Palestinian-global festival and music platform Exist reached London this month at Cafe OTO, the latest triumph of adventurous programming and acrobatic work across borders and international challenges. Exist has always been abound reaching beyond boundaries, organizers say. This year, they have some poignant messages about what music can do to reach beyond the boundary between life and death. And they’ve shared some crucial thoughts and music with us as they reflect on that mission.

Groove Synthesis, the instrument maker founded by veterans of Sequential and Oberheim, has taken their massive 24-voice wavetable synth and put it into a desktop form.

What could make pedals irresistible again? New York-based, independent Electro-Harmonix is squeezing their greatest hits and multi-functionality into 9 baby pedals. And they look adorable.

Well, we expected this, though maybe expected it a bit earlier. Avid is adding what is essentially an Ableton Live Session clone to its UI, available both in the new Pro Tools update and in a free iPad app called Pro Tools Sketch. The iPad app, for its part, visually looks very much like Apple’s […]

Having at least one really great 3-band EQ in your arsenal is a very good idea. Pulsar’s w495 looks like a must whether you’re a fan of the classic Neumann original – or you’re still a novice (but more on why I think that shortly). Now through October, this plug-in is free for macOS and Windows.

“We evolve. Whatever I’m doing, I’m evolving – I’m learning more and more every time I do the passage.” Egyptian-American experimental legend and composer Halim El-Dabh is an essential part of the early history of electronic music – and is poised to see his works receive much-needed reissues.

From the wonderful Jogging House – the producer behind Seil Records (Hainbach, etc.) – don’t miss Sonic Beds for Ableton Live (or WAV download). It’s a fuzzy, analog, modular and vintage and broken cassette analog pack so good, you could noodle with it like it’s a never-ending album and use it to lower your blood pressure.

Arturia has a big update for their flagship polysynth, the PolyBrute. V3 adds 7 types of distortion, expanded effects routing and tuning, a new stereo layer mode, and more. Also, I’m sorry, you’ll again be hit with the Arturia drinking game – it’s another Arturia news item that mentions “Germanium.” (Maybe we should play a […]

One of the big features of Ableton Push is its standalone mode and upgradeability, enabled by the Intel-developed NUC platform. Over the summer, Intel discontinued that platform, raising some questions about where NUC was headed. Now, with Asus officially taking over NUC, here’s a look at the platform and what it could mean for Push 3’s future, with Ableton’s head of hardware weighing in.

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.