Every week, Axehole looks for the most unusual music news or site we can find, the one thing that gives us that WTF? moment.

This week, we bring you the mobile music-making Tie Fighters of Weltklang, a German electronic electronic music duo.

The group was founded in Munich by Richard Aicher and Andreas Merz, and has created unusual live performances since then. They came up with the idea of Mobile Electronics performances in 1995 with a creation for the Universal Arts Gallery Munich that involved 8 MD Players. At more recent events, Weltklang has used JVC RV-B99 Ghetto Blasters as mobile amplification systems.
Continue reading ‘WTF Friday: Weltklang Moving Electronics & Electronic Street Music’

ElectroKraft has announced the MIDI SpaceAxe, a guitar-like synth and MIDI controller.

You wear the SpaceAxe like a guitar, but it’s an electronic synthesizer & MIDI controller with a touch sensitive ribbon controller-fretboard that can be used to create new, spacey-experimental sounds as well as traditional synth and percussion/drum sounds.

Bar-Ba-Rella!

Continue reading ‘Axe from Space gets MIDI’

The midiGun is a handheld midi controller that’s phallic and juvenile, but we sort of wish that they were for sale.

The gunshaped interface was designed to remotely control realtime music apps like Ableton LIVE and Traktor DJ. Users can trigger and control sounds and effects on a PC without watching a monitor or using a mouse and keyboard. The controllers and sensors can be individually customized to fit the connected software or to serve special user preferences.

Continue reading ‘Lasers, Guns, and MIDI’

Does the world need a light-up USB-audio cable? Who cares - it’s pretty cool!

The LightSnake cable is a 10′ 1/4” to USB cable, and is basically a “sound card on a cable”. Connect the 1/4” mono plug of the LightSnake cable to your instrument and then connect the USB end to one of your computers USB ports.

An embedded 16 Bit Analog to Digital Converter with audio signal boost ensures extremely low audio loss and 48 KHz Sampling Rate provides you with high audio quality while recording. The HSDL (Host Side Data Loss) Noise Reduction function prevents any unwanted noise when converting the audio signal to digital format and saving to your computer.

Most import, though, is the cool green light that should make it less of a pain in the a** to figure out where to plug it when you’re working in a dark room. Continue reading ‘LightSnake Puts Audio Card in USB Cable, Glows’

Monome.org has posted a video of a new MIDI controller, the Monome, in action:

The controller is basically an 8×8 matrix of on/off illuminated switches. The lights and the switches operate independently, so the buttons can light up when you activate them or they can do things like follow the pulse of a sequence.

It’s tiny (6.75 by 6.75 by 1.125), USB bus powered, and has 64 hypnotic, blinky lights, but the Monome site notes that it “doesn’t do anything really.”

Continue reading ‘New Monome MIDI Controller: Cool Blinky Lights, But it “Doesn’t do Anything”’