Roland just dropped a huge update for their SP-404 MKII, with a bunch of new features for playing and processing sound – including TR-REC step sequencing. Here’s your guide, if you’re lucky enough to have one of the units.
Music
The insanely tiny Teenage Engineering TX-6 now records and connects and makes more sense
It’s the ultimate music gear you can swallow. Sorry, make that carry in your pocket. And now the TX-6 starts to make more sense.
Atari, at 50, leaves a legacy of electronic imagination in visuals and sound
It’s official: video games, or certainly their leading icon Atari, have crossed the half-century landmark. But maybe that’s why the aesthetics of some of Atari’s earliest greats now sound newly fresh – not only retro, but as something elemental no deep in music, art, and culture.
Check this fanciful “old-school” retro tracker hardware and a cute groove
“Picked up this machine at a local garage sale. The owner said he picked up in the 90s and it was not working. Poking around and fixing the power board, it fired up and it turned out to be a tracker sampler. Looks very similar to a modern tracker?”
Weddell seal vocalizations are cooler than your synthesizer, and we’re still learning more
When it comes to chilly polar sounds, it’s tough to top the incredible Antarctic Weddell seal. These creatures live in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth, above and below sea ice – and scientists are discovering more and more about their audible and inaudible vocalizations.
Terje Isungset makes musical instruments out of carved Arctic ice
Acoustic instruments we think of largely in wood, string, gut, metal. Terje Isungset has spent decades making music out of ice.
Cherry Audio Voltage Modular software hits 1500 modules, adds exotic vintage Moog-style tools
It’s the unsung software modular platform – Voltage Modular has an eminently usable interface and now some 1500 modules. And now a bunch of rare Moog-derived effects, oscillators, filters, and vocoder they created with MRB arrive where they belong: natively in the Voltage Modular platform.
Trace the Black roots of disco, house, and techno in videos and reading – summer school is in
What a week – the Juneteenth commemoration in the US, Chicago house music interest trending as it’s repurposed for new big-name pop, and the death of disco legend Patrick Adams. Every day is a good day to know your roots, so let’s do this.
Hard as queer: Brutal Gegen releases and videos capture a party that’s defiant as ever
Forget for a second industrial and techno and “queerness” as social media fashion and commodity. Don’t even worry if you particularly like the music on this EP. Berlin’s Gegen remains a bastion of opposition to norms – and in spite of that, perhaps its greatest feat has managed to be successful anyway.
Free monosynth BLEASS Monolit for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad
It’s free, lightweight, simple, and clean – but make no mistake. Monolit can get big with sound, with FM, massive unison up to 7 voices, filter drive, and plenty of modulation.