Let’s get this out of the way: musicians are not a “niche” group. Recording has done some damage to the popular practice of live music, but still, you’ll find an astonishing number of people play instruments and sing. (New pop culture phenomena like Glee, the Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, and the resurgent TV talent show have helped, too.)

What’s “niche” is conventional music production software. While it’s a fast-growing segment, music making software remains elusive and befuddling to a whole lot of musicians. GarageBand for Mac was one answer to what software for the remaining group should look like. But pick up GarageBand for iOS, and you experience software that comes even closer to that vision. It’s simply one of the best-designed music tools for iOS, and would be so whether or not it carried the Apple name. It’s not the perfect tool for every iPad owner, necessarily, but it’s perhaps the best window into what a tablet can be for music. It realizes that original idea of GarageBand better than anything we’ve seen yet.

GarageBand has had just over a year on the iPad, and has gotten a significant revision. That’s left time to dive deeper into its features, for me, testing on the very first iPad and working now with the additional features Apple added more recently. Here’s why it could be worth trying (including if you’re an advanced iOS user or even music developer), why you might recommend it to beginners, and a few things about it that you might not know as far as more sophisticated functionality. (I’ll focus on the iPad functionality primarily, because for me it was the ideal form factor with which to produce music.)

I’ve spent some time with the software design. Here’s what makes I feel it special:

Design Strengths

I am your density. Density of touch controls is essential to design. Some iOS apps, while powerful, have so many controls that they can be tough on fat fingers and confusing to beginners. Others go to the opposite extreme, becoming so oversimplified that it’s hard to make the music you produce sound like your own (fine for toys or games, but not for creative software). Editing on GarageBand for iPad never feels awkward. Switching between editing modes can be a little disorienting at first, but the interface on each screen is crystal clear. The interface details (like woodgrain) that seem sometimes out of place on desktop also look perfect here, and they manage to add detail and texture without being distracting.

It feels naturally touchable. I still prefer hooking up a MIDI keyboard, but the touch instruments in GarageBand, and the editing interfaces, also feel natural. It really is possible to sketch out an idea with touch, at least in a broad sense. That immediacy is perfect for something that’s mobile, and for making music software feel like something you can touch directly. It overcomes the feeling both in desktop software and many iPad apps that the software is somehow at arm’s length.

It’s the most familiar to conventional musicians. Without being condescending to its users, GarageBand for iPad makes choices immediate and visually obvious. Rather than puzzling through a foreign interface, you find crisp text and images of familiar instruments, microphones, and other eminently musical metaphors. That extends to musical vocabulary on synth controls, keys and scales, and the like. People who have at least a little background in music will understand how to use this app, and without having to either learn a futuristic, alien UI (fun as those are) or be specifically versed in electronic music technology. There are a couple of confusing icons – the “Instruments” icon looks like you’re tying up a boat with a knot more than a patch cord – but by and large, this is a familiar interface.

Now, for a few details you might not know.

A showcase for the iPad’s tech

Initially, some third-party developers worried that Apple’s entry into iPad apps would crowd out independent developers. Instead, I feel GarageBand can be an effective showcase – and, given its price, it’s also a good entry for those of you curious about iPad music making, which could lead to other apps. You would hope Apple would lead in tech adoption, and in this case, they gladly do:

• It supports high DPI. If you do have a third-generation iPad (“the new iPad”), it should look especially nice. (I’m still on an original iPad; happily, it doesn’t look too shabby there, either.)
• It has some powerful wireless Jam Session features. You can communicate over Bluetooth or local WiFi with up to four total iOS devices. One device acts as a “bandleader,” and then other gadgets – including the iPhone – can synchronize to tempo, play position, and play controls. Smart instruments also follow shared chords, though you can play outside those chords if you like. You can also elect to turn off bandleader control.
• The coolest feature of sync, and the one that’s something new in “multiplayer” music making, is the ability to collect recordings on the “bandleader” device automatically. This suggests some real collaborative possibilities for music making that go beyond just syncing tempo, and it’s something I hope we see on desktop soon, too.
• You can use USB keyboards and the like, via Core MIDI support. So, cool as those smart instruments are with touch, you can also play conventionally. Some of the “smart” features are even supported via MIDI.
• You can use GarageBand with other iPad apps, thanks to Audio Copy/Paste. That could make GarageBand an ideal iOS hub for a studio of other third-party instruments and tools. It does work in just one direction – you can paste materials into GarageBand, but not out again – but that makes some sense, with GarageBand as your main “host” or editor tool.

I hope to get together with some other iPad owners in June to document how the wireless features work in video, and perhaps show off some of those Copy/Paste workflows; stay tuned.

Playability

The Instruments are an important feature for GarageBand. They won’t suit everyone – people wanting to make specific kinds of music should take a look through the diversity of what’s available for iOS in synths, instruments, and the like. But they do cover some basics. There are also some unique “smart” playability features.

Advanced articulations: try playing with some of the different instruments, and you’ll discover some nice features. Multi-touch gestures will often unlock certain instrumental techniques. The stringed instruments will respond when you play on the neck or use different voicings. Sections, as in grouped strings, will add swells or pizzicato, depending on how you play. These are features you’d expect of an advanced sample library, but not necessarily an iPad app – and it’s nice to be able to use your fingers on the screen to play them.

Also, while non-electronic genres definitely get a lot of love from GarageBand from the amps to instrument models, fans of electronic or dance music (or electro nuts, if you like) get plenty of synth bass and keyboard instruments. That’s what you’d expect from software that shares lineage with Logic, and it almost strikes me as a challenge to produce an electronic track entirely on GarageBand. (I’ll see what I can do; I’ve got a lot of travel coming up!)

My favorite current feature is the arpeggiator in the keyboard, which is a must on a touchscreen instrument.

In fact, while it’s also one of the more innovative features, I think my only disappointment is with the smart drum instruments. It’s a fascinating feature, letting you add different rhythmic parts by complexity, but it often falls a bit short of coming up with something genuinely musical, sounding a bit more like the auto-accompaniment it is. I think this really speaks to the demands we make of rhythm. It’s usable, it just may have you going back to editing to produce something original (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Guitar and string parts, in contrast, do really shine; they cover relatively stock gestures, but that could be perfect when you’re sketching out a new song idea. You can always fill in more elaborate parts later when you work on a more complete track, more likely then in a studio or on a desktop machine.

