The home of so many in the music and musical instruments community has been consumed by fire. Friends and colleagues in the Los Angeles area, you’re on our minds this week; I hope you’ve gotten to safety. And we can’t mince words: planetwide, every second of this climate crisis now counts.

Ukrainian games house GSC Game World lost a team member in the front lines and had to face up to Russian disinformation to produce their blockbuster hit game in the middle of a full-scale war. They also packed their game full of Ukrainian music – including electronic music producers. Here’s more on the game, and […]

While the year draws to a close and much of the world is focused on holidays, Tbilisi’s music community is out in force in ongoing protests, fighting for Georgian democracy.

On December 24 and 25, radio will broadcast live from Gaza and produce a live-streamed exchange between a choir in Bethlehem and Hebron and one in Khan Younis. It’s an unprecedented live connection to a world whose violence has been shrouded in darkness. It’s also a way for live streaming to reconnect a Palestine divided across the West Bank and Gaza.

Virtual patching has reached a major milestone: you don’t need a controller. Using just your hands and natural gestures, you can now build up entire interactive worlds, connect virtual wires, tweak knobs and faders, and play virtual instruments in PatchWorld on Meta Quest. Combined with Mixed Reality, virtual physics, and support for OpenSoundControl and Ableton Live and Link integration, it’s a glimpse of how mixed reality and VR can work for music making.

Harper’s Magazine has an excerpt from Liz Pelly’s book on Spotify, and already we get another bombshell. The company conspired to farm out ghost content, often substituting for known artists, to pay out less to artists. That much was suspected by anyone listening to the platform, but the details are even more damning and far-reaching than you might imagine.

Living Labyrinth immerses you in the world of Danish composer SØS Gunver Ryberg’s music. It’s a spatial experience of a flowing organic dream world of deep listening and meditative interconnectedness. And it includes both unreleased bits and portions of SPINE, one of the more notable releases of this year.

Like something out of a (nerdy) magician’s library, Build Your Own Modular is a physical, ring-bound book that transforms into a complete Eurorack modular system. It’s both a printed instructional document and the thing you’re building — all in one.

Amidst the noise of end-of-year lists and Bandcamp Friday, here are two compilations rooted in the music scenes of Lebanon and Palestine and diaspora and allies, as well as organizing aid there and for Sudan and Congo.

It’s called “1.05.” But the update to this iconic free and open-source tracker is massive, with a new UI option, new built-in MilkySynth, new effects, and more.