Why Mr NightRadio and WarmPlace is where the boundaries of mobile music are being pushed back

I started thinking about this piece when I saw the video above and realised that actually the boundaries of mobile music were being quite firmly pushed back by the work that Mr NightRadio is doing. The Quantum DJ is clear proof of just that. It’s a unique device and in fact one that I’ve been waiting for this year.

Just the fact Alex is making hardware as well as maintaining his already excellent software is impressive, but when you actually look at what Alex has done in software and hardware you start to realise that this is where the boundaries really are. Let’s talk about why.

We’ll start with SunVox. I remember when SunVox first started. I remember using it on my Palm OS Treo 650, then on a Dell Axim running Windows Mobile OS. Of course it came to iOS and Android, and it runs on desktop platforms too. SunVox keeps moving forward and even now is in beta again.

It has to be said that there are very few modular apps that can say that they run on so many platforms, and SunVox just gets better and better. I’d like to say that there are only a handful, but I’m not sure that there are even that many.

But SunVox is just the start. There’s all of Alex’s other apps to consider, for example, PixiTracker (+ the 1 bit version), PixelWave, SpectrumGen, SoundFields, and Nature Oscillator. Those are the ones that I’m not going to talk about (but they’re all worth checking out actually).

But there are a couple of apps that do require a little more attention. PhonoPaper and Virtual ANS. Both of these are just incredible apps. Unique and brilliant and capable of taking your sound to completely new places. I used Virtual ANS to complete a track called “Probably get the tube” which I wrote for the Cities and Memories project “The Next Station”. I used it to sonify old pictures of Regents Park Underground Station, and it did an awesome job.

These apps are amazing and, as I said before, they’re pushing the boundaries of the world of mobile music. Which brings me to this video, of SunVox and PixiScope.

PixiScope is a library for the PixiLang language, which itself was used to produce PixiTracker. How awesome is that?

So what am I getting at? This little multi-platform ecosystem is really going places in a very quiet and unassuming way, and that’s amazing in itself. If you’re not aware of what Mr NightRadio is up to, then now is the right time to acquaint yourself.