Editability

Editing was a bit short in the first release, and in some music making apps, but here, those features have been fleshed out in a way that’s nonetheless intuitive and accessible.

A lot has been made of the comparison of the old tape four-track – like a Tascam – and the iPad. Here, you can create subs and bounce tracks together to make new tracks, so that basic workflow is possible. (In place of the four track, what you’ve got, basically, is an eight track.)

It’s also possible to non-destructively merge editor tracks.

Note editing is, of course, a major addition to GarageBand. At last, it makes this a usable production tool. You’ll also find, appropriately, different editing options for drum parts, audio, and instrumental parts.

It’s also important to note that your musical options aren’t dumbed-down. You can create custom chords, rather than being locked into certain harmonies. Triple time signatures are possible, too (3/4 and 6/8 – sorry, Elliot Carter fans, it does stop there). You also get basic options for features like swing and quantization.

The only editing feature I’d still like to see is notation. A notational view would open up GarageBand to still more conventional musicians, and a score seems a perfect editing interface on a tablet. Aside from force of habit, the score is literally designed for this form factor, making music easy to see and understand.

Sharing and workflow features:

Some people will choose to produce entirely on an iPad or iPhone, but to make that mobility an advantage, you need to be able to share directly, and for some of us, at least, you’ll want to use the mobile gadget as a satellite, coming back to your main studio for more.

You can now sync projects across iPhone and iPad, and so on, as well as back to your desktop Mac for editing in GarageBand and Logic. You can also save to an iMovie soundtrack directly on the iPad, so you can use this as an on-the-go scoring tool.

You can also share to Facebook, YouTube, and, as part of a growing trend, SoundCloud.

But most importantly, import/export support means you can make projects your own, and use your iOS device in conjunction with a desktop machine or full studio. You can import and export your own media, including MP3, AAC (up to 192 kbps), AIFF, WAV, and Mac Apple Loops. (Of course, lossless files are generally a better choice.) Just add the file to iTunes.

Which devices are supported? GarageBand works on iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. You can use Jam Session on iPod touch (current models), but not third-generation iPhone or earlier and or older iPod touch models.

Conclusions

Part of the beauty of iPad music development, as the field matures, is that not every single tool tries to be all things to all people. But that doesn’t mean a tool shouldn’t feel meaty enough to be used over time.

On a variety of platforms, we’ve been waiting for a tool that can be an effective starting point. GarageBand on the iPad hits a sweet spot as far as that’s concerned. For playable instruments usable with touch – via the tablet, even if you’re crammed into a narrow seat on easyJet – it’s fantastic. Its interface is conventional enough that beginning musicians won’t feel as though they’ve just stolen a Klingon battle cruiser. But it’s also sophisticated enough that you can sketch out a song. For more advanced users, it’s still worth having around for that purpose, arranging chords and performing simple capture from other apps.

When do you outgrow it, what’s nice about the iPad is that it’s stupidly simple and affordable to add other tools. Want a more powerful song editor? Need a better groove machine / drum machine? Want to add vocal effects? You can simply turn to another app – but only to do what you really need, and only when you need it.

My only real regret is, even beginning musicians and songwriters often benefit from music notation. The absence of a score view/editor or the ability to see your music as notation seems a big omission.

Otherwise, GarageBand is a marvel – a perfect anchor from which to explore the outburst of developer creativity on this platform. In fact, far from portraying Apple as “consumer” company, it makes an excellent argument for the pro application development chops they’ve built up over the years – and could easily get people hooked enough to get into Logic Studio on a Mac laptop.

I hope we have at least opened some doors to finding new tools for users wondering what to do with their iPads (or iPhones, or iPod touches). And on that note, it’s worth revisiting the original GarageBand launch video, to see, with more distance, how Apple articulated their ideas for the app:

Ah, I remember March 2011…

Grab the app or review it yourself:
GarageBand for iOS @ apps.createdigitalmusic.com

If, in my opinion, you want to see how to run a label in 2012, look no further than Project Mooncircle (PMC). It’s based out of Berlin and was originally an offshoot of HipHopVinyl Records – a store I wandered into one summer day in 2004 and left, several hours later, minus a quarter of my summer tour earnings. The label bills itself as “specializing in the conjunction between electronic and organic music.” I could expand on that a little by saying that PMC’s music falls somewhere in the gray intersection between instrumental hip-hop, soul, and jazz, with a particular focus on whatever the thing is called that’s hip-hop post-Dilla or post-Fly Lo. I’ll call it Future Beats until someone tells me better. Ed. I hear the comment button clicking already. -PK

In PMC’s releases, swung, tumbling, complex, tricky beats weave in and out of melodies and vocals in a sweet cascade of emotion. Their records are the kind I want to play for people who think hip-hop began and ended with Native Tongues, or believe the pinacle of musical creation happened between ’94 and ’96 in the era of Trip Hop. Although just saying PMC is the logical extension of those movements fails to convey how extremely “right now” their sound is.

Apart from just putting out good music, PMC warms my heart by executing its affairs brilliantly and thoroughly. They have incredible art (including multiple reoccurring illustrators). Their catalog only skips 3 numbers in 100 releases. A huge amount of the music is available for sale on their Bandcamp page, with a healthy number of free giveaways. PMC even has two sub-labels, Project Squared and Finest-Ego, the later of which has put together a series of stunning compilations. These are probably the best place in the world to hear interesting new production in hip-hop, and they are all organized by country, one of my favorite discrete units of any scene.

The crew behind the label is above, but as I found out in a recent conversation with Robert Koch of Robots Don’t Sleep and several PMC release, the whole project rests squarely on the shoulders of the label’s founder Gordon Geiseking. Koch painted a picture of Geiseking tirelessly sitting at his desk, working late, surrounded by boxes and boxes of HHV vinyl waiting to be sent off all over the world. It makes sense – there’s no way something like PMC could have reached the heights it has without an extremely dedicated personality at the helm.

PMC’s other catchphrase is: “… an interesting experience for anyone looking for the extraordinary.” Almost absurdly humble words from an entity that’s just celebrated their 100th release with a 10-year anniversary boxset compilation, pressed onto two white and two black pieces of vinyl. That release alone is 46 tracks long if you get the digital version, one track each from just about anyone who currently has something to do with the label. It’s a great starting point to check out their sound, but if you want to delve further, you can listen to nearly the whole catalog on their website. I’ve picked a few past and current favorites below, but really, let yourself stroll through their incredibly deep catalog to find your own favorite future beats from around the world.

