's greatest invention… is a can opener

I found a box of these strange, 1.5″ metal devices at American Science and Surplus in the military / outdoors section tagged as “can openers.” Seeing as AS&S tends towards humorous descriptions, I thought it was a joke. They resembled door hinges more than can openers. Intrigued, I bought a handful at $0.40 each and then went home to my laptop to see how one is supposed to use these simple bits of metal to…

Meanwhile, in the Death Star Canteen…

The audio is from a stand-up routine from comedian Eddie Izzard, and animated with Legos by Thorn2200.

Quantazelle set from Subterranean 12/02/07

Here is a set I played of all original Quantazelle tracks, most of them unreleased. Enjoy! Quantazelle Live at Subterranean

The tragedy of suburbia

The only problem with James Howard Kunstler‘s speech at TED is that it’s too short. In his entertaining, oftentimes hilarious view, public spaces should be inspired centers of civic life — the physical manifestation of the common good. Instead, he argues, what we have in America is a nation of places not worth caring about. Reengineering our cities will involve more radical change than we are prepared for, he believes, but our hand will be…

Electronic Musician Gift Guide

If you’ve got an electronic musician on your gift list but are clueless as to what would make them grin with delight on Xmas morning, I and the other staff at Create Digital Music are on hand with our suggestions for gifts for electronic musicians. Among them, a Ground Loop Isolator (for killing that annoying hum when you’re playing live), an excellent Laptop / Gig Bag (shown), and the Korg Kaossilator, a battery-powered synth that…

Gifts for geeky guys

Got a guy on your gift list who’s got every gadget you can think of, and you’re not sure where to turn? Check out our suggestions for great geeky yet stylish gifts. < Odin’s Rage Watch – $120.00 This futuristic watch has a novel way for displaying the time. You know how you’re expected to recall the position of numbers on a watch with a blank face? Well this watch operates on the same principle,…

[Ramp Chicago] Near the Parenthesis, Chris Widman

XLR8R remarks that Near the Parenthesis’ music consists of “soundscapes that drift between ethereal and melancholy so skillfully it’s impossible to track how this artist moves from one musical point to the next,” and we think it’s a fitting description for music as complex as that of Tim Arndt. You would think that headphones provide the right ambiance to experience his music, but Sonotheque on Tuesday December 11 with the help of DJ Chris Widman’s…