I’m loving the looks of the Beoplay A9 Speaker. Equipped with Airplay so you can connect wirelessly through iPhone, iPad, etc. $2600 available in the middle of November.

Nike Field is a nice little experiment promoting the Fuel Band. Check it out. It’s like having Ableton Live built into your browser. Go full screen and start hitting your keys! (Make sure your sound is on).

It’s safe to say NYC invented the Hip Hop thing. Great map, totally fascinating to see all the close ties. Via Very Small Array.

Stockholm-based Teenage Engineering are at it again with a new OS Update and a new product.  Can’t wait to try it all out on my OP-1.

The OS update delivers new drum and sequencer modes and badly-needed MIDI sync, plus cool MIDI modulation. Combined, it seems the OP-1 has really matured – sync alone removes a major obstacle for some adopters.

The new hardware is Opbox, a combination USB host / MIDI / CV box with analog sensors – and it has pretty plug-in modules and even custom-made shoes to match (below). The shoes may not be terribly practical, but the Oplab fits a unique niche in hardware I/O and DIY projects – provided it’s a niche that people actually want.

Amazing.  Musical shoes.  More exclusive pictures and info over at Create Digital Music. Thanks Anthony!

Long time family friend Paul Winter is gearing up for his Winter Solstice Celebration kicking off tomorrow in NYC.

For this year’s concert the six-time Grammy winning musician will be joined by special guests: Armenian vocalist Arto Tunçboyaciyan, Gospel singer Theresa Thomason and the dancers and drummers of Forces of Nature Dance Theatre. The program will include music from the Consort’s new album Miho: Journey to the Mountain.

Four Shows Only: Dec. 15 and 16 at 8pm, Dec. 17 at 2pm and 7:30pm

The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10025
At 111th St & Amsterdam Ave

This footage above is from the 2009 Solstice, which featured Russia’s Dmitri Pokrovsky Ensemble, New York’s Forces of Nature Dance Theatre led by Abdel Salaam, and musicians Paul McCandless, Eugene Friesen, Jamey Haddad, Paul Sullivan, Eliot Wadopian, Bill Cahn, Tim Brumfield, Scott Sloan and Paul Winter.

I ran into my friend Anthony from Hype Machine on a plane today, how random. Or maybe not so random! He just launched the Music Blog Zeitgeist for 2010. It’s a collection of the very best music of 2010 as picked by music bloggers. Featuring original artwork, full album streams, and DJ mixes created exclusively for The Hype Machine. More info here. It’s fantastic and I encourage you to check it out, if you like good music. And who doesn’t?

Playbutton: Why just play a record when you can wear it too? Very smart– I have a feeling this could be big.

This Google Chrome Experiment called The Wilderness Downtown is beyond awesome. Maybe the best piece of digital execution I have seen in several years. If I gave away screen shots, it would ruin it. Sit through the whole song by Arcade Fire, and enter your actual address for best results. Chris Milk, you’re a genius.  Also, don’t touch/click until it asks you.  Just sit and watch.

Check out this beautiful music video which was made using pyrogprahy (soldering images onto plywood) and stop motion. It averaged five hours of work per second shown.

The song is If I Was King by Dutch indie rocker and singer-songwriter Tim Knol, directed by an Amsterdam hotshot called Sverre Fredriksen. Making of available here.

The fact that these guys keep straight faces playing shoes is impressive.

Somewhere in a top secret location in Tokyo, break beat music duo, HIFANA (composed of KEIZOmachine and JUICY) discovered that Nike Free Run+ running shoes can drop beats like realtime samplers and no other. HIFANA eschewed a part of their regular break beat set up and hooked up the mixers and sound systems to Nike Free Run+ shoes. When bent or twisted, the ultra-flexible Nike Free Run+ drops different tunes and sounds.  Via Freshness Mag