Rumpistol and Red Baron – Floating


The next release forthcoming on the label, the veteran Danish producer Rumpistol of Rump Recordings teams up with fellow Dane Red Barron (currently living in LA) to create a haunting soundtrack of etherial broken pop. Snippets from the entire release can be heard above.

Long Arm – The Branches

“The Branches” is amazing organic future jazz that isn’t cheesy in the slightest, from Russian mastermind Long Arm. It’s like he was sitting there in a smoky jazz club in 1955 with a tape recorder running. The true inheritor of the mantle of DJ Cam and his ilk.

Flako – The Mesektet

Beat maestro Flako takes you on a playful stumbling journey through a forest of beats – this is a true beat tape, more simple sketches than fleshed out epics, but it works so well that it’s difficult to tear yourself away from it till the whole thing’s over.

Robot Koch and John Robinson: Robot Robinson

One of my favorite hip-hop albums in a long time – John Robinson not only has a totally unique voice and flow, but he’s a born storyteller, a craft sorely missed in today’s beat scene. Robot Koch is at his finest on production.

V/A: Finest Ego | Russian Beatmaker Compilation

My introduction to the incredibly fertile Russian beat scene, which is almost crushingly large and diverse – but fortunately this is the cream of the crop – 813, Moa Pillar, DZA, Pixelord, Damscray and a bunch of others are all here. Get familiar!

Asusu – Small Hours / Taurean

I had forgotten about this till just now, but Project Squared is home to some of the better recordings in the Future Garage world, with Asusu being one of my all time favorites in this sound. Hope to hear more from this offshoot of PMC in the future!

Ed.: I’d been following Project Mooncircle, too, particularly as they pop up around Berlin, though I think the whole label will have international appeal. Got favorite releases you’d like to add to Matt’s list? Let us know comments!

Kid Kameleon is a San Francisco-based DJ, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music. He joins us regularly for our “Created” series, doing whatever the digital equivalent of digging through crates is. (Nominees welcome for that term.)
http://kidkameleon.com

Finding new sounds in our pulsing electronics means refining our working techniques isn’t just a technical matter. It’s a musical one.

King Britt, who has been granted many successful musical incarnations over the years, set off on just such a quest under his new identity Fhloston Paradigm. In a much-watched debut EP for brilliant UK imprint Hyperdub, the Philadelphia artist produces an out-of-this-world, cinematic sonic journey. King is perhaps best known as a name in house music; here, the style is experimental, but the groove rolls behind each track, sequencers softly shuffling along in a way that makes them seem caught in a slow, trance-like dance. Carefully-curated classic synthesizers gather into shared patterns of sound; King worked loosely with rhythm by letting these instruments play freely together, not slaved by MIDI, then crafted and polished the track in the more pristine digital world of the computer.

The “analog” business of these tracks is something of a hook for people describing the album, but that is of course a means to an end. Chaining together instruments lets polyrhythms emerge almost organically like blossoms, as King push their various timbres into undiscovered voices, whether a whisper or a growl. (We’ll have a separate video showing his equipment chain, which I think illustrates this more clearly, but here, let’s just listen.)

I’ve chosen the evocative “Liloos Seduction,” which Hyperdub is generously letting CDM stream. A lazy, drifting journey into exotic synthesized lands, it shows off the fuzzy edges of that gear’s timbres. But I’ll shut up and let you listen.

The EP is three tracks – two long, one short – but covers enough ground that it feels like a meal more than a morsel.

Official release page (and purchase in GBP): King Britt: Presents Fhloston Paradigm (HDB060) [Hyperdub]

Check it out on King’s site:King Britt x Hyperdub x Fhloston Paradigm [kingbritt.com]

Also on Bleep, where you can grab lossless versions for download: King Britt Presents Fhloston Paradigm EP Hyperdub [Bleep.com]

Hyperdub sent over this PR description, and it’s so nicely put-together that I think it also deserves a place. (I love when labels promotional materials are musically insightful and not just a jargon-laden sales pitch.)

HDB060 King Britt presents Fhloston Paradigm March 26th

Hyperdub start the year of single releases off with a brilliant, and subtle curveball courtesy of Philly’s finest; King Britt in his new guise as Fhloston Paradigm.

Built from drum machines, analog keyboards and 303’s, and edited in the computer, these 3 lean and mean tracks, have an unadorned feeling that build on Hyperdub’s love for old John Carpenter style electronics, combined with Dr Patrick Gleason’s ear for the abstract, and bouncy drum machine syncopation that sounds like they’re aiming for an alternative present where analogue synths are still king.

Chasing Rainbows, is first off, with a dark tone that reminds of the opening theme to the film ‘Escape from New York, a wavering 303 bassline and tough kicks and snares giving away to heavy, moody chords.

The Chase works rough rolling drum machine beats that stutter and build into strange fills that threaten to stop the track dead if it wasn’t for the strange stumbling bassline and gently building acid line that resolve into a super funky melodic duel with some stuttering synth strings.

Liloos Seduction is intense, quiet and abstract; a flickering 303 bass line is joined by barely there drums and reflective keys, everything shimmering in a dramatic fashion with gentle echoes giving the track a deep, watery sense of perspective as each part gently and gracefully builds and twists into a tender and effecting melody.

And the Mix

King put together a mix for FACT magazine I think many readers will adore, sprinkled with science fiction references, and veering from dark, film-like dystopias to shadowy club music to symmetrical electronic arpeggios, as if you’ve ducked out of the streets of Blade Runner and into a future cantina before a spin around the arcade.

