Isabella Hong – Looking Outwards – 04

For my Looking Outwards post this week, I decided to learn more about the album “Spicule” by Yaxu. Here’s the link to the article I read:

‘Spicule’ by Yaxu – Album as a live coding device on Pi Zero

Spicule is an album by Yaxu, also known as Alex McLean, that can be constantly edited using Pi Zero and the TideCycles live coding environment. This is not his first time working with sound and code – he has performed at festivals throughout Europe with artists Slub and Canute and has also helped pioneer the movement of live coding.

Yaxu’s music in terms of sound is all electronic, a very popular genre of music amongst today’s youth. His musical sound and method of creation align with each other and the audience that he is targeting at music festivals, another cultural craze amongst today’s youth.

I highly admire Yaxu for using code to produce his sound. It seems that these days anyone can create electronic music, presenting the idea that maybe it lacks a certain depth, meaning and intention. However, by manually controlling every aspect of the final sound, Yaxu demonstrates the amount of work that can go into producing this very popular sound.