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April 2024
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169 articles
- April 23
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- “It was just playing with Johnny once again, and that’s what it was. That was the energy of the creation”: New Johnny Cash album of unreleased songs has been announced, first single Well Alright streaming now
- "Like one of those novice chefs who puts steak, fries and spaghetti bolognese all on the same plate": Is Casio's 'recording studio in a boombox' the most bizarre music-making product of all time?
- SampleRadar: 537 free lo-fi sampler samples
- “It actually gave me more Hendrix vibes than Stevie vibes”: Watch what happens when you play a Strat through a cranked Super Reverb in an empty warehouse
- "Check your attic": Lost Lennon Help! guitar tipped to beat the current $2.4m Beatles six-string record at auction
- “I’m sitting on the bus aware that someone behind me is singing Do They Know It’s Christmas?”: Nik Kershaw recalls his “insane” encounter with David Bowie at Live Aid
- Walrus Audio’s feature-packed Monumental lets guitarists blend standard and harmonic tremolo in stereo for sonic adventures in “rich, luscious, warm pulsating modulation”
- Blackstar promises “a new level of sound quality, features, and performance” from updated HT MKIII series tube amps – now with CabRig IR tech as standard
- Fors launches its first plugin with the Tela synth: "Tela orchestrates a vast array of resonant peaks, intertwined to form a critical mass of sound"
- "I did a lot of research on Rick... I don't believe his audience is creative people": Jacob Collier calls Rick Rubin's creative manifesto "absolutely false"
- April 22
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- "Stevie liked a clean sound. He really didn't turn everything up until the last song": Stevie Ray Vaughan's tech Rene Martinez remembers his boss, friend and blues guitar legend
- “Stevie Wonder told me I needed to do 5 hours a day to get good at piano”: Super-producer Raphael Saadiq on taking advice from a legend, his love of Teles and creating musical history with Beyoncé and D’Angelo
- Kölsch: "I have this obsession with instruments that don’t sound very good. They have more soul than glitzy, modern-sounding VSTs"
- “I was gobsmacked. Mick Fleetwood called and said, 'We've got rid of Lindsey, would you play with us?'”: Neil Finn on joining Fleetwood Mac... but only after he'd gone through “the only audition I’ve ever done”
- "A guy named Alexander Dumble made the amps": Andrew Watt reveals the gear behind Pearl Jam's new album
- What's the difference between an instrument mic and a vocal mic?
- "You will make so much bad music, and that's absolutely great, because that's what lets you get to the good stuff": Tourist's one piece of advice for aspiring producers
- “Can movies like this please hire music people who know what they’re doing?”: Musician claims that an on-set photo from the forthcoming Bob Dylan biopic shows the star singing into the “wrong microphone”
- Someone has turned their John Mayer PRS Silver Sky guitar into an SRV Number One Strat tribute and it looks much better than you might think
- Everything DJs need to know about subwoofers: From how they work to where to position them for optimal bass
- "The biggest free music-making weekend of the year’: Learn to Play event returns for 2024
- April 20
- April 19
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- Does guitar weight matter? Thin Lizzy icon and Les Paul fan Scott Gorham thinks it depends where you're playing
- 71% of the top 100 Spotify artists in the UK are "self-taught", say researchers, but is that really so surprising?
- “I'm almost ashamed to be known as a DJ”: Dave Clarke on the state of dance music and the making of Archive One
- "We referenced The Cure a lot while making it": Stone Gossard reveals Pearl Jam's shared inspiration, and why he feels more heard as a guitarist on new album, Dark Matter
- Everyone’s talking about Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department lyrics, but what about the production?