Track listing:
1. Dialog from 1984
2. Lowleaf – Tala At Twilight
3. Fhloston Paradigm – Live Interlude #1
4. Chemical Brothers – Escape Wavefold (from Hanna soundtrack)
5. Boom Boom Satellites – Dub Me Crazy
6. Tenko – Slope – Gradual Disappearance
7. Eurhythmics – Take Me To Your Heart
8. Blade Runner dialog (rain scene)
9. Sleepy Tea – Specta Cierra
10. Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto – Microon III
11. Fhloston Paradigm – Live Interlude #3
12. Fhloston Paradigm – The Chase
13. JJ Doom – Banished
14. Power Douglas – Little Gong
15. Jerry Goldsmith – Intensive Care (From Logan’s Run soundtrack)
16. Raymond Scott – Portofino
17. Paul McCartney – Blue Sway (Demo)
18. Fhloston Paradigm – Song For Charlie
19. Synergy – The Mystery of Peri Reis
20. Galaxy 2 Galaxy – Frag 2
21. David Sylvian – Answered Prayers / Carla Bley (dialog)
22. King Britt presents Scuba – Bare Naked feat. Imani Uzuri
23. Fhloston Paradigm – Live Interlude #3

FACT mix 322: King Britt presents Fhloston Paradigm [factmag.com]

Don’t miss the FACT coverage leading up to this release, either, which includes some great interview on King’s process and love of science fiction (and how he got the name Fhloston Paradigm – thanks, Rucyl!)

King Britt on Fhloston Paradigm, pulp sci-fi movies and recording for Hyperdub [factmag.com]

To paraphrase the Justin Bieber fans, this mix is PERFECT. I’m going to leave it on repeat all day.

The link between dub music and technology is as old as the genre itself – you could even argue that dub is THE purest example of a technology expressed through music. At its best, it’s like magic – when I first saw Scientist run the board for Mikey Dread live, it truly was like watching a magician at work. He had a way of flicking faders so fast but so subtly that they seemed to move with a will of their own.

Although there are some core sonic elements of Dub that have been with it since its inception – echo, reverb, tape effects, etc – it’s also been a genre/ethos that’s quick to embrace new methods and new applications in its 40-year lifespan. One particular thread from Dub’s inception to now goes something like this:

The 70s – the warm round sound of King Tubby and his contemporaries.
The 80s – dub in the digital era, with Prince Jammy and others messing around with 8-bit sounds and new drum machines on seminal recordings like Computerized Dub.
The 90s – dub techniques flourish in every possibly form of dance music, including the icy germanic sounds of the Basic Channel and Chain Reaction labels and artists.
The 00s – that sound expands in new directions with records from Rhythm and Sound, Deadbeat, Pole and the entire long running ~scape label.

(As I said, just one thread through the history – for a much more fleshed-out telling of the story, see Bruno Natal’s Dub Echos or read Michael Veal’s book on the subject. Or if you want to become a dub producer yourself in an instant, you’ve got to check out Infinite Wheel, still as fun now as the day it was released.)

In 2012, two net labels – who so far have given every single one of their releases away entirely for free (!!!) – are unquestionably the proud inheritors of the legacy that runs from Tubby to Scientist to Rhythm & Sound to Deadbeat & Pole. They are A Quiet Bump, from Italy, and Qunabu, from Poland. I’ll cover A Quiet Bump below and follow up on Qunabu in a few days.

A QUIET BUMP

A Quiet Bump is a dub and digital roots label from Italy that’s currently 28 releases deep. They’ve just recently completely redone their website (which is beautiful) and even invented a new double mountain logo for themselves. Founded by Paolo Picone and Carmine Minichiello, the label is home to some of the most innovative dub music on the planet today – following in the vein of their german forefathers but infusing a kind of good-natured Italian warmth that makes the music truly unique and special. They label has been a labor of love since its foundation in 2005 – as Picone puts it “We are very proud in general of A Quiet Bump. We come from Irpinia, a small rural region of midland of Southern Italy… the biggest village only has 15,000 people, so developing an electronic/dub label between the mountains was not easy. A big challenge. Without the label we probably would have stopped playing music many years ago… it’s a survival project, and we are really proud of it.”

To celebrate the relaunch of their website, they’ve released their first CD compilation – UNO, the first thing you can actually buy from the label (as I said, EVERYTHING beforehand from these guys has been given away for free). It’s brilliant, and features many label regulars, the label’s brightest rising star DaDub (who’s gone on to release on Stroboscopic Artefacts) and some new high-profile collaborators like Stewart Walker. Paolo Picone, who records under the name Peak and has recently moved to Berlin, was kind enough to answer a few questions about the label. His responses are best read to a soundtrack of his own music, a captivating sample of which is below.

When and how did A Quiet Bump (AQBMP) start, and how did you chose the name?
The label was founded by me (Peak) and Camine “Gamino” Minichiello (Jambassa) in 2005. It started as just a name and logo to put on the cover of our band MOU’s first CD, a fake label, just to have a greater chance of getting reviewed as an official CD and not just as a demo… a trick! We picked the name to evoke the idea of something without a big clamor, a silent and shy label, a record company for implosive releases … But by the time we’d gotten to our fourth release, we decided just to run it as a label.

Who is part of AQBMP now, and do they have other roles beyond their music work?
Paolo Picone (Mou, Peak, Pantazm) with the contribution of my booking and events agency Soundabbast.
Carmine Minichiello (Mou, Jambassa) with the contribution of his Q-Zone Recording Studio
Giovanni Roma (Black Era, Pantazm, Lich, Voodoo Tapes) with his Blackchannel Mastering Studio
Raffaele Gargiulo “Papa Lele” (Jambassa/Wiseman Dub) the graphic designer of AQBMP
Leo Giso (Mou) the man behind shop, orders and shipping…
Web site design and programming by Nico Vece – the secret sixth man of AQBMP – with his THIN studio.

If you had to choose a word or phrase for your aesthetic for people who didn’t know the label, what would you say?
Digital roots? Contemporary roots? Or maybe in a better way: NON-Conservative Dub … Something connected with ’60/’70 Jamaican roots music and our contemporary culture… just in terms of space and time – places, society, and technologies. What King Tubby would have played now in the XXI century.

How do you choose which artists to release? Are they all friends or from all around the world?
We have no specific method… although usually we personally know the artists before producing them, so the majority of AQBMP artists come from our region of Italy … all friends. But it’s not a rule, everything depends by the music … the artist’s coherence as a producer and his sound are important for us.

Why did you decide to do Uno as a CD?
The main reason was to have a more professional approach to the promotion, and also to give the people a different approach of AQBMP. UNO in Italian means ONE, a number, the first number, just like a new starting point for us… we decide to change and renovate everything.

Plus we were very tired being classified as a “Net Label” – too many times and for more and more people in the net audio scene, the word “net” has become more important than the word “label”… In recent years I think the net audio world has become a fenced-in space – yes, with a lot of nice people, nice networks, situations, and nice ideas – but cut off from the music outside, or at least with a marginal position. The container became more important than the content.

