Simon Wickham-Smith
Database
It is hoped that this database will house as many online resources for experimental music as possible. This is divided into seven sections: digital music, festivals, labels, performers, radio, shopSpaces and magaZines. An eighth section, links, leads to other sites where more detailed information about specific types of music may be found. Please send me any corrections or additions as and when they appear.
These pages are are still under construction, more links will come online as soon as possible.
Digital Music 
For the two principle operating platforms, the best set of software resources on the web are to be found at these Calarts sites:
For Macintosh
Christopher DeLaurenti's
software page An excellent source for PC users.
Mac users should also check out -
Max and
SuperCollider programs.
More and various types of software are available at the following sites. Some are freeware, some shareware and some, of course, you'll have to pay for...
machines
Shareware Music Machine
yahoo
Mp3...
mp3.com is an excellent starting point.
Liquid Audio and
Real Audio are also well worth checking out.
Audio Research Site
Eric Lyon's site for electronic and computer music. Also contains some of his own work.
Big Briar, Inc. (USA)
"Greetings from Bob Moog and the folks at Big Briar. We are a community of musicians, business professionals, and technicians who work together to bring you some of the finest electronic music gear on today's market. We draw on a long tradition of analog design to build instruments with great sound, musician-friendly user interfaces, and rugges, good-looking classic-style enclosures"
Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities "Where new technology and traditional scholarship meet." This center, based in Stanford, CA, is "engaged in the development of large databases of musical and textual materials for applications in research, teaching, and performance."
Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics "The Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics is a multi-disciplinary facility where composers and researchers work together using computer-based technology both as an artistic medium and as a research tool.
Center for New Music and Audio Technology (USA) "Promoting the Creative Interaction between Music and Technology."
Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (USA)
"CREATE serves as a productive environment available to students, researchers, and media artists for the realization of music and multimedia works. Courses are offered at the undergraduate and graduate levels in collaboration with several departments. The Center also serves as a laboratory for research and development of a new generation of software and hardware tools to aid in media-based composition."
Centro Tempo Reale (Italy) "Tempo Reale, founded by Luciano Berio in 1987, is a centre for musical research, production and education. Tempo Reale is supported by the Regione Toscana, Comune di Firenze, RAI (Italian Radio and Television Network) and receives also State funding from the Dipartimento dello Spettacolo. The activities of Tempo Reale focus on the production of musical works employing new tecnologies, research in areas including sound spatialization and musical signal processing in real time and the restoration and re-mastering of historical electroacoustic works."
Chinese Computer Music Association "We, members of the International Computer Music Association (ICMA), also participants of this year's International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 99, Beijing), would like to invite you to participate in the establishing of an international computer music organization for Chinese composers, scholars, musicians from every corner of the Earth. Non-Chinese professionals who work in Chinese regions are also welcomed. "
Collective JukeBox "Collective JukeBox is an open free audio "workspace", which is continuously open since 1996. It works as a "groupware" and offers a free use of sound-systems and internet-system, as public and working interfaces. Autonomous and evolutive system, co-operative and international project, Collective JukeBox is currently moderated by the audio community itself andis a kind of continuous musical and sound laboratory open to the public audience."
Creating Music Morton Subotnik's evolving site for "online music creation and exploration. Come discover fun and easy ways to make music!"
electronicmusic.com This site, full of links, software and extensive references, was set up in 1995 "to help promote and de-mystify the many aspects of electronic music".
GAIV (France)
"Le GAIV (Groupe Art et Informatique de Vincennes ŕ St Denis) est un groupe du Laboratoire d'Intelligence Artificielle de Paris 8. Sur ce site, vour trouverez des programmes freeware ŕ télécharger, la liste des membres du GAIV, les publications et concerts du GAIV."
Grame A French site involved in the development of software along similar lines to IRCAM in Paris. They supply a very fine MIDI program, MIDIShare, which is available as freeware.
Groupe de Recherches Musicales (France)
A repository of sound information emanating from this pioneering electronic studio. Almost all in French.
International Computer Music Association "The International Computer Music Association is an international affiliation of individuals and institutions involved in the technical, creative, and performance aspects of computer music. It serves composers, computer software and hardware developers, researchers, and musicians who are interested in the integration of music and technology."
