We are excited to announce VT Audio Editions, a new venture that we've been working on for the last few months. Curated by VT audio art and music don Neil Wiernik, the project will program an ongoing series of releases that sit outside the standard EP and single format. Neil's concise mission statement for the project:

Focusing on the aural art genres that we have featured from the very start of our publication, VT Audio Editions invites artists to create a longer piece of audio/music content between 20 and 60 minutes in length. These submissions could be a composed work, a live studio session or a concert recording. Each Audio Edition will include a statement and biographic information on the participating artist.

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Our first release (embedded above) is by the Michigan-based composer Matt Borghi and it is a half-hour long, etherial, Lynchian soundscape with some fantastic sax work by Michael Teager. If this is an indication of the quality of the work that Neil will be programming, we're in for a treat.

Head over to the release page to download the piece and keep your eyes peeled on the VT Audio Editions page for future releases.

Don Miller, aka NO CARRIER, has just released a new, updated version of glitchNES. This is very exciting! For those not familiar with glitchNES, here's a brief introduction.

glitchNES is a custom-built Nintendo ROM that uses software tricks to create visual effects reminiscent of hardware glitches. Everyone who ever owned or played an original NES system should recognize these patterns, usually indicating that you need to hit the reset button and/or blow in the cartridge. Instead of remaining static, glitchNES encourages live manipulation of the imagery using a keyboard or external controller. Modifiable parameters include direction of movement, color, pattern, speed, and more.

Here are a few of my past experiments with v0.1.

Version 0.1 was a good start, but the concept is much more fully realized in v0.2. In particular, the live performance capability has been greatly increased. This was always the most exciting aspect of glitchNES to me, ever since I caught a video of Don Miller generating live visuals for a really crunchy electronica show, and I'm glad to see that he has continued developing with this in mind.

Version 0.2 doubles the number of controls (it now requires 2 controllers if you aren't using the qwerty keyboard), and adds more graphics banks which can be swapped on the fly. There is also a tap tempo function that allows for some rhythmic fluctuation of the imagery. As with the v0.1, the graphics banks may be edited using a tile editor to customize the resulting visuals. While I recommend this if you are planning to use glitchNES for a live show, I had a lot of fun just playing with the default banks that come pre-loaded.

Hardcore NES hackers can even buy some specialized hardware and create their own physical NES cartridge for use in an original system (works for NTSC anyhow). Everything you need for this process can be found at RetroZone.

glitchNES is available for free download here. After downloading, you need to run the compile.bat file to generate the ROM (glitchnes.nes). In order to use the ROM you will need to load it into an NES emulator. I recommend Nestopia or RockNES.

Enjoy!

Editor's note: Don Miller will be leading a short workshop on NES hacking as part of the GLI.TC/H festival in Chicago. This will be held at the Nightingale Theater on Saturday, October 2nd @ 5pm. Ben will be performing a live set alongside Evan Kühl at the same venue a few hours later. A full schedule and further details can be found at http://gli.tc/h