Who are some artists that you might want to work with for the label but haven’t yet?
I don’t know… They don’t yet have names! We don’t have a well-defined idea of the AQBMP sound: we are 5 people with completely different ideas about “sound”. We listen to everything from Dub Specialist to Sonic Youth, from Slayer to Moritz Von Oswald, from David Sylvian to Fela Kuti, etc… Just as some examples! So now we prefer to explore our commonalities based on low bass frequencies and downbeat… and when possible support the idea of research on modern roots.

What upcoming releases are planned?
A new release from PARA as well as VOODOO TAPES (a new dubby project by Gianni Roma/Black Era, the man behind the mastering of AQBMP)… both as digital releases and digital distribution.

To be continued…

Kid Kameleon is a San Francisco-based DJ, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music. Tune in regularly for his CREATED series on new and undiscovered music, including what to hear, and talks with artists.
http://kidkameleon.com

What happens as music peers through the gauze of memory? Our contributor Matt Earp asks that question with the second installment of the new series, CREATED, a column that examines new and undiscovered music and feeds our headphones through the week.

There’s a production technique in a lot of today’s post-FlyLo, beat-driven instrumental hip-hop that’s pretty darn pervasive when you start listening out for it. It’s that woozy, wobbling 80s synth sound – both pads and arpeggios – that once were clear and pristine but have been softened and weathered by time. It’s not just straight recreations of Vangelis or Tiffany, but those sounds as we hear them today – warped, foggy, distorted, heard on tape that’s been physically stretched – the 80s seen through the lens of time. It’s not your Madonna or Michael Jackson cassette as it was when you first bought it (that is, you readers over 30), but that tape as it sounds now, having sat through 25+ summers in the glove compartment of your IROC-Z, pulled out and played again in all its warped glory. It’s the sound of countless TV shows and commercials dubbed and redubbed from VHS to VHS, traded between friends, losing fidelity but gaining character at each interval. Personalized. Distorted with memory. Decaying but well-loved.

This style doesn’t have a name that I’m aware of and it doesn’t really have a progenitor, although Boards of Canada get name-checked by producers I’ve talked to more than anyone. But BOC call more on 70s-era memories (the era of their youth) – filmstrips, 8 tracks, The Electric Company and Richard Nixon. This stuff is firmly rooted in the 80s and early 90s – VHS, cassettes, 3-2-1 Contact and Margaret Thatcher. And TONS of people are doing it. Oneohtrix Point Never (and his dozen other guises). Com Truise. Salem. Kyle Hall. Lone. Space Dimension Controller. Toro y Moi. A lot of those bands are also associated with Chillwave. But Chillwave is a little more crisp and singer-songwriter-y. This style is more instrumental, hip-hop driven, and has intentionally-warped sound elements and heavy muffling envelopes added to the lo-fi synths. When it’s done well, it’s one of the more exciting sounds of today’s electronic music, and I’ll take a stab at coining a new phrase for it – VHSwave. That plants it firmly in the 80s, evokes the sense of the stretched tape, and touches on the fact lots of these artists are also make videos for their creations, usually out of a warped pastiche of strange 80s visual flotsam and jetsam.

For a TON of this stuff, check out Outlier Recordings, especially their voluminous Outsourced compilations. For even weirder sounds and concepts, look to New Dreams Limited, which seems to have some connection to Oneohtrix — but who can say? Fat Dudes is the pictorial companion of VHSwave, and is run by Astro Nautico‘s Paul Jones. And for a far more thought-out investigation into all things retro, check Simon Reynold’s book Retromania.

JACOB 2-2

Jacob 2-2 is a Brooklyn-based sound and video artist who takes his name from an obscure, late-70s movie about a fearless kid investigator. “It’s probably one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen,” says the producer, whose first name is David but who prefers not to give his last name. It makes total sense when you listen to his music: there’s a kid-like wonder to it, crossed with a dose of playful humor and an bunch of weird 80s synths. It’s a lot like Look Around You condensed into musical form.

David’s prized possession is an old Roland Juno 6. That particular Juno has no presets at all, so every time he gets something he likes he has to record it immediately. “I always think to myself, ‘I’d better record it now or else I’ll never be able to recreate it.’” Its warm sound in turn drives his beats and effects, filled with pings and blips that could be straight from any 80s video game. Sometimes his beats are muffled, while at other times they shine through clearly.

So far, David has put out three EPs, two self-released through his Bandcamp: (The Gifted Child and Cabazon). His most recent EP, Fantasiarexia, was picked up by Jakub Alexander of Moodgadget. He’s also had a couple compilation releases and a handful of remixes for Aleph, Starfawn, Macka and others. (You can listen to all of them on his SoundCloud page.) A motion graphic designer by trade, David also makes his own videos for his live show, performing against a background of material loosely cut together to his music and full of weird and wonderful nostalgia and color.

“There’s a difference between nostalgia and kitch” David says, “And with my stuff it’s not about recreating what we had or were when we were children, it’s more about the idea of being a kid.” But he might take issue with my labeling his work VHSwave – born as he was in the late 70s, “my family had a huge Betamax collection when I was growing up.” So perhaps for Jacob 2-2 it’s actually BetaWave.

STEPHEN FARRIS

Flash forward a dozen years, and you arrive at the birth of today’s other subject, the prolific Stephen Farris. Half a generation younger than Jacob 2-2, Farris has arrived at a similar sound more by general osmosis of nostalgia through the Internet than by actual memories of the 80s, of which he has none.

A lot of his stuff, though not all, is more influenced by traditional hip-hop than Jacob 2-2 – including its more mellow and jazzy side. It’s not really surprising, though, since he’s from Houston – a city that’s been known for a melted and laid-back approach to hip-hop for two decades. Farris’s stuff is a little bit more upbeat than a lot of Screwed stuff, but he’s also influenced by the Chopped aspect of Houston hip-hop, integrating that genre’s effect of messing with and repeating vocals and samples. Strange cut-ups pop up all through his work and create some of its funnest moments.

