In difficult times, paying attention to music can be an act of humanity. We turn to music not because it attracts attention, but because we want to fill our ears and souls. From Indonesia-to-Mexico collaborations to resurfacing legends, Mongolian hip hop to rethought AI, David Abravanel is back with a personal set of selections to round out the year.

Creator Orllewin didn’t just produce a magical minimalistic modular in glorious black and white on Panic’s Playdate mobile system. There is beautiful music to go along with it – and an upcoming free port to Lua (meaning support for other platforms).

Want to fill your YouTube feed with basically all synthesizer legend Suzanne Ciani, all the time? Now’s a great time to click subscribe, as she’s uploading an incredible amount of music. (Eat your heart out, Aphex Twin.) Also, can we pause and just consider that she wrote an incredible composition for a beeping GE dishwasher?

System Flow for Reaktor 6 features a 32-grain, two-sample-slot granular engine for producing drones and textures – and it’s completely free. It was all born at Synthesizer Studio Berlin, a rentable studio full of classic vintage analog and early digital synths.

Teenage Engineering’s fecund design imagination has yielded inventions wonderful, ambitious, sometimes prohibitively expensive, odd… but can the company reinvent the lowly field recorder? And was the “field system” just marketing vision or pipe dream – or does it bring those pieces together for something genuinely musical and productive? We turn again to CDM’s at-large Swedish gear tester (and tester of Swedish gear) Andreas Roman for a proper review. -Ed.

Rhodes – yeah, that Rhodes – is giving away the V-Pan panning plug-in they’ve just introduced. The hardware-style panning borrowed from Rhodes’ Vari-Pan circuitry is worth adding to your arsenal as a versatile auto-panner. Week of Free continues…

Wolfgang Flür left a string of technological innovations, but if you need a moment of sublime chill in a chaotic world, look no further to the pastoral sounds that accompanied what was arguably the first electronic drum kit.

Week of Free continues: Elisabeth Homeland has updated its TouchMe freebie for Ableton Live. Grab a parameter, control it instantly with a MIDI controller – now with third-party plug-ins as well as built-in devices, plus other enhancements.

Rainbow Circuit’s Crush is a free instrument for Max for Live, combining FM and physical modeling into a unique, deliciously unruly percussion device. It’s such a joyous treat that the Hallmark Christmas movie practically writes itself.

“Words are missing to convey our outrage, our sadness, and our feeling of helplessness,” say organizers. Instead, Bethlehem in occupied Palestine joins Beirut for a live broadcast electronic music performance “Christmas in mourning.” Separately, artists band together in international compilations, outpourings of feeling in sound.