This week's guest Pheek does it all in the world of music. He is a musician, producer, label owner, sound engineer, educator and much more. His discogs page lists 35 albums, over 50 singles and EPs, and more than 900 credits to his name. Hailing from the Montreal scene, he is well-known internationally in the world of electronic music, through his output, touring, and collaborations with many other artists. In the last few years he has moved to the country outside of Montreal, where he runs a studio, hosts musician retreats, provides coaching services, and continues to create new music.

There is a personal/professional connection with Pheek and the podcast, as the studio where I record the podcast was his own for many years. With his help and encouragement, the studio was transformed into the collective that runs and uses it now. In our conversation, Pheek gives some history and context to the studio, as well as his almost 40-year (and counting!) career of making music, and we talk about his own process and advice for producing music.

• Pheek: musician website | audio services website | linktree
• Towards the end of the episode Pheek mentions Yaeltex, a South American company that builds custom MIDI controllers: https://yaeltex.com/

This 6th episode concludes the first "season", if you will, of the Music, Movement, Machines podcast! It has been a pleasure to put these episodes together, and I'm looking forward to the next batch. I'm taking a little time to retool and make some small changes to the production, but overall the format will stay mostly the same, and I'll be back soon with more conversations with musicians, artists and researchers.

If you've enjoyed this podcast, please share it with others, visit the Patreon home (where you can find video episodes) and check out the accompanying "Music, Movement, Machines" newsletter at johnnyvenom.substack.com.

Thank you for listening!

Adam Pultz Melbye is a double bassist, composer, improviser, musical instrument builder, algorithmic designer, interdisciplinary artist, researcher... the list goes on and on. Perhaps most importantly, Adam is a wonderful human being who I am lucky to have gotten to know over the last few years. Adam joined me by video call from Berlin to share their journey from jazz bassist through their prolific and ever expanding career in the arts, technology and research, and some of the feminist and queer theoretical underpinnings of their current practice-based works and residencies.

• Adam's website is adampultz.com, where you can find links to their music, projects, research and publications
• Adam holds a practice-led PhD in music technology from SARC (Sonic Arts Research Centre), Queen's University Belfast.
• Music of Adam's current practice is concerned with feedback instruments, especially the FAAB (feedback-actuated augmented bass), which was designed in collaboration with Halldór Úlfarsson (of halldorophone fame).
• We talk about RAVE (Realtime Audio Variational autoEncoder), a fascinating (and fun!) framework for neural network-based sound synthesis and timbre transfer.
• Adam and I served with our colleague Raul Masu as environmental co-officers for the New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference from 2021 - 2024; during that time we co-authored a paper and created the wiki eco.nime.org, with information and resources to address environmental sustainability in music technology research.

• "Kin: Speculative Evolutionary Algorithms", which was part of the Speculative Sound Synthesis project at the Institute of Electronic Arts (IEM) at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz.
• "Queer Sonic Fingerprint" transdisciplinary research and sound installation at the Art Laboratory Berlin, with Isabel Bredenbröker.

As always, the video version of this podcast is available on Patreon, and the companion newsletter can be found at johnnyvenom.substack.com. If you appreciate the podcast please don't forget to subscribe, like and share!

Happy 2026! We are SO back. More snow, more ice, and more podcasts! After taking a much needed pause over the holidays, Music, Movement, Machines continues with new episodes coming out roughly every couple weeks. As always, thank you for tuning in, and if you know of others who might like to listen, please share it with them.

In this episode, I sat down for a conversation with my former PhD co-supervisor, Marcelo Wanderley. Marcelo is a professor of Music Technology at McGill University where he leads the Input Devices and Musical Interaction Laboratory. He is also the current director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, a multidisciplinary research centre that serves several Quebec universities.

Marcelo is well-known across the world of music technology, and especially in the area of musical interface and digital musical instrument design. His ongoing work, teaching, and supervision has helped music tech research evolve as a truly interdisciplinary field, and under his leadership CIRMMT continues to redefine what this can mean for the future.

Below is a list of relevant links and information about some of the things that we talk about in the episode.

• The Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT)
• The Input Devices and Music Interaction Laboratory (IDMIL)
• Guests continue to be closely affiliated with IRCAM and NIME, and Marcelo is no different. Fun fact: Marcelo Wanderley is the Most Cited Author in the first 20 years of the NIME Conference! (source)
• Trends in Gestural Control of Music (2000) is an e-book (originally published as a CD-ROM) edited by Wanderley and Marc Battier. It is one of the earliest sources of literature on gesture and interaction for computer music.
• Also mentioned in the episode: Problems and Prospects for Intimate Musical Control of Computers (2001) by David Wessel and Matt Wright, which should have been in Trends... but instead was published at the first year of NIME!
• Finally, Marcelo mentions one of the publications he and I co-authored, Stability, Reliability, Compatibility: Reviewing 40 Years of DMI Design (2018) as we discussed expanded musical practice (one of CIRMMT's four research axes).