- April 18
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- “Dickey was larger than life, and his loss will be felt world-wide”: Allman Brothers Band co-founder and legend of southern rock guitar Dickey Betts has died, aged 80
- “Sometimes life gives you opportunities to right some wrongs”: Mark Tremonti reunited with “My Own Prison” Les Paul nearly 26 years after it was stolen
- Dawesome's MYTH looks like one of the most innovative soft synths released in 2024 so far
- “We talked about synthesizers and sounds. She can get kind of nerdy and I really liked that”: Producer Carter Lang on his first meeting with SZA and how he ended up working on Kill Bill, her number one hit
- “We invite you to bring your vintage tonal dreams into the present”: Catalinbread promises modern twists on golden-era tones from the ‘70s StarCrash Fuzz and SideArm Overdrive
- "At first, based on the music and the riff, the band and their management thought it could be the first single… then they heard James’ lyrics": When Metallica and Bob Rock changed tack and gambled with Enter Sandman
- “Next-generation sound experience backed by decades of R&D”: Boss has big news for bassists, unveiling feature-packed ME-90B multi-fx, plus high-powered Katana-500 head and matching 1x12 cab
- "Computers are the worst thing that has happened for the performing musician": synth maestro Vangelis wasn't holding back in this classic studio interview, even giving a certain Yamaha synth a bit of a kicking
- "That new synth you all been waiting on, on its first album": Watch Mike Dean shredding the forthcoming Moog Muse synth in its first ever demo
- We asked for mixing tips and production advice from engineers for Adele, New Order and Queens of the Stone Age: "I can’t count how many times I've used demo vocals in the final version"
- April 17
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- “Why would that be embarrassing?!”: Jack Antonoff on how he feels about winning the Producer of the Year Grammy Award 3 years in a row
- "There are some incredibly, stupidly, ridiculously talented people who can't pay their rent who are writing these songs and it's incorrect – it's just wrong": Raye calls again for the music industry to act on its "evil" treatment of songwriters
- Is Spotify about to launch a set of built-in remixing tools? Reports suggest that you’ll soon be able to create sped-up and mashed-up songs from within the app
- “It continues to be bittersweet. Part of me is like, 'I wish there wasn’t a reason for me to be the drummer in the Foo Fighters.’” Josh Freese on getting the call from Dave Grohl to take over from Taylor Hawkins
- Issue 334 of Computer Music is on sale now
- "Kraftwerk were using a Bee Gees-branded toy drum machine. You really couldn't make it up": Yes, a band you considered at the forefront of synth technology used a toy beat maker. And a pretty terrible one at that
- Henry Mancini tribute album features Quincy Jones conducting John Williams and Herbie Hancock on the Peter Gunn theme, and Lizzo trading flute licks with James Galway on the Pink Panther
- "Twenty years in the making": Jason Momoa performs his first ever live show as a bassist – covering Black Sabbath, Hendrix, Zeppelin, Metallica and Stevie Nicks with Jack Black, Danielle Brooks and Rita Ora joining as guests
- April 16
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- How do you make an entry-level guitar that’s twice as good? Spend an extra $5 when making it, says Lee Anderton of UK gear retail giant Andertons
- The Fender Tom DeLonge Starcaster makes its debut on Planet Earth and the Blink-182 guitarist guarantees that it is “certified cool by the scholars of cool”
- Grimes: "Sound design is my favourite part of the recording process"
- Schecter declassifies its Black Ops series, revealing 6, 7 and 8-string electrics “engineered for precision and power”, and perfect for high-gain metal
- The world's most Googled guitar song chords and riffs prove Elvis has not left the building in South America and Ethiopia loves Blur
- "This track is an undeniable banger, but it’s also extremely weird": The borrowed hooks and unstable grooves behind Michael Jackson's Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'
- “Vintage tone and dual channel flexibility for the modern player”: Gibson expands Mesa/Boogie co-designed amp range with the Dual Falcon 20 2x10
- "I learned to play the bass, the guitar, and as much of the drums as I could by listening to Pearl Jam": See producer and superfan Andrew Watt performing Alive back when he was a little-known solo artist
- Win a residency at a top London studio and the chance to perform with Amy Winehouse's band
- April 15
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- "There are no safety nets in The White Stripes. It’s obviously harder for me to work with a 1964 plastic guitar compared with a brand-new one right off the factory line": Jack White talks gear and garage rock hipsters in this 2007 classic interview
- Dtronics is turning the free Dexed synth plugin, an emulation of the Yamaha DX7, into a hardware synth
- "He was mad, when he set it up… it shocked him how bad it sounded": Steve Albini has just given his most insightful interview on the recording gear behind Nirvana's In Utero and why Kurt Cobain's touring amp setup failed to impress in the studio
- "The first one's not necessary": Why Peter Green dismissed his greatest blues-rock Fleetwood Mac song as a mere intro to a greater piece – one that would later intimidate even David Gilmour
- “The Vintage VST has not been officially launched”: Behringer explains what happened to its missing free synth plugin
- “This is insane - all my tracks are double the tempo”: Grimes is forced to apologise as her Coachella set is thrown into chaos due to “technical issues”
- “You’re never seeing us again”: Blur’s Damon Albarn rounds on the Coachella crowd as they refuse to engage in a Girls & Boys singalong
- April 14
- April 13
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- Georgia: "My dad brought me into studios from the age of six - there’s a picture of me as a kid on his Juno on a Leftfield 12” somewhere!"
