Music
ZULI, as Swag Lee, turns Egyptian MP3 fragments into dizzying hip hop
It’s long past time to start talking about scenes in Egypt, Palestine, and elsewhere not just like some exotic foreign treat, but dead-center in the history of hip hop experimentation. ZULI casually drops his second Habibi Loops for free, and it utterly slaps. To quote one clip, “that’s sick, man — that’s dope.”
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Sampleslicer MKIII, the definitive real-time sampler looper slicer module
Live performance requires practice. And creating a truly performance-oriented module also requires a long process of iteration and refinement. Sampleslicer MKIII, the live sampling-looping-slicing labor, by Jan Willem (ginkosynthese), is the culmination of that process. And it just keeps getting better: today’s beta update, just announced, adds features like momentary reverse, non-repeating one-shot, and gate-triggered resets.
Peter Kirn - July 11, 2025
Gear Modular-Analog Music tech Reviews Tech
FL Studio 2025: Mixer add and delete, AI help, more plugins, Python scripts
FL Studio, the everlasting DAW that the uninitiated think is way less powerful than it is, just got more powerful again. And if you were perplexed by it in the past, it has a new AI-powered chat to help you out, called Gopher. The good news is, you’ll need help less, thanks to in-Playlist audio editing and Mixer tracks finally working the way you’d expect. FL continues to be underrated, overpowered, and seriously fun, so let’s take a look.
Peter Kirn - July 10, 2025
Music tech Software Tech
Reason’s classic ReCycle is updated, free, and more useful than you might think
Peter Kirn - April 2, 2025
Music tech Software Tech
Roland SP-404MKII power up: loop capture, Koala integration, lots more
Peter Kirn - April 4, 2024
Gear Music tech Tech
KORG’s microKORG, KingKORG NEO: vocalist, or Economy Plus
Peter Kirn - January 18, 2024
Gear Music tech Tech
This script makes endless looping samples out of YouTube
Peter Kirn - November 20, 2023
Music tech Software Tech Web
Molli is the quick iOS looper we were waiting for – and you don’t even have to hit record
Peter Kirn - May 16, 2023
Apps iOS Music tech Tech
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