Cool Hunting

Monome
Since the multi-use controller Monome first came out a few years back, it's slowly gained a cult following thanks to its attractive and flexible design. If you're unfamiliar with the device, the Monome is an ultra-tactile, interactive and adaptable MIDI interface that takes advantage of open-source software to manipulate any number of musical parameters. With a pleasing grid-based design, the programmable buttons function as...

The History of Sampling
The History of Sampling is a visual map compiling the history of music sampling from the jazz greats through the latest hip hop sampling, and everything in between. The interface is pretty impressive, it's all an interactive timeline and you can mouse-over albums to see the links between them. It hosts an incredibly impressive amount of data, and equally impressive user interface. via Data...

Audioscrobbler: Musical Match-making
There are all sorts of match making sites out there, but few of them really work well. The best ones take very specific information in to account. But who wants to enter all sorts of specific information? Audioscrobbler finds matches based on music listening preferences. It sits in the background of your music player, so there's not extra work for you. Thanks Scott!...

J. Howells Werthman: We Are Making Plans
J. Howells Werthman (JHW), a brooklyn native and co-founding member of the Nuclear Family music collective, recently released his first solo album We Are Making Plans. Taking advantage of Nuclear Family's "extensive community of music makers and artists, guys we've been doing shows with for years," the result carefully crafted album features a curated list of guests that proves hip hop lives on. Although...