Who the fuck is Hatsune Miku? Some may say she’s a Vocaloid, the poster child for the voice synthesizer software engineered by Crypton Future Media. Others may say she’s just an idol, one of the pure virtual variety, playing shows as a hologram from time to time. Others will attribute her likeness t
Playing artists Sam Rolfes’ and Lars Berg’s “fleshy music game” Limp Body Beat will probably be the closest I’ll ever get to attending one of those Body World exhibits. I hate the physical look of muscles. I cringe at the sight of gore that includes flesh-slicing. I’m not into it. Flesh and anything
With new album Yume, ambient electronica musician Helios seems to recall the beauty of lazing underneath a sun-crested sky. The music soothes by letting high notes drift out to a gold horizon. It seems to lift off from the soft fringes of grass and get carried out on a hot puff of wind. More precise
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. Panoramical (PC, Mac) BY FERNANDO RAMALLO & DAVID KANAGA Forget the “music visualizer” that has been spinning webs of geometry on your PC since the ’90s. Panoramical finally makes it as outda
You were lured in by the sight of a skeleton astronaut, weren’t you? Or is that just me? The idea of an astronaut left to rot in space grips me as one of the horrors of the future. At the moment, as far as public records show, there are no dead people floating around in space. But we have to suppose
Everyone shuffles in, somehow looking both non-committal and excited. The space is tight-knight, vaguely dingy, and hot from all the breaths and bodies. People are talking, but not real talk—at most, small talk, to diffuse the tension of waiting. Then, the lights go black and everything stops for on
Welcome to life after Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, where every music game feels incomplete without J.K. Simmons’ Fletcher yelling, “are you rushing or are you dragging?” While Whiplash does not yet exist in game form, at least there’s Clapping Music, which may induce similar levels of angst in player
The world is an infinite musical instrument. This is the prevailing idea across the interactive documentary Soundhunters. And it doesn’t mean in the way as I understood it in my college days, drumming out beats onto desk corners with my fingers; it’s less deliberate than that. The idea is to listen
Harmonix reckons it’s time for the music visualizer to go about a big change. That’s probably about right. For an electronic art that’s almost as old as videogames it’s a wonder how it’s managed to remain so close to its roots in abstract shape-making. Did you know that the first commercial electron
Getting inside a musician’s mind is relatively easy work these days. Whereas the 20th century was mostly restricted to whatever questions Rolling Stone proffered their subjects, now we have the miracle of multimedia practically opening up their skulls as if a hungry spoon scalping a ripe kiwi fruit.
I remember being eight-years-old and having a playground debate as to how Jamiroquai’s music video to the song “Virtual Insanity” was made. We were kids, so obviously one of the suggestions was that it was magic. Another said it was computer graphics. But the most plausible was that the floors were
Sign up to receive each week’s Playlist e-mail here! Also check out our full, interactive Playlist section. SOUND SYSTEM II (BROWSER) BY PIPPIN BARR Music and videogames go together like peanut butter and jelly: the visceral experience of play magnified by an equally sensorial accompaniment. In So
If you’re not a DJ then there has probably been a time in your life when you’ve wanted to be one. What I’ve always loved about the craft is the gesticulations. Specifically, how the fingers are concentrated on spinning a concentric web of vinyl. The DJ operates machinery as a pilot would command a p
What does a videogame sound like? That’s the question Pippin Barr has been trialing as of late. It might seem absurd at first—we know what games sound like, don’t we?—but he doesn’t refer to diegetic sounds or sound effects that go towards making a convincing world. What he is interested in is the i
