Rotofobia – Global Music Project (Poland)

Rotofobia is a three piece electronic-garage-rock group from Warsaw, Poland. They have a dark and dirty sound that is effortlessly hip, and yet is still enjoyable without seeming like you’re trying to impress everyone by having an exotic taste in music. The group is currently unsigned, tours extensively around Poland, and appears to have self-released one album so far. They also seem to have garnered quite a bit of press for themselves.

As far as the make up of their sound goes, the guitars lean heavily toward a droning and drugged out sound with high lead lines coated with delay. Arkus, the drummer, keeps the beats a little dancy which lightens the mood quite a bit from what would otherwise be an overly depressing sound. However, one of the things that really completes the Rotofobia sound is that most of the bass lines are played on a gnarling synthesizer. This, more than any other aspect of their instrumentation, fills out any empty space in their sound and makes them simultaneously contemporary and incredibly unique.

Tone Matrix

Tone Matrix is a 16-step sequencer that generates a tone for each white block on the grid. It’s essentially one repeating measure of a 4/4 beat divided into 16 parts. In plain English, it’s an awesome and easy to use site that will have you entertained for quite some time. The tones sound very soothing so it takes awhile for them to get old, even when the measure repeats quickly.

When I first visited the site, I spent a couple minutes to organize the tones into a cool sequence and it worked great. The second time I just rolled the mouse over the blocks clicking randomly and it was equally as awesome. My only criticism is that it needs a reset button. However, you can solve this by hitting refresh on your browser. It would also be nice to be able to export the sequences into .wav or .mp3 files or make longer sequences. But even taking that into consideration, I still think this is a phenomenal site.

Tweakbench

If you make electronic music, chances are you’ve heard of Virtual Studio Technology, or VSTs. Before I found Tweak Bench however, I had never heard of them. The quick explanation of them is that they’re like entire synthesizers in one little file on your computer that you then control from an external MIDI controller.

Tweak Bench offers a wide variety of awesomely lo-fi homebrew VSTs, both synths and effects, all for free download. Across the board, the VSTs have a very tasteful 8-Bit Nintendo feel to them, while still retaining a useful quality that makes you actually want to use them in a song.

Check them out at www.TweakBench.com.