It’s St. Patrick’s Day, so a good excuse to revisit this 2023 compilation of Irish experimental and electronic music back to 1960 — especially as the label has some updates from the underground scene recently. From handmade instruments to bedroom-produced tape constructions and a healthy interest in UFOs, get ready for the strange. “I wanted […]

With an unprecedented minimum of 450,000 people displaced in Lebanon, community-led efforts are again working to provide basic aid. These often overlap with the very music and creative communities I’ve written about here, in the country and internationally. And they can benefit from your support.

LOBOTIX is another reason to have hope in musical imagination. Even without speaking a word of Japanese, these are instantly some of my favorite tutorials. Here, these cover the spectral synthesis modes in Serum 2 and the modular capabilities of Bitwig Grid (and Vital and PhasePlant and more). And thanks to 2020s tech, we get her in the form of an anime character.

Roland is fairly quiet on this 303 Day, but in the maelstrom of terrible news, it was a relief to see the Japanese music community out in force. This is what we really strive for: a world where we can just make bassline noises all day. Here are some highlights, and even some free Max for Live love if you need some acid therapy.

Bandcamp is the first major platform to impose a strict prohibition of generative AI. The principles are clear, but how will it work in practice? And is this more symbolic than practically meaningful? Here’s a first look.

It’s Lucy and the football time with the music industry. Having led artists into a complete disaster with streaming, they seem poised to do it again, on a grander scale, with generative AI. Warner has a deal with Suno today, following Udio earlier this week. Peace for our time.

This is not granular. This is all sampler, unison. And so it sounds like things that even granular can’t do. Vara Osiria Belich is this week’s sound design inspiration, with her bonus gestural spell casting with gen-1 Leap Motion. (Remember?)

We don’t need another great reverb, let alone another great Valhalla reverb/echo. But we get one anyway. Sean Costello and Valhalla say this one is focused on transparency and realism — plus modulation and a bunch of echo modes when you want them. The now is FutureVerb.

In case you hadn’t been watching KORG software releases lately, here’s a secret: they’re suddenly awesome. New models are coming far closer to the originals, featuring more and more perfect recreations of the best of KORG’s digital and analog back catalog. Today we get some bombshells: the flagship KORG grand piano engine, but most importantly, 1995’s Trinity and 1977’s PS-3300.

Against the backdrop of AL.FESTIVAL, the Berlin festival centering music from the Arabic world and diasporic communities, we gathered an expert group to discuss liberating technology from some of its Western biases and exclusionary design. Now you can listen back (and read more), with artists ABADIR and Basel Naouri plus Ableton’s Dr. Laurel Pardue, as chatter ranged from critical views of futurism to ways software can mesh with Indonesian gamelan.