Here’s an interesting documentary showcasing some of the most killer synths, ever. Very informative, and humorous….

Top 20 from Sonic State

from CDM.

I was recently turned on to somni451 … If you dig softer tek-ambient sounds like stuff from the kranky and mille plateaux labels, then you’ll probably really enjoy this… (loscil and shuttle358 come to mind)

Go to the site… click audio to d/l his first album and one track from his second…

Prophet64 SID music software is offering cartridges that sport TB-303 emulation… surprisingly good emulation, considering it’s all like, 8-bit. Check it out.

{edit} - nice low fi synth creation here as well!

“A meme is old media, a beme is new media; a meme takes off by accident, a beme by design; a meme can take years to surface, a beme hours; a memes is linear, a beme is nonlinear; a meme moves in a jet stream, a beme has a splatter pattern; a meme is viral, a beme is pandemic.”

wiki

I just recently learned that elephants have a rather keen way of communicating over long distances: Really Low Vibrations.

Elephant wiki - Scroll about halfway to “communication”. Also interesting is the fact that they know we cannot hear these frequencies, thus they up their pitch when communicating with us.

Which leads to…

Oskar Sala (1910-2002) (wiki, tribute), credited for the creation of the Mixtur-Trautonium and exposing a new scale of subharmonics. The “bird” sounds in Hitchcock’s The Birds are made from this machine, as he was involved in the “electronic sound production and composition”. Check out
Sala on discogs….

I found out about Subotnick after checking this Free Albums Galore entry. Unfortunately, only one emusic entry to be found… I was hoping to find his Silver Apples of the Moon album, which came out in 1967. Samples of this early work can be heard on his website.

Also interesting, is that he was ‘director’ of the Electric Circus in New York City in the late 60s (according to his timeline).

This is a cool little ambient application with snowflake graphics that appear as you’re listening. It’s not too mind-blowing, but cool to think someone took the time to do this. The music is quite pleasant…

So the Buddha Machine seems to have quite a little following. Robert Henke’s concept album on them was released recently, and I just found out about Kikapu label head, Pocka, using them in his latest release. Also, here is a compilation dedicated to these beautiful lo-fi ambient boxes.