It’s 909 Day again, and a moment to reflect on the beauty of Tadao Kikumoto’s rhythm composer masterpiece. HAND CLAP. Let’s RIDE.

AlphaTheta, the company that DJs will probably never stop calling “Pioneer,” has a major update for their flagship deck. It starts to make the CDJ-3000 seem more like a foundation for this: expanded media access, online connectivity, and some welcome usability, reliability. and sound improvements.

Piers Headley’s Music for Toilets is an unsung masterpiece, a cheeky environmental imaginarium that once played on loop at Berlin’s Fisch Labor. And now, thanks to Tresor Records, it’s coming to you.

Apple’s MacBook series has had sensors in the hinge since 2019. One developer, Sam Henri Gold, decided to put that to use, first transforming the hinge into a creaking door, and next a playable Theremin.

Ahemdou Ahmed Lowla is on the move. Breaking out across Europe for the first time in 2019, I caught up with the Mauritanian WZN superstar last month. Hearing his music will change how you think about keyboards — and new stuff is on the way.

Ewan Bristow, the indie underground developer of free and inexpensive effects, has done it again. LOCD uses phase locking for brain-splitting distortions and spectral sound design. And you can’t put a price on that — so Ewan didn’t.

Ableton just quietly dropped updates to its iOS app Note and mobile hardware Move, with still more on the way in Move beta. They didn’t talk much about either with the focus on the public beta for their flagship Live, so — let’s talk about Move and Note!

Ableton Live 12.3 hits public beta today, with stem separation and Splice integration, the ability to bounce groups as well as paste bounced audio, there’s a redesigned Auto Pan-Tremolo effect, and you get some new MIDI Tools and Pack updates, plus some extras you might miss like, finally, A/B parameter changes in devices. Oh, and Push has an all-new layout and more. Here’s what’s new.

Baby Audio has built a software drum machine. And it feels like hardware — tweakable, bendable, hackable, hybrid hardware. Tekno is like a blend of different classic machines combined into its own, hard-hitting personality. I’ve been cooking up a free, CDM-exclusive collection of kits and MIDI patterns, including some reimagined classics.

Sure, the tariffs and shipping are a mess, but — you can still find some fantastic gear deals at the moment. That includes new gear and new modules, plus some unique used deals and special discounts. Here are a few of the best.