IRCAM (France)
French-language site for the Institude de Recherche et Coordination Acoustic/Musique. IRCAM is situated in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and is the place where much of the most famous electronic music of the last half century was made, much of it under the watchful eye of Pierre Boulez.
Longplayer "A thousand year musical composition, it will play continuously and without repetition from 1 January 2000 until its completion on 31 Decmber 2999."
Lovebytes "An ongoing programme of commissions and events exploring interactive audio, digital sound synthesis, generative music and algorythmic compositon."
Machine Listening Group (USA)
"The Machine Listening Group is working towards bridging the gap between the current generation of audio technologies and those that will be needed for future interactive media applications. Our research includes new description-based representations for audio that enable controllable, compact and computationally-efficient sound and music rendering and presentation. We are also concerned with the application of research from psycho-acoustics and auditory perception and cognition to engineering solutions for new audio applications. These include 3D spatialization, virtual acoustics and computational analysis of complex real-world auditory scenes such as multi-instrument music recordings and so-called "cocktail party" problems. These new technologies are essential to new media applications which demand automatic browsing and access to content, as well as control over the production and presentation of audio information."
Steim (The Netherlands)
Steim is responsible for much of the research and development of instruments and tools, specially made for composers and performers in the electronic arts. The links and software pages are particularly interesting and, if you have a viable project for a new use for an old instrument, they may very well be able to help.
Symbolic Sound Corporation (USA) "Symbolic Sound Corporation designs, manufactures, and markets hardware and software for computer-based digital audio. They are the creators of the Kyma sound design workstation, a visual sound design language with associated Capybara multi-DSP hardware accelerator. Kyma is being used to do sound design for music, film, advertising, television, virtual environments, speech and hearing research, computer games, and other virtual environments."
Festivals
All Tomorrow's Parties (USA)
Angelica (Italy)
Archipel (Switzerland)
"Ecouter, sans divagation aucune, sans se laisser distraire par les 'bruits de la vie', est-ce encore e&acu;couter?"
Atlantic Waves (UK)
"A major festival of Portuguese music at various London venues."
Avanto Festival (Finland)
"Helsinki media-art festival"
Bang on a Can (USA)
"New York's legendary Bang on a Can Festival was founded by composers Michael Gordon, David Lang and Julia Wolfe in 1987. Dedicated to the work of composers across the entire aesthetic spectrum, Bang on a Can makes a home for musical inventors, misfits and pioneers."
Cabrillo Festival (USA)
Cathedral "...festival of internet music from five continents..."
Dissonanze (Italy)
"Dissonanze is the first italian event dedicated to innovative electronic music. A full immersion in a technological universe created by dee jays, visual artists and the protagonists of computer music of the last decade. Two nights dedicated to the lovers of a genre that fuses together entertainment and experimental music, digital and analogic, the best art galleries and the most important dancefloors in the world. "
Earational (The Netherlands)
"Electronic Music and Audio Art"
electroni-k (France)
Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville (Canada)
Göteborg Art Sounds (Sweden)
"classical improvised soundart beat"
High Zero (USA)
"The High Zero Festival is, as far as we can tell, a utopian festival of improvised music unprecedented on the East Coast in the last ten years. Located in Baltimore, Maryland, the festival is both a meeting for an inspired international subculture of players, and also a "non-pandering" mass exposure to an unusually wide audience for such challenging music. It isn't about stars or bands, it is about the most radical and stimulating improvised music we can bring together."
Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK)
Britain's leading annual festival of experimental composed musics.
Impakt (The Netherlands)
An audio-visual art festival.
Mission Creek Music Festival (USA)
MIMI (France)
"Mouvement International des Musiques Innovatrices"
Music Unlimited (Austria)
Musiikin Aikan (Finland)
Musique Actuelle (Quebec/Canada)
"Since 1982, the Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville is dedicated to promoting new musics of all genres (jazz, rock, contemporary, improvisation, electroacoustic, etc.). During its years of activity, the Festival has offered annually some 25 concerts in 5 days, featuring about 120 musicians from more than 10 countries."
Mutek (Canada)
"MUTEK is an annual gathering showcasing emerging forms of electronic music and the latest trends in sound creation. Its mission is to be on the cutting edge of innovation and to provide an environment for discovery. "
Norberg Festival (Sweden)
"A Nordic festival for contemporary music and art inNorberg, mid-Sweden."
