Reimagining the synthesizer: Meet the Seaboard

The first instrument from UK music-tech company ROLI, the Seaboard is a reinvention of the keyboard with an organic way of controlling volume, pitch, intensity, and timbre. With soft, flexible keys, it’s designed to apply the control of an acoustic instrument to world of the electronic, while offering different sounds depending on where each is played. Plus the whole thing looks like it was designed by a less twisted HR Giger.

The Seaboard is due in a limited, handmade run of 88 this April.

A war to reclaim the sun in Mr. Gnome’s “House of Circles” video

Mr. Gnome: Madness in Miniature (El Marko, 10/25/11)

Mr. Gnome, the Cleveland-based rock two-piece consisting of vocalist/guitarist Nicole Barille and percussionist Sam Meister, has a lot of ideas. Its 2011 album, Madness in Miniature, tells an epic story that the band wanted to translate into some other form of media, be it graphic novel or film. They eventually scaled their ambitions back to a music video, which we previewed for you earlier this year.