last week the Sonar festival 2009 took place in barcelona. the most obvious trend to observe was that there are much more live performances going on rather than simply djing, so lets summarize. Day 1 featured Tim Exile with a show entitled "we are the robots", where the musician was accompanied by an essemble of 4 robotic instruments.(video) later that day we watched french experimental hiphop producer Debruit who is also worth mentioning for his fine cut-up sound.

the second day got interesting when viennas Dorian Concept rocked the stage and got wobbly with Bombsquad (listern here) who in my opinion played the best dubstep-set at sonar... and it got really interesting when Ryoichi Kurokawa (video) performed an eclectic audio/visual show using four laptops.

the third and last day was one of the electronic performers. The Raster Noton showcase, featuring SND, Byetone, Atom™ and especially Alva Noto, who performed using a gigantic audiovisual live patch(max msp or homebrew i guess), was nothing less than cutting edge (video1-interface / video2). Furthermore you should check the sound of Lukid, who kept the dub-heads knodding in the dome.

At night the Animal Collective turned the stage into a big playground and brought psychedelic overkill. Followed by Beardyman (video), whose very unique way of performing is worth watching. Props also to Sinden form the UK for bringing some oldskool jungle to the sonar night.

listen:
dorian concept - sonar set
debruit - sonar set
lukid - sonar set

peaceout

Oh what a great week this was for us tech aficionados!

First off, the Nintendo DSi is out since yesterday in Europe, with 2 cams integrated (waitin for homebrew! yay!), bigger screens and slimmer design... check it out.

Secondly, Ableton Live 8 (Kompact's most trusted choice for sequencing and live performance) is finally out with tons of new features like thight Max/MSP integration, Live Set sharing, new warping methods and lots of other stuff... more info here.

this thread is supposed to give you some information about the possibilities to create music on the nintendoDS. as far as it comes to home-brewed applications you will need a ds card adapter like Edge, R4, CycloDS, ect.
here we go:

GlitchDS (homebrew, free)
Cellular Automaton music sequence with a really nice minimalist interface. you can load your own sounds in .raw format and it also has a visualization feature for the sound created, 8bit - style of course. ideal for IDM and noisy sounds.
developer site

RepeaterDS (homebrew, free)
repeaterDS is a free music application for the Nintendo DS that allows you to “play” a sample by drawing on the DS screen. The vertical axis controls repeat length. The horizontal axis controls the playback offset into the sample.
developer site

CellsDS (homebrew, free)
cellsDS is a free flexible, programmable grid-based music sequencer. cellsDS is six sequencers in one, with each sequencer being controlled by a user definable Lua script.  its interface is quite similar to the Tenori-On and Monome controller. latest version has a midi-Output feature
developer site

ProteineDS (homebrew, free)
homebrew scratch application. load a sound, set cue points, pitch, pan, ect. nice for cutting beats and a capellas.
developer site

KorgDS-10 (commercial)
A really nice adaptation of the legendary Korg MS-20 synthesizer. 16step, 2 synths, one drum sequencer and the ability to jam with friends through wifi synch.
developer site

Nitro Tracker DS (homebrew, free)
NitroTracker is a FastTracker II style tracker. it has many nice features such as: recording sound with the DS microphone, loading .wav and xm modules(no effects yet), midi via dsmi, ...
developer site

Nanoloop (commercial)
nanoloop is a simplified stepsequencer, addictve character of loop-based music creation. works on GBA.
developer site

Elektroplankton DS (commercial)
The game offers two game modes — Performance and Audience. The Performance mode is considered to be the more significant portion of Electroplankton, allowing the user to interact with the plankton with the use of the stylus, touchscreen, and microphone. Audience mode is like a demo mode.
developer site

anything missing? post below.
enjoy!