Music games and music creation tools tend to be a one way street, running straight forward from front to back. Each step of a sequencer lights up and then dims after the beat hits. And Guitar Hero is a forward scroll with no backsies. But Cadence is an intriguing music puzzle game and music generati
Well, kinda. A new study by researchers at the University of Barcelona shows that some people are incapable of having emotional responses to music. But those very same people who don’t get all misty-eyed when they hear “Desperado” still found games stimulating. For the study, researchers gathered 30
Game of Thrones is HBO’s much-ballyhooed high fantasy drama series, soon entering its 4th season. Big Boi is the hip hop artist best known for rapping about southernplayalisticadillacmuzik and bombs over Baghdad in the rap group OutKast. In other words, nothing in common. Except, well, Big Boi and
It turns out that angsty teenage expression resulting from mind-numbing boredom does have a use beyond pissing off your parents (it’s what got me into writing about games, after all). The months and—I dread—years that I spent pushing pre-made loops of electronic noise into formation, alongside the d
Physical touch is something that’s been sorely missing as music has become more digital. You’re not going to see a producer going all Pete Townshend on his $10,000 dollar studio equipment. But a weird and wonderful acoustic research project by Felix Flair turns any hard surface into a tactical music
Today, Radiohead surprised everyone with a free mobile “app” called PolyFauna in which you walk around a desolate atmosphere while messing around with your phone’s features and, of course, listening to Radiohead. I’m just gonna call a spade a spade and say it’s a game. Here are some of the game-lik
The RZA is the grandmaster of hip-hop, and we do not mean that in like a “Grandmaster Flash” context. The dude is mega-good at chess. Next week in Anaheim he will be defending his crown at the Hip Hop Chess Federation’s celebrity tournament, which is the most RZA-sounding federation ever. He’ll prob
Partly a synthesizer, and partly a puzzle game, Fract is essentially Portal meets Kraftwerk. What I mean by that is you’re lost in a broken machine-world and play with glow-y neon sounds. And while it’s hard to compare any electronic music anywhere to the canonized output of Ralf Hütter and Florian
In a scandal on par with Milli Vanilli and Manti Te’o’s girlfriend, Mamoru Samuragoch, the composer of the soundtracks to Capcom’s Resident Evil Director’s Cut and for the Onimusha series, has owned up to not actually writing any of his music for the past fifteen years, since he went completely deaf
Here are a few of the weird, freaky things you can do in Ben Esposito’s bizarre music video(game) for bo en’s Pale Machine: knock a buzzing cell phone off a dresser with a rolling beer bottle; brush a disembodied mouth’s teeth; knock over a bowl of Wheaties and a milk carton with an unending, extrac
The Ototo is almost too adorable. So adorable that it only qualifies for our late Friday afternoon post, because what’s better at the end of a long week than watching a circuit board turn almost anything into a synthesizer. And by anything, we mean anything: hoodies, coffee, house plants, cats. (Yup
This story is so Kill Screen it hurts. Burial, the hermetic electronic artist on Hyperdub known for grainy, pitch-black beats, has apologized to fans, saying that the sublime Rival Dealer EP might be the last we hear from him for awhile. Why? Well, because he’ll be consumed by Dark Souls 2, like the
In the dominion of analog synths, the Korg MS is iconic as they come—a black and white keyboard with an upright console of knobs towering above. The Korg M1, not so much. But looks can be deceiving. While the M1 was a standard keyboard, it sonically outperformed its accordion-shaped older brother.
Synesthesia, or the mental state that blurs the boundaries between sight and sound, is a rare neurological condition. That is unless you’re playing Fract, where it happens all the time. “The audio is so intrinsically connected to the mechanics of the puzzles. Because many systems are plugged into w
Leave it to the bassist from Lightning Bolt to make the demonic/cyberpunk, rhythm/racing game of your dreams. If you haven’t heard of the band, imagine a relentless, noisy shredding of vainglorious metal riffs. If you haven’t heard of the genre, well, neither have we! Thumper is the game in question