North West Electro-Acoustic Music Organization (USA)
NWEAMO is "dedicated to promoting all styles of music using electronics - from pop and rock to music concrete and fully-scored pieces - and to putting electro-acoustic composers in the Pacific North west in contact with the international electronic music community".
November Music (Belgium/Germany/The Netherlands)
"November Music is an internationally orientated small-scale festival in three countries. The basis for the programme is "New Music", which is put in a broader framework with important links to other kinds of music. Besides the function of November Music as a stage for new Flemish, German and Dutch music (amongst others by an initiating assignment policy) the confrontation with the international contemporary music practice is essential. Such confrontation provides a stimulus for Flemish-Dutch-German composition. November Music presents every year projects which are initiated by the festival. Every year there is a CD with a compilation of some highlights of the festival."
Observatori (Spain)
"Observatori brings together a series of artists who share the same experience; an artistic journey. This Festival will hope to generate an open discourse that moves beyond the boundaries and demarkations of pre-conditions. By gathering together these artists, 'artists' in the classical sense of the word, we are unbinding its meaning derived from the post-modern period. We renounce that specialist and particularist connotation that, recently spawned, limits us artists by its definition of the arena of artistic intervention. To go around putting labels on each artist is to fix them in quadratic and critically arthritic boxes. To cage their creative labour into the performance of just one stereotype in a specific artistic medium (i.e. video, sculpture, painting, music, etc...) is to demagnify the possibility of their creative capacities. Added to this, the experience and interpretation of the receptive public, results in mono-directionalism. We ourselves, are looking for a more flexible and human approach that could internally generate a new code, to enrich the creative experience of the public and the artists themselves."
Other Minds (USA)
A festival of experimental music of all types, which takes place every March in San Francisco, CA.
Planet Tree (UK)
"The Planet Tree Festival is a tonal contemporary music festival based in London, presenting the non-commercial / high artistic integrity face of new musical sound, alongside ecological speakers. "
Safe As Milk Festival (Norway)
San Francisco Electronic Music Festival (USA)
Send + Receive (Canada)
"send + receive: a festival of sound explores current experimentation in sound through music, audio art, installation, and radio works. "
Sónar Spain)
"SONAR is the obligatory meeting point for an alert public, cutting-edge artists and the most influential professionals from the sectors of music and modern arts."
Sons d'Hiver (France)
Sound Circuits (USA)
"Sonic Circuits is one-stop shopping for the aesthete living in the electronic age. It showcases the latest (and, we think, the best) artistic uses of technology from a variety of fields. From the commercial to the classical, arcane to mundane, for gear-heads and neophytes, students and pros, Sonic Circuits promises to provide something to intrigue most people."
Sound Symposium (Canada)
"We have it all...world music, classical, drumming and percussion, dance, performance art, whales, The Great Auk, Harbour Symphony, visual art, The Fire Organ, folk, multimedia, lectures, workshops, sound installations, gala performance, interactive, experimental instruments, new works, world premieres, jazz, contemporary compositions, exhibitions, improv, theatre, vocal, radio art...". The Harbour Symphony, a perennial favorite at the Sound Symposia, consists of music written especially for the horns of ships in the harbor of St Johns, Newfoundland, where the festival takes place.
ThreeTwo Festival of New Music (USA)
New York festival of contemporary composed musics, directed by Keith Moore and Taimur Sullivan.
Time of Music (Finland)
Trans Musicales (France)
Toon (The Netherlands)
Ultima Festival (Norway)
"Ultima's aim is to reflect the most important trends in contemporary art and music, and fulfilling this is in itself demanding enough at a time when so much is happening in the arts."
Uncool (Switzerland)
"Festival of International Contemporary Music"
Verbindingen-Jonctions (Belgium)
Vision (USA)
Yogyakarta Gamelan Festival (Indonesia)
"In the last of 20th century and beginning of 21st century, Gamelan is developing nicely. In many countries of the world, gamelan art is living beautifully. Classical gamelan music (gending) living side by side with contemporary gamelan music. Gamelan has an urgent position in developing global culture. Gamelan groups are involved in cultural activities in many countries. So, it is very important for gamelan lovers all around the world to communicate with each"
Labels
Accretions (USA)
Marcos Fernandes' artist-run San Diego, California label: "where music is out there".