“I got into making music my freshman year of high-school, when I got a copy of Fruity Loops 5 and this book Circuit Bending: Build your own Alien Instruments,” he says. From there, Farris started going to Goodwill stores and poking around online to find old Casio keyboards he could hack into new forms, though he does count a Juno 106 among his possessions (seems like the Juno is the synth of choice for VHSwave). For a while he was making music with an MC in a group called Ghost Mountain, but for the past couple years he’s mostly been a solo producer. Almost all of his music is available from his Bandcamp page – and apart from a few remixes and compilation appearances, he’s entirely self-released. He name-checks a lot of fellow producers that he either admires or has plans to collaborate with, like ntropy, Sound Founder, Brock Berrigan and VHS Head, but he is also a bit of a lone wolf. “I don’t really collaborate well,” Farris laughs. “If you ask me to do something or if you want a certain part to sound a certain way, that’s probably not what you’re going to end up with.”

Farris ends up playing in Austin quite a bit with fellow beat-heads in the Exploded Drawing collective. He’s also reached the final round of the Applied Pressure producers’ battle that will be held the first night of SXSW. He’ll be battling Lo Phi at a show that also includes beat-meisters Elliot Lipp, Robot Koch, and B. Bravo. Farris also does the videos for his own works, cutting together elements from his huge library of clips with Adobe Premier. And just so you know he’s no joke in the world of VHSwave sound, if you order it Farris will actually make you a copy on, on VHS, of his Cosmic Sound II album and send it out to you along with your download. “It’s pretty trippy though, I’m not sure I could watch it all the way through” he says. The first 5 minutes are below, and Farris reckons he’s made about 80 so far.

Kid Kameleon is a San Francisco-based DJ, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music.
http://kidkameleon.com

As pundits lament the loss of the album or conventional musical roles, it might be easy to miss a barely-hidden revolution in the craft of sound. Pieced together from the simplest of found acoustic instruments and strange electrified sonic organisms, fashioned with the most sophisticated of digital tools and computer music production machines, artists open an ocean of new musical and sonic discovery. The new venues and patrons proliferate, ranging from interactive installations to so-called “sonic branding,” sound design for games and motion spots and television, and yes, somewhere in there, even produce an album now and then.

Just ask Simon Pyke. As a solo artist, sound designer, composer, and through his sound design and music shop Freefarm, he’s a one-man Renaissance for the ears.

Simon, who tells us he’s a long-time reader, shares a short documentary behind his work. A beautiful short film takes you inside his Brighton, UK studio, a toybox of great musical toys that looks a bit as though someone was granted a wish and got to render the archives of this site in the real world. But it’s not so much the tools as the unabashed discovery of sound. That is to say, I find it impossible to watch this film and not want to immediately drop everything and get to making some sounds and music.

What’s equally impressive is that Mr. Pyke has produced for himself sonic fingerprints, even across varied work, sounds that are whimsical but always modern. It’s a kind of retro-futurism that sometimes draws from musical expressions that nod to everything from folk to Philip Glass.

As a sound maker, it’s easy to thrill at his show reel, but look, too, to a charmingly-personal instrumental EP on Bandcamp entitled Collisions. (In fact, you’ll notice what’s missing in all of this: a label. Instead, Simon does just fine running his own business in boutique sound and music, and releasing his own music to people who care about it.)

Have a look at his work; I know it’ll be inspiring my work this weekend. Thanks, Simon! Keep reading!

http://freefarm.co.uk/

In one of the records we’ve been most anticipating this year, Mouse on Mars today release Parastrophics, a densely-layered Magnum Opus of a full-length album. If you want to audition the release before buying, there are two places where you can do so:

SoundCloud has a set that will give you a taste
XLR8R has the full stream

But the overwhelming sense I’ve gotten talking to the duo (Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma) is that you should resist the temptation to stream this is the background whilst you respond to emails or sort your socks. If you want to hear it in the sort of environment the artists intend, in other words, you should find yourself a comfy couch, your favorite listening device, and listen to the higher-quality, lossless version. (“Mastered for iTunes” be damned. Come to think of it… anyone want to sell me a couch?)

Care and attention to detail is a real watch cry for the record, so another way to understand it – once you’ve done that proper listening – is to take in the superb behind-the-scenes video shot by Berlin’s Electronic Beats, top. (That’s the print and online magazine also known to locals as the best thing Deutsche Telekom has ever done with their spare change.) As part of the beloved Slices series, Holger Wick interviews the two in their studio at Funkhaus Berlin, the former-GDR broadcasting center whose recording facilities have been converted to new, more democratic use in the reunited city. There, it’s clear that the two apply craft and philosophy in equal, mixed measure, that the process of making is itself a kind of process of listening.

Perhaps the word that’s better than “quality” is “depth”: the reason the album demands close listening is the sense that you need to devote those neurons to a beyond-superficial experience of what’s happening, like donning 3D goggles and listening to the musical activity on more than just one level or plane. There are rhythmic and timbral lines to follow on multiple levels, a kind of digitally-constructed polyphony of both melody and sound, some of which unfold after repeated listens.

That said, it was equally a joy hearing the first live performance of the material at Berghain, as a featured act of the CTM Festival. There, the two improvised their way through the raw ingredients of the record almost as if a dance, their creative energy and enthusiasm unleashed in frenetic fashion. There were even some cameos of squealing and vocoded gestures on iPhones, powered by Pure Data patches, as a handheld instrument.

We should have more from this duo and a look at the record soon, following their lead and taking our time. In the meantime, sit back for some good listening and (thanks to Electronic Beats) watching – highly recommended.

http://www.mouseonmars.com/

Official notes, well worth reading in this case, I think:

Over the course of ten albums – not to mention an avalanche of side projects, remixes and collaborations – Jan St Werner and Andi Toma of Mouse On Mars established themselves as two of the most inventive and unpredictable artists in electronic music.

In 2012 Mouse On Mars’s triumphant return comes in the shape of Parastrophics, a life-affirming and constantly surprising album which is crammed with ideas, exuberance and sheer kinetic energy. It’s like listening to the entire history of pop music – distilled, refined and crystallized into a string of compulsive new shapes, full of glitter, intrigue and addictive detail. Atomised fragments from two lifetimes of listening flare and fade, tiny scraps of memory shrapnel hover, tantalizing and insubstantial, before being whisked away by the next impatient idea.

But despite all that restless curiosity, Parastrophics also demonstrates a peerless command of pace. Whereas some previous Mouse On Mars releases have bordered on the frenetic, their latest displays a subtle but persuasive sense of control. Even when tempos climb, 303s squirm and kick / snare patterns snap to brisk attention, there’s an elegance to the way that each element slips in and out of the mix which speaks, whisper it, of maturity. Parastrophics is as a playful as ever, but it’s never throwaway. The closing “Seaqz” is the perfect illustration, a frenetic romp which is perfectly held in check by gracefully undulating melodies; it brings into focus the beguiling sense of confidence that suffuses the whole record. All of which is a roundabout way of saying that – after six years away – Mouse On Mars have come back with their best record yet.

