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.

Trans communities are organizing and acting, building on an ongoing long-term struggle. And it’s time to go physical. Trans Music Archive is working on physical editions of some terrific music, and they’re asking for your support.

The unprovoked attack by Israel on Iran this week has put civilians in both locations in the line of fire and the entire region at risk of escalating war. There’s a loud chorus from many of my Iranian friends, colleagues, and the artists I’ve written about over the years. Attacks on civilians and neighborhoods across Tehran and the country are being underreported, and artists are calling on us to spread the word.

Connecting with a musical voice isn’t always about hearing something glossy and finished. Sometimes, with the chaos and horrors around us, that perfectly-ordered kind of music can even cease to make sense. These electronic emanations from FAX, the Baja California, Mexico-based producer, are like a salve, like cool water for the soul.