Ai Records "neue electronica"
Alien8 (Canada)
Ame-Ambient (Japan)
"the ambient music produced by AME aims to convey profundity of spirit to the listener by virtue of its very simplicity. AME was established in 1998 with Nagaya Kazuya as the label's central artist."
Annette Works (UK)
"A label set up to produce works which use a real time exploitation of electronics in a particular place at a particular time"
Anoema Recordings (Finland)
"Anoema Recordings is a Helsinki based record label delivering sounds of free improvisation, electronics and noise."
Antiopic (USA)
"Antiopic has been established to provide a viable resource for sound artists developing ideas on the margins of solidified genres. Focused on developing a space for dialogue to emerge, Antiopic is principally concerned with differing degrees of response to ideas of structure and ideology found in various compositional forms. Recognizing the vast traditions of musique concrete and experimental compositionŃbut not limited to themŃthe label hopes to contribute to and expand those sound forms, drawing the visible and invisible lines of connection through a myriad of styles and anti-styles. We hope to provide a repository for artists working with ideas and sounds that may have no immediate outlet or communal support system, and in representing these artists to break further limitations in sound organization."
Artifact Music (Canada)
"One of North America's most astonishing founts of new music."
Asphodel (USA)
Atavistic (USA)
"Atavistic's new Unheard Music Series lets you access the heretofore inaccessible. Hand chosen by writer, producer and musician John Corbett, the series scours the earth in an ongoing treasure-hunt for rarities from the realms of action jazz, creative music and free improvisation, specializing in lost music of the '60s and '70s, but leaving room for particularly outstanding items that fall outside those stylistic and temporal waters. Drawing from radio archives, private tapes, collections of rare vinyl, and all sorts of unreleased sessions, often working hand-in-hand with the artists themselves, the series will focus on filling gaps in the historical record and illuminating otherwise dark corners of the musical continuum. The finest, most startling new discoveries and favorite forgotten moments by both world renowned and barely visible artists will be excavated, dusted off, and buffed up. Sure to surprise and delight avid fans and new listeners alike, Unheard Music Series reissues will always come equipped with original covers and new notes contextualizing the music, and first-release packages will include rare photos, historical info and, where possible, comments from the musicians themselves. "
Audraglint Recordings (USA)
Av-Art Records (Denmark)
"Av-Art Records is a non-profit, publically funded Danish association for the promotion of improvised and related musics. We publish CDs, arrange concerts in Copenhagen with local and international participation and... produce this homepage. We hope it can turn into a medium of communication, exchange, discussion and mutual inspiration between people who are interested in these musics."
Bad Taste (Iceland)
Barely Auditable Records (USA)
Barely Auditable records is dedicated to releasing music which would otherwise fall into the oblivion of what is considered by corporate thinkers as "not commercially viable."
Beta-lactam Ring Records (USA)
"B-lRRecords is a label dedicated to releasing uncommon music with unique packaging in this age of mass production."
Biink! Records (USA)
Black Box (UK)
"The UK's most innovative independent record label"
Broke Bunnie Recordings (USA)
"Never forget that music is much too important to be left in the hands of professionals". A very good links page here, too.
BSI Records (USA)
Caipirinha (USA)
"re-inventing culture"
carpark records (USA)
cfom-music (USA)
"chock full of mercenaries/music for the third ear"
Charhizma
Chicks on Speed (Germany)
clearspot (Germany)
Col Legno (Germany)
"...the most significant label representing the world of contemporary classical music"
Cold Blue Music (USA)
Comatonse Recordings (USA)
"Comatonse Recordings is dedicated to the production and dissemination of non-categorical contemporary electronic music. Originally founded in 1993 as the private label for Terre Thaemlitz, then a New York DJ, Comatonse releases emphasize the use of audiophile and specialty vinyl. Today, located in Oakland, Comatonse also offers digital editing and mixing services, and ambient/electroacoustic DJ performances." An attractive site with alluring graphics and audio files.
Composers Recordings, Inc. (USA)
By far the most extensive catalog of American composed music available anywhere in the world.
Constellation Records (Canada)
"Constellation is a record label and loft space devoted to exposing music from Montréal and the surrounding region. We are committed to the independent production and dissemination of culture, and see Constellation as a work-in-progress striving to map out and consolidate techniques for preserving artistic communities from the levelling death machinery of corporatism. All our label releases are hand-packaged using artisanal techniques that aim to encourage (however meagre our resources) a network of independent artists, bookbinders, die-makers, silk-screeners and printers. We also host a live performance series at our loft space, and stage the occasional recording."
