Cmon, get down: Chuck D and Flavor Flav have resurfaced to deliver an all-Public Enemy album again, following the all-star guest appearances of their last outings. And they deliver a fiery critique of society, racist government, Big Tech, AI and chatbot love affairs, ageism, and the (CBS-owned) 1973 Yankees. But hip hop, OG hip hop, is here to save us, just like it saved those damned Yankees and the Bronx. This summer needed this release, and it’s right now pay-what-you-will on Bandcamp.

Sometimes, Roland gives us predictable things. Sometimes, the company decides to digitize the handpan for an electronic hand percussion instrument that can also make gamelan and singing bowl sounds, pretty environmental noises, and function as a Bluetooth speaker.

Stewart Copeland went from The Police to prolific composer, but perhaps no score was as beloved as Spyro the Dragon for PlayStation. Those sounds have now been revived in community-led, free libraries that run on all sampling platforms, along with some theory and composition lessons. It can instantly improve your mood–and it all began with Stewart playing, dying, and respawning in the game.

Soundtoys is supporting LGBTQIA+ communities by giving 100% of every purchase today and tomorrow, June 25th and 26th, to Lambda Legal. Here’s more on that organization, and in case you are going on a shopping spree for yourself for charity, a look back at the latest tips and resources on Soundtoys stuff on CDM.

AAS’ Lounge Lizard EP-5 refreshes one of the definitive electric keyboards in software with a redesigned physical modeling core for tine and reed instruments. What sets this particular plug-in apart is deep modeling and diverse presets, which can take the instrument way beyond the lounge. Yes, it can be an accurate electric keyboard, but it can also imagine new keyboard instrument sounds that you’ve never heard before.

Quick: when was the last time when you just messed with a synthesizer knobs and played with waveforms for the sheer joy of it? The new soft synth from GForce dumps all the algorithms and black-box elements of FM in favor of the visceral pleasure of messing around with sound. It’s not another historical emulation. It’s an FM playground.

cables.gl, the stunning, free, and open-source media creation environment for visuals and sound, is back with its June update. The Web-powered, Web-or-offline tool is faster, editing is easier, it’s more future-proof and reliable, and they’ve updated their roadmap for what they envision this to be. Even alongside other tools, it’s great to patch like this on the Web.

Splitting open the ordinary into sublime imaginations, this compact gem from Cairo’s ZULI bursts at the seams. A melodic fragment, tapping in a field recording, a dialog, a street argument–everything gets unfolded into another unseen dimension. It might be the musical pause you need right now, and hey Berlin, ZULI is live tonight (as am I) so there’s a chance to catch this energy in person.

Torso Electronics S-4 already looked compelling – hard-core granular sampler hardware just when that genre needed a boost. But we were waiting on the 2.0 OS to deliver on that promise. Now it’s here, with macros, scenes, varispeed recording, unlimited sample length, dynamic modulation, and more.

Barry Vercoe, composer and music scientist, founded MIT’s electronic music efforts and helped shape the Lab’s efforts in digital synthesis and machine listening and learning. But his biggest impact came outside the academy: as the inventor of Csound, he took the original innovations of Max Mathews and made them accessible to everyone. The live coding scene that followed has transformed the practice of coding sound into a new form of musical performance.