How did the Minimoog take shape – and set the course of synthesizer and musical instrument history? Among many revelations in JoE Silva’s The Minimoog Book for BJOOKS, we learn how the synth’s early prototypes evolved into the instrument we know today. Read the excerpt here.

Eventide is in on the holiday gift game, too, with a giveaway through New Year’s Eve of one-knob signal separation fixers for low-end thump and high-end air.

Universal Audio also has their holiday freebie announcement, and it’s lovely – the Pure Plate Reverb, licensed for both native systems and their UAD-2/Apollo hardware.

Augmented Mallets Play, showing graphics of mallet instruments (one real, one synthetic), and parameter knobs arrayed around a central morph knob.

Harper’s Magazine has an excerpt from Liz Pelly’s book on Spotify, and already we get another bombshell. The company conspired to farm out ghost content, often substituting for known artists, to pay out less to artists. That much was suspected by anyone listening to the platform, but the details are even more damning and far-reaching than you might imagine.

Living Labyrinth immerses you in the world of Danish composer SØS Gunver Ryberg’s music. It’s a spatial experience of a flowing organic dream world of deep listening and meditative interconnectedness. And it includes both unreleased bits and portions of SPINE, one of the more notable releases of this year.

Oneiroi from Befaco is a mythical variety chocolate box where every flavor is delicious. It’s an experimental slash drone slash sound design treasure box. And now it’s in VCV Rack.

Like something out of a (nerdy) magician’s library, Build Your Own Modular is a physical, ring-bound book that transforms into a complete Eurorack modular system. It’s both a printed instructional document and the thing you’re building — all in one.

It’s a drum machine. It’s a sampler. It’s got a rechargeable battery. It’s got… some space inside the case. So hacker DIYDSP (Noah Vawter) added his own amp and speaker, modding the handheld with the self-contained speaker Roland left out.

Out: tiny milk chocolates. In: delicious Program Card code creations for the Music Thing Computer in the Workshop System. It’s a beautiful story of what happens when a small, focused community goes all in on an idea.