Chris Sharp

In two ambient works, musicians Cory Allen (Austin, Texas) and Marcus Fischer (Portland, Oregon) chart connected sound worlds mined from shared samples, in a sweeping opus of a musical environent. Released yesterday on February 22, coinciding with birthdays of the artist and Chopin, it generously has the you’ve-just-got-to-buy-this price of US$2.22, well worth adding to your downloaded collection.

The first track is nothing if not womb-like. It begins with a warm, pulsing hum, delicate tones peeking above the blur. Then it gradually succumbs to binaural fuzz, producing a whitened atmosphere of timbral architecture, an eneveloping mist punctuated by soft, insistent ticks. The second track feels more expansive, a trip on an alien sea that begins with creaking, ship-like wooden planks and sails into waves of sound and ringing timbre. With the arrival of the piano and strings in the second track, there is a renewed sense of musical groundedness: this is not just an endless drone, but a set of extended gestures.

There is a regular sense in the sound design of tonal centers, of lines and connections and progression behind the spray of sound. Accordingly, our friend Marc Weidenbaum, whose blog disquiet has been a compass for online releases of ambient and experimental music, has contributed some thoughts on just that topic of congruity in notes for the album. He fits those, of course, into 222 words:

The Internet is a congruity engine. The ceaseless churn of online databases aligns any two or more things found to have in common any one thing.

Cities with similar names require clarification from mapping systems. Faces of people with similar names appear together in image searches, forcibly conflated into one extended family.

Congruity is especially powerful regarding individuals with the same birthday. Factors such as seasonal attributes and development relative to classmates are widely accepted to explain perceived similarities between individuals otherwise born years, even centuries, apart.

Two / Twenty Two by Cory Allen and Marcus Fischer occurred because the two musicians acted on their shared February 22 birthday. Both live in cities considered artistic outposts in otherwise rustic states (Allen: Austin, Texas; Fischer: Portland, Oregon), both have professional experience in visual design, and both explore gentle sonic psychedelics that bring texture to what might otherwise be termed ambient. All coincidence, certainly.

Allen and Fischer stacked the deck in congruity’s favor by providing each other with a set of samples from which to devise new music. The result is two rough fragile recordings. They have the burnish of delicate objects that survived significant tumult. As for the tremulous piano in track two, perhaps it’s a nod to Chopin, who was, according to various databases tracking such things, also born on February 22.

Marc Weidenbaum
disquiet.com
credits
released 22 February 2012
. . .

all sounds were created or captured
by CORY ALLEN + MARCUS FISCHER.
in Austin, TX + Portland, OR.
Winter 2012
Mastered by CORY ALLEN
Photo + Design by MARCUS FISCHER

More:
cory-allen.com
mapmap.ch
disquiet.com

By the way, one of the many things I love about Bandcamp is that it is supported by the superb Chrome extension, ex.fm, which is ideal for listening to streamed music. I tend to like to survey music via ex.fm and purchase and download the stuff I really love. If you want to follow me, my profile is:

http://ex.fm/peterkirn

Get the extension: http://ex.fm/

And I’d love to know what you’re listening is like, if you wish to send playlists. Perhaps we can talk more about that soon. We’ve just enabled the ex.fm plugin here on CDM, so that may make finding music here easier, too.

Writing about the meeting place of technology and music, we cover potential: what’s possible, what might be in the future. So as he launches a new music column, our new contributor Kid Kameleon has coined a cheeky title: “created.” This isn’t just what you could create with digital music, but what has been made, as he discovers and reviews new sounds. And while words like “genre-defying” get overused, producer/DJ/journalist Kid Kameleon – aka Matt Earp – really is on a quest for music that pushes out from the boundaries drawn around it. Over this and future installments, Matt will help widen our own listening to the up-and-coming and unexpected. So let’s get started, by peering through the window of one label and one artist. -PK

TESTTOON & OUBYS

Testtoon and Oubys are separate but symbiotic (for now). Testtoon is a very new label run by Michael Severi from Antwerp, Belgium, in collaboration with his brother Rafael. Michael’s girlfriend Eva D’haenens creates the label’s art and graphics as part of Testbeeld, the label’s visual twin. Testtoon is only two releases into its existence so far, but according to Severi, its agenda is to “promote creative and original electronic music” with vinyl-only releases of ”only local or more unknown producers we like.” Severi’s current aesthetic for his own DJ sets as well as the label is “ambient, field recordings, and experimental,” and Testtoon couldn’t have found a better or more captivating artist for their launch releases than Oubys, from Brussels.

Oubys is the stage name for Wannes Kolf. From his succinct bio: “Kolf’s music is made with live improvisations, electronic treatment and field recordings. Influenced by early legends Faust, Heldon, Can and ambient guru Brian Eno, this music has a nice sense of subterranean depth and a pulsating progression.” Oubys has had two previous releases on the CDr label U-Cover (also out of Belgium), and his music has is perfect blend of textured soundscape, low thrumming bass and steady washes of atmospheric synths that combine in perfect proportion to yield richly immersing musical experiences. This world can be a space where it’s hard to sound original or interesting, but Kolf weaves just enough of a pulsing through many of his creations to give them the skeleton ambient music so often lacks. His first release for Testtoon was Terra Incognita in 2011, which falls somewhere between an EP and an album in length. It’s full of rich complexity reminiscent of Monolake and Chain Reaction, and it ends with the almost epic Blackland 2 (below). But it also takes in more collage-like sounds along the way, in tracks like “Hidden Base” and “Mitlt”.

The label’s second release is the Positronium EP, which heads in a slightly darker direction, more buzzing electricity than soothing sound beds. It contains an early version of the album track Positronium II, a remix by Oubys, and truly special restructuring by Substance of Hardwax, Berlin, a scion of German dub techno reaching back almost 20 years. A tantalizing snippet of it can be heard here:

That EP will be out by the end of February. For now Testtoon is doing the distribution themselves, so it can only be found in vinyl shops in Belgium and by mail order through a couple of internet outlets. But Severi is hoping to secure distribution soon, so untill then keep your ears on both Oubys and Testtoon’s SoundCloud pages for samples of new material. And give them both props for doing such small run and tangible releases in the age of digital music!

