French ambient artist and graphic designer A Last Picture From Voyager shared this meditative video, demonstrating how they make album cover art using a paper cutout collage technique.
Here’s what they have to say about it:
“For my latest ambient music collaboration, Ways to Hors Sujet, I used old magazines, scissors, glue, and intuitive composition to craft a unique DIY album artwork from scratch.
This video shares my process for designing tactile, analog-style visuals that reflect the tone of ambient and experimental music.
Whether you’re a musician, visual designer, or curious about how to make album cover art by hand, this video offers tips and inspiration to create your own cutout collage and ambient visual art.”
The approach seems to be taking the punk DIY ethos and applying it to ambient electronic music. And – while the techniques may not be new, the video is surprisingly soothing and even inspiring.
Check it out and let us know what you think. And – if you’re DIYing your own album art – share your approach in the comments!
Lese let us know that they has just updated Codec to version 2.0, bringing a handful of new features that give you more control over the way the plugin manipulates audio.
Codec repurposes a real-time audio coding standard designed for internet voice communications as an audio effect, producing a crunchy, digitally degraded sound that simulates a poor internet connection.
What’s new in Code 2.0 video:
Codec divides audio into individual packets, some of which can be randomly dropped out using its Loss control. This prompts the plugin’s internal decoder to try to conceal the packet loss, and there’s a choice of three modes that determine how this is handled by the plugin, each giving you a different sonic flavour.
The Disorder control (new in Codec 2.0) adjusts the ordering of packets being fed into the internal decoder to create a chaotic, glitchy effect, while a new Noise mode adds noise to the signal before it’s fed into the encoder, creating a “messier” sound.
Additional crunch can be applied via Codec’s Crunch controls, which crank up the gain on a selected frequency range prior to the encoding stage and dial it down it once the audio is compressed, creating more distortion artifacts with no added volume.
Codec is available now for PC and Mac in VST/AU formats. You can download it for free from the Lese website.
Time Off Audio has launched Dime [ms], a new plugin host that enables you to conveniently employ mid/side processing with any of your existing plugin effects.
Mid/side processing is a mixing and mastering technique that has a whole host of useful applications, from practical tasks such as targeted EQ and compression to more creative sound design effects.
Splitting a signal into mid and side channels, Dime [ms] lets you insert up to four VST3/AU plugins from your library into each channel for targeted processing, displaying the mid/side balance in real-time on its stereo width visualizer.
Solo buttons allow you to audition the processing being applied to each channel, and volume compensation can be applied with input/output gain controls. Up to 10 parameters from any hosted plugins can also be mapped to macros on Dime [ms]’s interface. Time Off Audio tell us that the plugin’s efficient architecture means it introduces no added latency and is light on your CPU.
“From mixing and mastering to post-production and sound design, Dime [ms] lets you create your dream mid/side processing chains with ease,” reads a statement from Time Off Audio. “No complicated signal routing, no phase issues, no stress.”
Available in AU/VST3/AAX formats, Dime [ms] is available now for an introductory price of $/€19 (RRP $/€29).
