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Hands On With the Grain Mk II, a Sampler the Size of a Passport
Grain Instruments shrank its sampler to the size of a passport and charged 349 euros for it. Three weeks of trains, soundchecks and one lost project later, here is what the spec sheet leaves out.
Liner Notes: Your Favorite Song Is a Room
Ask anyone about a song they love and watch how fast they start describing a kitchen. Reverb is the one part of a record that gives it an address.
Wire Mix 012: Basslines for Basement Windows
Sixty minutes of low end built for rooms where the only window is at street level. Mixed by Ada Kwon.
Moth Choir's 'Cathedral of Small Sounds' Is the Quietest Loud Album of the Year
Twelve people, one deconsecrated chapel and about forty contact mics. Moth Choir have made an album whose loudest event is a chair leg, and turned dynamic range into an argument about who gets to decide how loud your life is.
'Silence Is a Rhythm Too': Elif Duran on Scoring Empty Spaces
Elif Duran writes music for documentaries about buildings nobody lives in. We met her in an unheated textile mill outside Bursa, where she was popping balloons to measure the reverb before writing a single note.
The Warehouse Kids of Sao Paulo Are Building Their Own Grid
Sixty-two addresses, two diesel generators and a rule about who is allowed to add a room. In Sao Paulo, the parties that outlast the venues are the ones with better logistics.
Liner Notes: The Encore Is a Lie
The two songs after the encore are written on the set list before the doors open. It is four minutes of theatre, and it costs the audience the last train.
Building a Studio in a Van, One Rattle at a Time
Fourteen months, 4,100 euros and one very long argument with a sliding door. What I learned building a working control room into six cubic metres of sheet steel.
Why Every City Sounds Different: A Field Guide to Urban Acoustics
Street width, render, tram rails and the local noise floor decide what a city sounds like long before anyone plays a note. A field guide to why Berlin rings for two and a half seconds and Lagos does not ring at all.
'Field Notes From a Dying Mall' Finds Ambient Gold in Dead Retail
Nineteen months, six shopping centres in their last weeks of trading, and a 62 Hz escalator motor doing the job of a bass player. Field recording usually gets away with pointing a microphone at somewhere interesting. This record actually composes.
The Algorithm Doesn't Dance: Notes on Discovery After Playlists
Recommendation systems are extremely good at telling you what you already like. They have no way to model forty people in a back room deciding, together and in public, that a record is worth caring about.
Why Musicians Are Falling Back in Love With Minidisc
It is cheap, it survives a tour bag, and there is no plausible way to put the contents on a streaming service. Four years into the minidisc revival, the second-hand market has finally noticed.
Issue 05 — Echo
9 PostsWhat survives a scene: labels, festivals and the venues we lose.
Issue 06 — Bloom
8 PostsLoud again, on purpose. Summer 2026.
Issue 03 — Drift
6 PostsAmbient music, empty buildings and the sound of cities at rest.
Issue 04 — Pulse
8 PostsRhythm as engineering: machines, storms and small rooms.
Issue 01 — Signal
6 PostsWhere the magazine starts: first principles, first records, first rooms.
Issue 02 — Static
7 PostsTape hiss, dead formats and the noise we choose to keep.
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