What if you could take the essence of a melodic 808 kick, a wavetable synth, the thick supersaw from a JP8000, and an edgy percussive synth and mash them all together into one magical lead-kick-synth? And then what if you made that free? Well, that’s just what Toybox has done with the Thump One. It’s the deluxe banana split covered in whipped cream dessert treat of synthesizers – and you deserve it.

We are awash with various dynamics tools these days, but don’t sleep on this. GMaudio is a deceptively simple upward compressor that you’ll want in your Ableton Live arsenal, as it can scale effortlessly from nuance to extreme. And it’s remarkable that it’s free; it almost feels like it fell out of an Ableton Live upgrade from a parallel universe.

Sektor is a beautiful Ableton Live freebie, a graphical tool for capturing bands of a sound’s spectrum and then looping and sampling them. Here’s a quick play.

In fragmented materials and process-based performance interventions, this year’s Atonal exhibition seems to breathe life into debris, a deconstruction of ruined objects. But most striking of all is the work of sound artist Rabon Aibo. With mechanical constructions, he makes the cavernous Kraftwerk power plant into an instrument – and makes use of gas canisters that resonate with dark moments in Kurdish and European histories.

This month has brought unimaginable suffering atop thousands of deaths in both Morocco and Libya. To readers whose communities and loved ones have been directly impacted, we’re thinking of you. As music makers and instrument makers, I hope we continue to connect to remain tuned in and responsive. News can be overwhelming, but we live in a world where connections – and action – is never far away.

Resolume continues its update churn – and expands its ubiquity as the go-to live visual tool. New in 7.17: a new recording panel with more features, expanded copy and paste, Akai APC Mini MK2 support, and still more functionality packed into its patchable modular Wire environment. Here’s the latest on Arena and Avenue:

Fresh, unexpected, unreleased music – we’re back with the regular series Post at Refuge Worldwide. This month’s special guest is Donbas, Ukraine native Moe Nagasi, our conduit to the Donbas-Berlin connection. Tune in 1pm local time (UTC+2 ) / 7am NYC time / 8pm Tokyo.

It’s the prototype that ate Chicago’s Knobcon. 4ms showed their new “Meta Module,” which lets you put patches inside a hardware module. The new module can run compatible VCV Rack patches with full hands-on and CV control. An image went viral, but without all the details. So here’s 4ms to get meta with us and explain exactly what’s going on.

It’s the no-mixer no-input-mixer. Developer Igor Vasiliev has created an experimental app that models the feedback effects of mixers and effects – and it’s capable of creating beautiful, ghostly sounds, all entirely in software.

Native Instruments has updated their Kontrol S-Series with a single big glass screen, redesigned buttons, and one big new feature – polyphonic aftertouch, for per-key expression. But those premium features will command a premium price, at $749 up to $1299 for the 88-key hammer action option.