Cranial Fracture Recordings (Australia)
"Cranial Fracture Recordings represents music which fractures your skull; sounds that hammer and chisel away furiously at your head until they worm they way in and infect your brain. Whether it be constructing complex distorted beats to make your body move, or painting eerie and dark soundscapes of emotional intensity, Cranial Fracture Recordings wants to release music that you won't forget in a hurry."
Crawlspace Records (New Zealand)
Crippled Dick (Germany)
Crippled Intellect Productions (USA)
c74 (USA)
"c74, a CD label brought to you by Cycling '74, is devoted to works by artists the world over who use Cycling '74 software technology to make astounding music and art."
Cuneiform Records (USA)
Deluxe (USA)
DiN (UK)
"Purveyors of fine contemporary electronica".
Directions In Collaborative Audio "Our intention is to develop an independent recordĘlabel, releasing remote network collaborations developed within our open,Ęon-line community."
Disasters By Choice (Italy)
Disposable Thumb Recordings (USA
"From monkey to man and back again."
Domino Records (USA)
Donemus (The Netherlands)
Drag City (USA)
Drunken Fish Records (USA)
Dual Plover (USA)
earsay "gutsy, new, experimental music"
EarthEar "Over the past 10 years, a new breed of sound artists has emerged, exploring nature's voices, humanity's soundings, and the myriad ways they can be woven into creative new expressions. For the first time, EarthEar brings the these sonic visionaries together. Join them as they share their discoveries in listening."
ECM (Germany)
"directions in music and sound since 1969"
Electroshock (Russia)
"this is the first russian site devoted to electronic, electroacoustic, experimental and avant-garde music"
Emanem "compact discs of unadulterated new music for people who like new music unadulterated"
empreintes DIGITALes "electroacoustic and beyond"
Erstwhile Records (USA)
Expanding Records "The Expanding Records Website is an international on-line resource for information relating to the Expanding Records catalogue of experimental non-vocal electronic music."
Experimental Intermedia (USA)
Extrasensory (UK)
"Dedicated to contemporary sound art through the promotion of events and CD releases of artists' work." A very cool website!
FACT (Israel) An independent label in Jerusalem, one of whose goals is "to present and document the creative work that is happening on the street level, without being burdened with over production, and being tied to one musical genre."
Falçata-Galia (Serbia/USA)
"We concentrate on new music from these places, namely in the fields of electronic music, free jazz, experimental and avant-garde, progressive and ethnic music."
Fällt (Northern Ireland)
falsch An internet-only label from the Mego stable.
Family Vinyard Records (USA)
FatCat Records (UK)
"Purveyors of Quality Noise."
Far East Records (Hong Kong)
Fencing Flatworm Recordings (UK)
"fencing flatworm recordings is a leeds-based, hi-tek-lo-fi, micro-label dedicated to electronic and experimental musics using a home pc set up and cheap-ass CDRs"
Firework Edition Records (Sweden)
"Firework Edition Records moves freely between performance, music and the visual arts, and whose productions often reach a point where traditional aesthetic boundaries, limitations and concepts are eliminated. Firework Edition Records observe and document, experiment and ask questions, build up and tear down. They leave it to the listener/the viewer to take what he/she wants or simply leave. Firework Edition Records is a platform for contemporary sound art."
Fisheye (UK)
Forced Exposure (USA)
For4Ears Records (Switzerland)
Fractal Records (France)
"Communicative fatal sounds. A penitent carries a mystic bookin the left hand. A salamander changes colour, on the back one can read : where is Stetson City 1869. We do not want to give some jam to pigs, then we were called Fractal."
Freedom From (USA)
"Promise everything, deliver nothing". Hopeful, eh?
FreeNote Records (USA)
"Welcome to FreeNote Music - microtonal guitars and recordings. We are dedicated to providing the best in alternate-tuned music."
Fylkingen Records (Sweden)
The record label of the Fylkingen experimental arts society, concentrating on "electroacoustic music/text-sound composition and cotemporary chamber music".
Gaudeamus (The Netherlands)
Please check back regularly, more links coming soon.....
