Venezuela to Berlin, Hyperaktivist on MESS, love, and music community

From Venezuela to Europe, DJ/producer Hyperaktivist’s passion for music has been about connecting people as it has about connecting music. She talks to us about that process of community building, even in the face of resistance – and shares hours of music mixed with Mohajer at her side.

Elektrofon’s Klang is the gorgeous chord module that looks like the future

Sometimes, tech looks stylish in the way you’d expect it to look on the deck of a starcraft. So if Eurorack makes you think “old-fashioned,” meet the Klang, a chord creation module from Norway.

Get a powerful spectral delay, free, in MSpectralDelay plug-in

What makes a delay more interesting? A delay that’s combined with spectral controls. What makes that better? Getting it for free. MSpectralDelay is here – and looks like a must-download.

FL Studio 20 for Windows and now Mac, with Hell-freezing functionality

FL Studio aka Fruity Loops has hit a version the developers are dubbing FL Studio 20. At age 20, the software still includes lifetime free updates – and a bunch of new features, including freezing of audio, and Hell freezing over.

Listening, the secret of sound design: Francis Preve at Loop

To master sound design, no technology can top your own hearing. That’s the message from Francis Preve, who gave a gripping talk at Ableton Loop. Now we’ve got video – and more discussion. Nothing is sacred – not even the vaunted TB-303 filter.

The Touché, adding expression to synths – just in time for Moogfest

After years of somewhat similar wheels and pads and keys that wiggle, we’re finally seeing the ability to get physically expressive with sound in new ways. The Expressive E Touché is one of the most compelling cases of that – but to understand, you have to watch, and listen.

Speaking in signal, across the divide between video and sound: SIGINT

Performing voltages. The notion is now familiar in synthesis – improvising with signals – but what about the dance between noise and image? Artist Oliver Dodd has been exploring the audiovisual modular.

All the details on Moog’s new Grandmother semi-modular synth

Moog’s Mother line have all had patch cables. Now, the Grandmother adds something else – keys. Oh, and a heck of a lot of colors. We talked to Moog to get the inside scoop on the new Grandmother.

This Stylophone business card is the best music nerd handout ever

Short of handing out a self-built Eurorack system with your phone number scrawled in metallic ink on the back, it’s tough to beat this all-in-one working Stylophone as a calling card that says “yeah, I’m a music tech nerd.”

8BitMixtapeNEO is a glitchy hackable synth the size of a cassette tape

It’s the size of a cassette tape, has buttons and pots so you can play it as a handheld instrument, it’s open and hackable – and it sounds like 8-bit mayhem.