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.)

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:

Here’s Kid Beyond proving that he’s far cooler than Sebastian Bach, as if you didn’t already know that. (These kids and their reality TV …) Via the CDM forums from some time ago.

And via the Ableton email list, here’s the gig in Austin. Wish I could be there, but I’ll be in Chicago and not at NAMM. July 15 should be a big date, as Ableton says they’ll be announcing something at NAMM. I’ll leave you to figure out what that is. Gig details:

Pop-electronica singer/beatboxer Kid Beyond will bring his stunning
vocal skills to Austin on July 15. The show falls right in the middle
of 2006 Summer NAMM; attendees are encouraged to join the fun and see
the show.

A beatboxer for more than twenty years, Kid Beyond is a legend in the beatbox world 14and his recent “live-looping” work is gaining him impressive national attention. Looping and multitracking his voice on stage to create his own live backing tracks, Kid Beyond layers his transcendent singing voice over his own beatboxing and vocal instrumentation. The result is a riveting brew of pop-electronica that has drawn comparisons to Gorillaz, Moby, Fatboy Slim, Thievery Corporation and M.I.A. Ed: I don’t think he sounds anything like these largely unrelated artists, but he does sound great, so let’s leave it at that! -PK

Kid Beyond, with DJ Chicken George, Cherubic & Whatamelon
Saturday, July 15, 2006
La Zona Rosa: 612 W. 4th Street, Austin, TX
Showtime: Doors 8 PM, Show 9 PM; tickets USD 10 cash
http://www.lazonarosa.com/

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

Rhizome’s “Voices of the 64″ entry points to several useful links. Among them: a new story on soundscapes.info goes beyond the history of the technology to the masterworks of 8-bit composition. With all the (well-deserved) talk of the genius of minimalism in games for the Nintendo Entertainment System, you hear far less about the great music written for a platform like the Commodore 64 — with a better onboard synthesizer, too. Dig in for some musical inspiration, game memories, notational examples, and believe it or not, extensive footnotes and bibliography. Plenty to read there, and maybe you can make this into the world’s most enjoyable doctoral dissertation.

If the Prophet64 has made you decide to take the plunge into C64 music-making, it’s worth mentioning the C64Music! blog again. Aside from the C64 geekery, you’ll find plenty of inspiration for how to make your C64 music into a real act. I have to reprint this photo by sml, not because I’m going out of my way to rip off the good folks at Rhizome and C64Music!, but because this is clearly the way to put Kraftwerk to shame and do a computer-based stage show right. Viva Welle:Erdball. (Great name, too.) Now, if only I can get my aerial friends to do trapeze work with some C64s in-hand . . .

More soon once my new cartridge arrives. (They have started to ship; I can tell from watching the mailing list.)

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.)