TEAL & BEASTIE RESPOND

Not terribly far from Testtoon’s sample-based ambience, a similar label/producer symbiotic relationship is going on, but for a different genre of music. The label is Teal Recordings, run by Simon Olsson, and the producer is Beastie Respond aka Tobias Pedersen. Both of them are in Copenhagen, Denmark, and both have associations with the Dunkle Bar there.

Teal is 4 releases deep so far, available both as 12″ records as well as digital, and much of its sound has been focus on that particular hybrid of house, dubstep, UK Funky and techno that doesn’t have a name yet but is currently saturating lots of clubs in London and beyond. Producers like Blawan, West Norwood Cassette Library, Hypno, and Kowton have all given some of their finest productions or remixes to the label – a favorite in this vein is the smokey jazz-club sampling shuffle-skip of Hypno’s Koko, a true gem.

But the label’s breakout sound has surely been the beguiling Syncope by Beastie Respond. A beautiful piece of uncanny music that draws equally from Drum and Bass, Dub, Dancehall and Chilled Out Hip-Hop, it’s one of the best examples of the current trend of DnB producers using increasingly tricky rhythms to give the illusion of both 85 bpm hip-hop (or in this case, with a 4×4 beat, almost slow disco) and the frenetic poly rhythms of Jungle. It is a sound that’s most closely associated with the producer dBridge, his label Exit Recordings, and what’s been termed the “Autonomic sound” of this particular strain of modern Drum and Bass – a sound hugely influenced by the “is it head nod or dance music?” slippery-ness that is Dubstep’s most impressive achievement to date. And frankly it’s an amazing breath of fresh air to the genre of Drum and Bass, reviving many veteran’s interest in a sound that’s accesible enough for a new generation of listeners who till now only knew DnB as classic ragga, harsh tear outs, or cheesy over-the-top atmospherics.

Now, not to pigeonhole Pedersen into only this one sound – he’s got musical skills that stand out on some darker and more straight-ahead productions, as well, geared to a more traditional DnB audience. But his syncopations are at their most impressive in this rhythmic netherland, so it’s not surprising that Teal is releasing a second single from him in March. This one, the label’s 5th, is 2 tracks, “Be Quiet” and “No More”, and once again, “No More” is just killer, full of crisp clean sounds that tumble over each other, constantly pinging back and forth between a head nod and a skank.

Beastie Respond says he has some other tracks and remixes coming soon. If both record labels and producers the world over can embrace this sort of tricky, intelligent music that works both on the dancefloor and in headphones, then the future of electronic dance music is bright indeed.

Kid Kameleon is a San Francisco-based DJ, promoter, writer, blogger, historian, archivist, and fan of electronic music.
http://kidkameleon.com

Don’t miss Matt’s write-up of selections from 2011′s musical landscape – complete with a couple of recent choices from his more than 100 mixes:
The Music of 2011: Kid Kameleon Picks, Om Unit Mix, Techno Mix

The evolution of what we now call “DJing” is inseparable from the turntables and mixer. So, what happens when you enter the digital domain and you really don’t need to refer to either device? Many digital DJ controllers have simply mimicked those previous inventions, with virtual tables and a mixer-style layout. To some extent, they must, not only for familiarity but to even make it possible to perform the kind of tasks DJs expect.

Then again, the computer, endless shapeshifter that it is, can do whatever you like. And so we’re beginning to see mass-market controllers marketed at DJs – not just the laptop performer, but DJs and DJ software – that goes in new directions.

Novation Twitch is one such effort. New Yorker Abe Duque takes up the Road Test series for Dubspot. I rather enjoy the lo-fi video as he flies New York to Munich; I could almost imagine the entire video being shot that way. (There you go, CDMers: I now have no excuse not to shoot some video tests for y’all on my smartphone.) And, uh, yeah, been there. Maybe the most ringing endorsement for the Twitch is how snugly it fits into the carry-on bag. I’m pretty sure that’s one of the superb UDG Gear line carrying both his laptop and Twitch.

Getting down to the actual review, Abe Duque – whatever impatient YouTubers may say in comments – does a fine job of coherently covering all of the features fairly and in detail.

Highlights:

• The Twitch is clearly set up to integrate with Serato, though there’s also a Traktor overlay. I’ll be eager to see how it works with Ableton Live, though, as the layout would seem to apply nicely to that.
• Having faders double as effects wet/dry controls is a clever twist, and reveals the intention of the Twitch to focus a DJ performance on mucking around with individual songs and not just queuing, beat matching, and mixing.
• The highlight is probably the slicing control, which uniquely couples the touch strip with pads.

You begin to see how a Twitch performance would come together, with two-deck slicing and dicing and effects controls. Of course, that could be accomplished with other means, but the Twitch embodies a lot of what we’ve seen in the DIY scene and homebrewed controllers, assembling a layout that conceptually reflects all of this track-mangling in the hardware’s physical form. In fact, it’s hard not to think that that scene influenced the Twitch.

This kind of track manipulation was common both with the Akai MPC and Ableton Live. Curiously, the design of the Akai APC40 for Live really doesn’t make that sort of performance very easy, focusing instead on clip launching and mixing.

In practice, Twitch looks promising. It does face a lot of competition. For Serato alone, there are various controller options, and Serato loyalists can expect this and other control surfaces to cater to their needs. The big entry we know is on the horizon is Native Instruments’ upcoming controller and software – something the company has already revealed in some detail prior to its official release. In fact, it’ll be tough to judge Twitch without having seen in person whatever NI has cooked up, as it appears their offering could focus even more closely on the sample triggering / looping notion, again within a DJ paradigm (Traktor).

DIYers, many carrying the banner of “controllerist,” have been pushing DJing in this direction for some time, and back to its original roots, DJing has embraced more inventive ways of really transforming tracks and not just playing them. Now, as those ideas seep into the mainstream, we’ll see if the line between DJing in the sense of playing tracks – and live performance, more as you’d expect in the instrumental vein – continues to blur.
Dubspot Lab Report: Novation TWITCH DJ Controller – Road Test w/ Abe Duque

Oh, yeah, and for something completely different DJ controller-wise, see Dubspot’s take on the compact Allen & Heath Xone: K2.