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iBand - reach out and touch

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Ten years ago, demonstrating my usual impeccable business sense, I applied for a patent for a combination cell phone/fax machine/word processor/makeup mirror/hair dryer. My reasoning at the time was sound: It wasn't enough that your phone should accomplish all of your business needs, but it should help make you look good too. Form and function all the way, baby.

Okay, so perhaps the hair dryer wasn't such a good idea. But you have to admit, I was on to something. Since that time, mobile phones have become nearly all things to nearly all people. To the entertainment world, this has been a major boon: Consumers can download music anywhere, anytime, onto their phones. Major artists, realizing the importance of reaching an increasingly fragmented (and distracted) audience, have jumped on the bandwagon by releasing exclusive tracks to cell phone providers.

Now it appears that phones can play a part in the music-making process as well. Witness iBand, three art students from Austria who have hit pay dirt with a couple of ditties played on little more than their hacked and hot-rodded iPhones. Their first "release," a rudimentary number described as a "jam session," was a YouTube hit when it appeared last month. In the video, the three members (Marina, Seb, and Roger) play two iPhones, one loaded with Moo-Cow-Music Pianist software, the other with the Moo-Cow-Music Drummer, and a Nintendo DS, with an interactive music video game called Electroplankton.

And iBand's follow-up, a full-blown track with Marina's vocals called Life Is Greater Than The Internet, is an even bigger hit. The video shows the students playing two iPhones and an iPod Touch (the units are customized with PocketGuitar and Moo-Cow-Music Drummer).

As a neat little throwaway, Life Is Greater Than The Internet is engaging fluff. But is it music? Well, it does have a melody, and lyrics you can even sing along to, so the simple answer would have to be yes. But perhaps the bigger and more important question is this: Are iBand really a band after all?

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