The year was 1992. The artists were techno legends Underground Resistance. But this message from the Europe/Japan release Revolution For Change fits as easily into 2025 as an emancipatory manifesto for music and art.

An affordable bank of faders and controls is so sought-after that Novation could have just slightly refreshed Launch Control XL to some applause. But XL 3 does more than that: it’s a fully fleshed-out update with deeper control, more buttons and transport, more customization, a display, and now full-sized 5-pin MIDI I/O.

The 1010music story we’ve been following for some years just reached its dénouement. I’m holding a bento right now, and it lives up to the name: compact, lunchable, perfectly sized portions of everything delicious you’d want. It’s a multisampler, slicer, granular, looper, sequencing, production, mixing, FX box for $899.

Harvestworks, the storied arts center in NYC that has been a hub for electronic music and media since its 1977 founding, is making an urgent appeal. Cuts by the Trump administration’s National Endowment for the Arts threaten the space.

This is the Ableton Move update we’ve been waiting for. Ableton’s compact controller/standalone now gets proper MIDI implementation and slices up samples. Plus, you get the Auto Filter from Live 12.2. That’s in addition to other recent updates. Here’s your guide to what’s new.

Konstantinos Soublis, aka Fluxion, has been quietly pushing the boundaries of dub techno and experimental electronic music for over two decades. His latest album, Haze, represents a profound exploration of musical storytelling. For CDM, he breaks down that work track by track and dives into his thought process, then and now.

The 1982 Poly-61 was a grimy, cheap, raw-sounding quintessential 80s synth. It doesn’t have any of the star power of other Korg instruments or rivals from Roland and Sequential. So instead of a commercial remake, what we get is free. But it’s fantastic. It’s way better than you’d expect from a free plug-in. Meet the Full Bucket Music FURY-68.

We need to talk about how good Fat Bard’s game soundtracks are. Super Space Club rebooted Asteroids as “a lo-fi space shooter to chill to,” set to the St. Louis production duo’s beats – and that game is free right now on Epic Game Store. So grab that. But it doesn’t end there.

Developer Oliver Greschke (MoMinstruments) built an AUv3 iOS synth around the DSP from Emilie Gillet’s legendary open-source Mutable Instruments Plaits VCO. Elastic OSC gives you unique touch-based controls, plus new features that let you use Plaits’ sound palette as a complete mono/polyphonic instrument.

We’ve got physical modeling for instruments, so why not pair them with physical modeling in 3D objects? Anukari is the latest instrument to do that, with lovely-looking modeled visuals and the ability to run as a plug-in as well as standalone.