This is the way: SynapseRack is a fully customizable, layer-based live visual tool, complete with modular nodes and HAP and MIDI support. Now in beta, it costs ¥12,000 for a full version – just over US$80 – plus a very workable free version with no watermarks.

Choosing an original is always rewarding. One of the reasons we’ve grown to love loopop is that he’s not an “influencer” – his video reviews are manuals, tutorials, and sound design guides come to life. So it’s worth watching the full Oberheim OB-X8 video even if you’re not in the market – because it’s full of sound design tips you can apply to other instruments, even free software modulars and synths.

As expected, media tech giant Avid is ending its life as a NASDAQ-listed public company and selling to private equity, in a $1.4 billion all-cash acquisition by STG.

“Piano” is bookended by sketches on a partly-ruined piano in a war zone – messages over an army radio heard crackling in the background. In between, there is the warmth of a 1920s German instrument in the artist’s Kyiv flat and grandmother’s house before the war. Ukrainian artist John Object is now living mainly as PFC Timur Dzhafarov, deployed to the front. In sounds, images, and words, he has opened up about what that reality means.

“You’re gonna need a bigger boat?” This should qualify – a whopping 208HP with 4 zones, ready-to-run (just add modules), 7U, with the 1U rail containing a bunch of utility goodies preinstalled. It’ll cost you, of course, but Make Noise has made a case to eat Chicago. And it still has a handle and a cover that fits over cables, so you can patch up and lug it to the gig in Chicago, too.

Listening Parties are a new feature on Bandcamp that do what it sounds like they do. Play your release, talk to fans, and let folks buy the album.

Don’t miss this latest LP on Kampala, Uganda’s Hakuna Kulala, as Berlin-based Ziúr takes on a dream roster of international collaborators. In perpetually shifting, explosive rhythms and organic percussion, a fully-blurred hybrid of experimental jazz and club roots, it has plenty to say about the world around in its violence and chaos.

#808day has become a predictable annual event, a content churn in the lazy days of summer. That is, predictable except for … the machine’s original manufacturer, Roland. I’m sure precisely no one had “custom BMX bike” on their bingo card. Here we go.

The Playdate looks at first like a curiosity – a black-and-white pocket game system with a crank, from Teenage Engineering and Panic. But now as it starts to get into the world, it’s proving itself as a beautiful mobile instrument, especially with developer Orllewin making everything from samplers to effects pedals and recorders.

Bandcamp Friday pick. Beirut’s stellar label System Revival earlier this year put together a must-hear compilation of music with a who-who of Lebanese and international artists. And if you slept on it before, now’s the chance – made more poignant by the anniversary this week of the Beirut blast.