One music tour in 2006 may pack more lines of code and more IQ points than any other: the meeting of BT and Thomas Dolby. This should be a really fantastic tour given the buzz on each artist lately, and if you want to see people doing unique stuff with computers as performance instruments, this should be it. Thomas Dolby just posted his tour dates on his blog:

Thomas Dolby; An Evening with BT and Thomas Dolby 2006
BT and Thomas tour flyer

US-only, but a fair number of cities, so check to see if the show is coming to your town. If you’re on the other side of the world, there’s a DVD on its way, too; more on that soon. And, as pictured below, “it’s good to be the Dolby.” (Circumstances explained by Thomas — “it was sometimes hard to keep my concentration.” Yep, I know most of my gigs tend to go this way.)

Let us know if you make this one (I’ll try on the East Coast). Know of other musical events around the world we shouldn’t miss? We’ve got readers all over the planet, so do let us know; stop by the forums. (And we’re still interested in that calendar idea.)

Ah, musical parrots. While I continue to obsess over Hatebeak, the heavy metal parrot, here’s a video that claims to show a beatboxing parrot:

At first, I thought this might be faked, but it does appear to be the real thing, and having known a few parrots, these birds will do far stranger things vocally. Via Signal to Noise, via GoogTube.

If human beatboxers are more your speed, the supremely talented Kid Beyond will be in Austin, Texas, this time doing a full-on gig rather than the shorter tech demo for Ableton he did at NAMM in January. Beatboxing parrots are a novelty; Kid Beyond makes beatboxing a serious instrument; he’s a real vocalist, and an utterly awesome musician. I got a chance to interview Kid Beyond this summer and should have that interview for you soon. In the meantime, a video from VH1 plus gig details:

It would be unfair to mention the free Magical 8-bit Plug-in without acknowledging who created it: the insanely talented Japanese chiptune band, YMCK:

YMCK Official Site [English]
YMCK Events [Japanese]
YMCK @ Myspace

And, most importantly:

YMCK Music Videos @ YouTube

Their style is a unique mash-up of the tightly-quantized, hyperactively cheery iconic Nintendo music with even more densely-packed jazzy harmonies than Mario could muster. It isn’t about gimmick: this sounds like someone who was practicing 8-bit at age four the way some people practice violin. Or, as they put it:

While the sound is cheap, the song compositions are influenced by jazz from the 1950’s and 1960’s, with a clear and feather-light 4-beat rhythm underlying sophisticated harmony progressions. The experimental combination of these two features has resulted in the unique YMCK sound, which is neither techno music nor jazz. YMCK uses limited 8-bit sound to take you out for dreamland.

Yeah, pretty much that last sentence. The trio includes a talented 8-bit animator, so prepare to spend the next hour in dreamland on YouTube. Just a couple of quick examples:

Muchas gracias to “Pants” in comments for bringing this to our attention, and, best of all, noting that you can get their albums outside Japan, along with plenty of other gems, at:

Records of the Damned

There’s never enough Commodore 64 music. While I’m waiting on my Prophet64 cart to arrive (see previous story), here’s some musical C64 reading (and listening) for you:

From the forums, corporation has been kind enough to give us a glimpse at his fantastically cool studio, complete with a nicely-decorated DM2 USB control surface. The Mixman DM2 was intended as a toy for computer DJ newbies, but the hardware feels surprisingly nice and, thanks to apparent overstocks of the DM2, often shows up for as little as US$30. Click through the forum link for another shot and full details of his setup, which is a great example of how to put together an affordable computer setup (and save your money for a nice turntable like the classic Technics 1200mk2).

How do you DJ? [CDM Forums]

Eugene, aka corporation, sends along these additional links:

I dont really have a page for my for my current set up, but i do run the DM2MIDI forum @ http://www.dmtwo.tk

I also have a place for my mashups @ http://www.corporation.tk

I have rare motown acapellas for d/l @ http://www.motownpellas.tk

also a future place for my live dm2 mixes @ http://www.waxdj.com/corporation

The mash-ups alone are worth checking out. And if you’re interested in hooking up the DM2 hardware, especially if you’ve got a PC, the DM2MIDI forum is an absolutely essential visit. (As we’ve covered here before, Mixman doesn’t look kindly on DIYers efforts to make their hardware useful. Why? I think Douglas Adams would say they’re “a bunch of mindless jerks who were first up against the wall when the revolution came.” But maybe they’ll come around eventually, and they have made very clever hardware. In other news, CDM should start a Sirius Cybernetics Prize.)