Real-time granulator Emergence spins incoming audio streams into rich textures – and it’s a free download, with inexpensive Patreon options available to support the author. I’ve been hands-on with it lately; here’s how to get more out of it.

It’s the perfect follow-up to 1010’s ultra-compact blackbox sampler and bluebox mixer. Now nanobox adds pint-sized synthesis to the range, with ultra-portable granular and wavetable synths – and we’ve got a first review from resident 1010 expert Andreas Roman.

Here comes the twist – in a year in which so much of the adventurous end of the electronic music scene was stalled, that dynamism was alive in Köln by way of Iranian diaspora. Timcheh was a window into where electronic musical inventors can go next, together.

Whatever you’re doing now, if you want to calm yourself and rediscover the love of slow production, watch this transcendent footage of David Sylvian with Ronny Drayton, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Holger Czukay, Jon Hassell, and Steve Nye.

Techno is just one angle – the lifeblood of music between Detroit and Berlin is a relentless underground drive that hustles harder. If you need some of that mojo now, here’s both a pay-what-you-will compilation and a free soundpack with the likes of Tyree Cooper, Sarah Kivi, and Eric D. Clark.

It’s next-level chaos – literally. The radical sonic exploration of the original Softpop by Peter Edwards and Bastl has been massively expanded into a new modular analog synth and sound processor. In a chaotic universe, here’s the kind of unpredictability you want to swallow whole — rather than the other way around.

Poppy pianos, house keys, lofi stuff, and tweakable racks are all yours for free for Ableton Live in the just-released Foundation: Keys by Abletunes.

The plug-in recalls the 1930s experiments of Maurice Martenot – and it comes with buttons to add chains and a pillow.

The chalk is underwater, screaming like a chattering alien. Or that’s how it sounds through a hydrophone. Enter the weird world of some of Richard Devine’s field recordings – then grab the sounds for your own Creative Commons-licensed creations.

It’s another winter of tough commercial pressures and pandemic limits on gathering. But Hong Kong Community Radio – and now CFK Radio – provide some shining examples of how to create new spaces for far-out sounds.