Detroit is “not going to go along with what everyone else is doing” – and yes, for all that history, its scene has new artists growing. Here’s a look at an essential local label and community hub.

Arturia’s MicroFreak is about as much sonic exploration as you can get in any single low-cost synth on the market now. And now it adds more – a new vocoder.

From Reason Studios comes a new physical modeling instrument, Friktion, focused on bowed and plucked strings. The twist: it lets you push the envelope sonically, but never loses its cool.

Toybox is one of the best software modular designers out there, bar none – and easily must-have for the Reaktor Blocks platform. There’s a lot of stuff you can use for free, inside and outside Reaktor.

Legendary producer and singular voice Aaron Carl would have had his 47th birthday last week. It’s worth listening to what he had to say – in music and in words.

Think of it as an “I feel freaky” button for Arturia’s MicroFreak. In addition to useful automation and editing features, a new editor adds 4 random methods for making sounds.

A deep-dive, hands-on review of the boutique synth-sampler-sequencer hardware box that does it all.

In the early days of analog synthesis, you had to just turn knobs really slowly and imagine some planetary bodies moving around. Now we have computation. Let’s make ambient space music that’s accurate.

The KORG volca sample was always a compact, hands-on, grungy little wonder box. Now a major revision solves its biggest problem – sample loading – and adds a ton of new features.

There’s been a ton of off-the wall TR-707/808/909 news this month, so let’s gather it in one place. But the really important development is having a powerful SuperCollider drum machine, for free – and here’s why.