The 15^th edition of the venerable electronic music festival Mutek begins in Montreal Tuesday May 27, running until Junday June 1. Opening night features performances from Tim Hecker, Oneohtrix Point Never, and Kangding Ray (and many more), with the programming getting progressively clubbier as the week progresses, including long sets from Richie Hawtin, Ricardo Villalobos, and Nico Jaar.  What began as a small festival to show off Montreal’s best electronic musicians and foster the connections between Europe and North America has become one of the most anticipated and consistently innovative festivals in electronic music, having long since branched out to successful editions in Barcelona and Mexico City.

See the complete festival PROGRAM

This year Mutek have joined forces with (erstwhile rivals) Montreal’s Elektra festival of digital arts to jointly celebrate their crystal anniversaries. The Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal will serve as their HQ, one…

Boy, oh, boy, where do I begin?

As you may have noticed, Wave Maker Magazine has been inactive since March 6, 2014. Since that time, I’ve been thrown into a maelstrom of unfortunate events, which have forced me to put W.M.M. on hold.

On March 12, 2014, my father passed away. I lacked the energy and motivation to do anything, so I trashed my untouched, but always growing, to-do lists and tucked my fat agenda under my bed. Saying “No” to being busy eventually gave me the opportunity to not only savor the time I had with my family and friends, but also savor the stillness and quiet that surrounded me as I grieved my loss. Unsurprisingly, it was also during this time when I realized that I could no longer stand the business of music, especially music journalism. I say “unsurprisingly,” because I knew that my passion for music journalism…

The recently published , Chasing Sound: Technology, Culture & the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP is historian Susan Schmidt Horning ’s first book. Veering away from the usual sound recording suspects (like the phonograph), Chasing Sound shows how the studio and the audio engineer are central to the cultural and technological changes associated with the production and reproduction of sound.

According to Schmidt Horning, such changes were reflected in the shifting ideal of recorded music as a representation of live performance to the ideal of recorded music as a studio-engineered creation. Using the accounts of those responsible for recording sound, Schmidt Horning constructs a rich narrative that manages to be accessible while still focused on the highly technical work required of studio workers. That said, by focusing so heavily on user practices and anecdotes she misses an opportunity to engage with the theoretical implications of the…

Lost in Doi Saket  is a unique release that can only be experienced on  Kate Carr ‘s website: a Google sound map with approximately sixty pins representing sixty Soundcloud field recordings.  Click on the pin, see a photo of the location, listen to the sound: it’s that easy.  To travel around Thailand in this fashion mimics Carr’s own experience, in which she was able to rent a scooter with little training and set off to explore the countryside.  Her 600k experience now becomes ours: familiar and disorienting all at once.

The difference, of course, is that while the home listener/viewer is provided a computer rather than a scooter, and is able to set off in a non-linear fashion.  One can choose to follow Carr (or at least to guess her route) or to click randomly.  As a travelogue, it’s far more appealing than a slide show.  In a way, it’s…

We last encountered  Mark Lyken and Emma Dove  a year ago with their installation-based EP and video  The Terrestrial Sea.   Their new work expands on the work of that prior release and continues an investigation of the sonic and visual properties of Scotland’s Black Isle.  An installation is again the launching pad; a special edition CD/DVD version is in the works, while the digital score is already available.

Mirror Lands, the film, is directed and lensed by Lyken and Dove, who share soundtrack duties as well.  This ambitious 67-minute project represents a confident forward step.  One of the appealing components of the DVD is that the narration, music and field recordings can be separated.  While the soundtrack stands on its own, it makes a lot more sense in the larger context.

Sea birds cry and swoop against a black backdrop before the piano and narration are introduced.  A…