Drift is a friendly, MPE-ready, hardware-inspired synth that’s now included in Live 11.3. Since anyone with Live 11 – even Live Lite users – will get it free, let’s go straight to the source to understand the instrument. We took the chance to talk to Marc Resibois, the instrument’s creator, about how Drift was developed – and get his tips on sound creation and some of the sound features you might otherwise miss.

Sound recordist, producer, audiovisual producer, and modular experimentalist Behrooz Farahani is spinning deep ambient excursions live in modular. And sometimes there’s literal spinning.

Skating, like music, can be an escape and a DIY means to healing. “No ComplY” is a new compilation from Arabic- and African- region artists benefiting children in Gaza. They’ve just lost their skate park, but there’s hope – and a call for your help.

Expander MK2, the second-generation effects box from Black Corporation, packs loads of analog and classic digital effects into a single epic processor, covered in controls and with a dedicated routing matrix. Here’s a first look.

It’s the other West Coast – but one that until recently got far less play in the broader modular world. Now, the folks at Random*Source are shipping years of work (including the involvement of creator Serge Tcherepnin himself) in a Eurorack module. It’s called the GTO, and behind a simple panel lurks a wild amount of possibilities. Real Serge in Euro. GTFO.

It’s 404 Day – in the more-overlooked of the Roland-themed faux holidays! And what way better to celebrate than with some sound tips from CDM editor-at-large David Abravanel. They add to the evidence that the SP-404MKII is capable of way more than lo-fi beats, just in case you weren’t already among the converted.

News cycles tend to move from crisis to crisis – ignoring what happens as crises deepen. Artists of Turkish, Syrian, and Kurdish heritage deserve more attention in Berlin and Germany generally, so today is a great time for some music, awareness, and action as areas impacted by last month’s earthquake still urgently need support.

Emergence, Daniel Gergeley’s gorgeous granular plug-in, has reached a 1.0 milestone with tons of new features. The additions appear well worth the $20, but the 0.3 release is still available free/pay-what-you-want. Here’s a look at what this does, with demos.

The runs-on-any-OS modular music studio got a major 2.1 update this week, with better high-res graphics, a new keyboard, and more. It’s a synth. It’s a tracker. It runs on Raspberry Pi so you can make your own mobile music hardware. It’s stupidly good – and those keys make it easy to jam with on the go. SunVox is a bright music maker even in hard times.

Today as the United States celebrates Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is another opportunity worldwide to reflect on Black identity in music and BIPOC and marginalized roles in music generally. Here’s some reading, including the sometimes challenging relationship between Hip Hop and King.