Ash Lauryn, Detroit-born journalist, DJ, and creator now based in Atlanta, helms Beatportal this month and champions “Black and underground” music in all her work. Here’s where to find it all so you make sure not to miss it.

What if Conway’s Game of Life, a Tamigotchi, a Turing machine, a Game Boy, and a stack of ecology and philosophy books got mixed up in a transporter accident and then spawned… a new monome program? Well, it’d probably look like this.

Party like it’s 2002. By popular demand, Sonic Bloom has recreated the “vintage” color skins of Ableton Live 2, 18 years ago.

At some point, you don’t want another plate reverb. You want the experimental sounds of a phase vocoder combined with a physics model – like in this free Max for Live effect.

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.