The Northern Hemisphere’s darkest days make a good scene for music, whatever your spiritual/religious persuasion. So here we have some gorgeous sounds in this holiday week.

Novation packed new sounds – and 43 new wavetables – into an update for their flagship Peak synthesizer. Sound designer Patricia Wolf writes to share how she approached making some of those new sounds.

From the mint-and-hot-pink labels to the wobbly pitch and effects, make no mistake: Dreadbox are teasing their upcoming Hypnosis with retro synthwave fetishists in mind. And from the sound, we’re okay with that.

Unconfirmed and unofficial images identified as KORG volca modular and volca drum are circulating across social media channels today, after first appearing on Reddit.

It’s the shortest day of the year and first astronomical day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere. Don’t fight it. Embrace all that darkness – with this transcendent album full of drones, made in the free VCV Rack modular platform.

Nothing brightens midwinter like music. So the warm glow of nd_baumecker’s mixing is something special. The delayed download is out now from Ostgut Ton, the label associated with Berghain and Panorama Bar.

If DJing originated in the creative miuse and appropriation of hardware, perhaps the next wave will come from DIYers inventing new approaches. No need to wait, anyway – you can try building this scratch controller yourself.

So many questions. Someone decided to encase their Electro-harmonix Big Muff Pi Distortion / Sustainer in concrete, and now wants to/is forced to get rid of it.

It was the worst of times, it was … the worst of times. The Internet and social media has doled out hate and trolls, democracy-crushing propaganda and tribalist fragmentation. But then, an Internet Christmas miracle happened.

Live coding environments are free, run on the cheapest hardware as well as the latest laptops, and offer new ways of thinking about music and sound that are leading a global movement. And one of the leading tools of that movement just hit a big milestone.