Trace the Black roots of disco, house, and techno in videos and reading – summer school is in

What a week – the Juneteenth commemoration in the US, Chicago house music interest trending as it’s repurposed for new big-name pop, and the death of disco legend Patrick Adams. Every day is a good day to know your roots, so let’s do this.

Hard as queer: Brutal Gegen releases and videos capture a party that’s defiant as ever

Forget for a second industrial and techno and “queerness” as social media fashion and commodity. Don’t even worry if you particularly like the music on this EP. Berlin’s Gegen remains a bastion of opposition to norms – and in spite of that, perhaps its greatest feat has managed to be successful anyway.

Free monosynth BLEASS Monolit for Mac, Windows, iPhone, iPad

It’s free, lightweight, simple, and clean – but make no mistake. Monolit can get big with sound, with FM, massive unison up to 7 voices, filter drive, and plenty of modulation.

Tooll3, VJ-friendly free procedural visuals, puts some sweetness in sweet spot (Windows)

If you feel like a kid in a candy store, here’s still more eye candy you can make for free. A little bit of patchable generative graphics, a little bit of rendering live and interactively, and a little bit of keyframe animation and editing so you can hold it together? That really satisfies. Check out […]

Arturia FX Collection 3: now with tube and op-amp distortion and more enhancements

It started as small collections of effects “you’d actually use,” and Arturia’s full FX Collection suite has grown well into that. I’ve been hands-on with the latest edition – here’s all that’s new.

CLAP is a new open-source plug-in format from Bitwig, u-he – do we need it, and who will use it?

Bitwig and plug-in maker u-he today are announcing a new plug-in format into beta, dubbed CLAP, for CLever Audio Plug-in API. It’s open and has features missing from the leading proprietary formats – and boasts some significant support at launch. So what will that mean for you?

Review: Here’s Moog Mavis, packing analog Moog modular essentials into a 24-jack, $349 box

It looks like another budget semi-modular, but look closer: Moog’s latest is a distillation of a lot of what distinguishes a Moog modular voice, with some significant twists (wavefolder!). And it can work on its own or as an ideal companion to other patchable instruments. Let’s break it down.

MPC standalone updates look tasty: retro and vinyl FX and amps, probability, ratcheting, workflow

You’re spoiled for choice in standalone drum machines. But Akai is leaning heavily on frequent updates – and there’s plenty in the latest MPC 2.11 release for all their standalone devices.

Hot visual patch summer: cables.gl adds character camera control, new physics, remote viewing

The free browser-based patching environment for visuals cables.gl has one hot summer update. New ray casting and the power to walk around and walk into walls.

Crank it up: A noble and elegant simulation of playing French Horn for Playdate

We truly live in a golden age of indie game development, for we have a breathtaking, achingly realistic simulation of French Horn controllable by crank on the pocket Playdate.