This is the musicvideo of Das Kombinat to the title ‘Multimedia’ from the CD ‘Betriebssystem’. The real life footage was shot 1998 on Hi8 video, but the quality was so low that it couldnt be keyed in a good way so we stored and forgotten about it. In 2002 videosoftware made such advances that we tried a new application and imedantly bought a license because it saved our material. Keying is still poor but much better now. We combined the footage to 3D animations we created. The sound is complete rendered digital with the opensource csound back around 1996. The video was shown several times, for instance before Notstandskomitee concerts, but also included into the blue screen issue of the Berlin CDr artzine t.i.n.a.h. .

By far the coolest video I’ve watched all morning.

:the early gurus of electronic music

“Electronic music represents freedom from conventional music forms: it liberates the production of sound. I was very interested in electronic music from its philosophical point of view. It is music that takes chances: it’s adventurous, it doesn’t sit still. And that’s something that should be applied to culture at large.” – Iara Lee

Ohm: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music is a sensational sonic history, grounded in mold-breaking experimentation. With virtually no rules to follow, or previous works to emulate, these composers were given a new freedom unlike anything else before. Naysayers would call this compilation a lot of things, but not music. For the open minded, this three disc +dvd set is an opportunity for exploring a world of sound you may have not experienced before.

From what I’ve read, bending capacitors of this magnitude might blow your fingers off. Or at minimum, learn you real quick never do that again.

Love noise? Love toys? Perhaps circuit bending is for you./

To celebrate Thumbuki’s soft launch, we’re kicking off our our first original series: Get Bent

And by original series, I mean I’m personally going to be doing research on “circuit bending” over the next few weeks, and sharing my findings with you. I will post here the top relevant links, video, tutorials, historical accounts, etc, as I find them.

What is circuit bending? According to wikipedia:

“Circuit bending is the creative short-circuiting of low voltage, battery-powered electronic audio devices such as guitar effects, children’s toys and small synthesizers to create new musical instruments and sound generators. “

Also check out this video example of circuit bending by James Anderson.

As for me, I have zero hands-on experience with electronics. Though I do have some familiarity with everything from modular synthesizers to Csound. So I plan on getting very used to the idea of holding a soldering iron in the near future. I will be reporting back to you all of my successes and all of my failures as I turn children toys into little electronic frankensteins. For art’s sake.