- "We got the job done, and we made a hell of a lot of money doing it": Words of wisdom from Wrecking Crew legend Hal Blaine, Neil Peart's "six favourite drummers"
- “Having too much stuff to start with gets in the way; there's too many options now”: Trent Reznor says that he and Atticus Ross like to choose “the best tools for the job” before they start writing
- April 12
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- Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge confirms release date for his new signature Fender Starcaster – and you could win one for free
- Faith expands mid-priced Nexus series with solid-bodied mahogany and exotic trembesi cutaway electro acoustics
- “In the flesh, he was earth-shattering. His style on every level was fantastic… playing with his teeth, his feet, and behind his head": When Buddy Guy rewrote the blues rulebook with a Strat and blew the collective minds of Clapton, Beck and Page
- “We prefer innovation over imitation”: AudioKit’s Nerd Synth is inspired by (but not a clone of) the Nord Lead A1
- “Cool with a capital C”: Eric Clapton’s Marshall JCM800 that rocked 1.5 billion people at Live Aid is up for sale
- Want to change your guitar's humbuckers and upgrade your tone but don't know where to start? These guides prove changing pickups doesn't need to be stressful
- "To be honest, I don't consider myself a guitarist, so I don't sit around and think about the whole thing too much": Noel Gallagher explains his songwriter mindset in our classic interview
- “I found his music about a year ago and I instantly became obsessed”: Olivia Rodrigo invites Noah Kahan on stage during her Guts tour to perform Stick Season
- “A timeless instrument crafted with precision and attention to detail”: Heritage’s new Core Collection H-575 is a Custom Shop hollowbody for jazz maestros with deep pockets
- “A call came into the office from Radio One, saying the band had just gone to Number 1 in the album charts”: Oasis celebrate 30 years of Supersonic with raucous live version from ’94 show at Belfast’s Limelight
- April 11
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- Antigua Burst is officially back in style as Squier gives four Classic Vibe models a cult classic refinish
- YouTube bass star Julia Plays Groove rocks out on new cover of Dua Lipa’s Training Season
- “If you’re okay with what’s going on, the audience is too; and if you’re not okay with it, then they’re not”: Julian Lage shares some essential advice for solo guitarists
- Best Focusrite audio interfaces 2024: the top models to suit your recording needs
- Is Shure's MV7+ the best microphone for podcasters, YouTubers and content creators?
- "I doubt we will have anyone breaking through in the kind of monumental way that The Beatles did, or like The Who or The Rolling Stones": George Martin correctly predicted the future in 1983. Or did he?
- Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s son, Moses, is “becoming an expert” in ‘80s synths, says his mother
- “Sounds amazing, bro!”: Eric Gales reveals he is playing custom guitars made by a man named Eric Gale! Watch the blues-rock maestro demo one with Mary Schwartz
- “We do not collaborate with Behringer in any way”: Tone2 Audiosoftware says that it had nothing to do with the development of Vintage, Behringer’s mysteriously absent free soft synth plugin
- “The magic is easily achievable”: Give your guitar a Hentor Sportscaster makeover and nail Moving Pictures-era Rush tones as Alex Lifeson’s Lerxst debuts the Limelight pre-wired pickguard
- Antares' Auto-Tune Pro can now do four-part harmonies in real-time with your MIDI keyboard
- Save up to 30% in Guitar Center’s massive Guitar-A-Thon: Big savings on Fender, Martin, Schecter, Ibanez and more
- “I was worried to death that this thing was gone”: Jerry Cantrell’s ‘Blue Dress’ G&L Rampage has been found safe and well
- "Everything was so heavy at the time, so I was like, ‘Oh, you know what? I’m gonna completely do the opposite’": How Pharrell's pop production defined the sound of the ’00s and beyond
- "It's a great synth, for sure, but $25,000 great? No chance": 5 stupidly expensive vintage synths (and how to get their sound for free)
- April 10
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- “Not just another preset pack”: Expressive E’s Phase Plant Expressive Suite takes Osmose, Ableton Push 3 and other MPE controller owners into whole new dimensions of sound
- Former Arturia V Collection developer releases Polaris, a fast and furious Android music-making app that embraces the trend for ‘DAW-less’ beatmaking
- Bernie Marsden auction date confirmed, with over 80 guitars going under the hammer, including Gibson and Ibanez electrics played onstage with Whitesnake – and the Gretsch that Peter Green borrowed
- “These are things that most of us have simply never tried to do before”: Great Eastern’s XO Variable Crossover is a frequency splitter and dual FX loop for radical stompbox experiments
- “I couldn’t listen to Genesis or Yes and feel like they were writing songs for me. It wasn’t my music! But with punk, I could understand the songs; the words mattered”: John Cooper Clarke on inspiration, addiction and being endorsed by Arctic Monkeys
- Save big on Spark amps and get free shipping on everything through April in Positive Grid’s massive guitar month sale
- “I can only say I am 1,000% happy with the end result”: Seymour Duncan and Eric Gales team up for a pickup set to give your S-style a “perfect balance of vintage warmth and modern clarity”
- Ride's Mark Gardener: "I’m definitely a gear nerd, but I had to stop otherwise I’d have gone bankrupt"
- “I saw the Olympic White with the pearl on it and I was just blown away”: Fender unveils Lincoln Brewster signature Strat – a vintage-inspired stunner with “stealth mods” and lots of them
- “We’re offering a reward to anyone who can help us locate the guitar”: Jerry Cantrell’s G&L ‘Blue Dress’ Rampage has been stolen
- "I never intended the statement to mean 'Paul McCartney quits Beatles'... It was all a misunderstanding. I just thought 'Christ, what have I done? Now we’re in for it'": The day the world learned the Fab Four were over
- April 9
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- Meet AstroLab, Arturia's greatest hits in a stage keyboard: 34 instruments, 10 synth engines and 1300 presets
- “I chose the wrong key”: Mark Knopfler reveals the Dire Straits song that “didn’t come out the way I wanted”
- The ultimate guide to Eurorack percussion: "Modular synthesis opens up a world of sound design that is hard to find anywhere else"
- Behringer releases a free Vintage synth plugin, but you might struggle to download it
- "It's faded, I f**king dropped a cigarette on it... I named it when I was drunk but I don't remember what the catalyst for that was!": Gibson reveals the Slash “Jessica” Les Paul Standard
- April 8
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- "Songwriting for me, at the time of Rubber Soul, was a bit frightening because John and Paul had been writing since they were three years old": How The Beatles raised their game in 1965 to create a masterpiece that "broke everything open"
- “Not doing singles”: Billie Eilish announces that her third album, Hit Me Hard And Soft, will be released on 17 May, and teases a journey "through a vast and expansive audio landscape”
- Arturia teases mysterious extraterrestrial announcement to be revealed at livestream event: "25 years, and beyond"
- "In the late ’90s and early ’00s equipment was so fetishised. I’ve been in fancy studios that have all these iconic machines which are like museum pieces now, but they’re constantly breaking": Naum Gabo on 20 years of progress
- "We always recorded with Michael in the dark - he hated light": Engineer Bruce Swedien on the making of Michael Jackson's Thriller, track by track
- Master 6 rhythm guitar styles inspired by AC/DC, Metallica, The Who, Pantera, Guns N' Roses and Iron Maiden
- “A new standard in AI music”: Soundation’s Gennie brings automatic text-to-audio sample generation to its online DAW
- April 7
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- "He showed me some things that Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson had taught him – he knew those people": Hubert Sumlin, Howlin' Wolf and their legendary blues legacy
- "People say, ‘Oh, Bring It On Home is stolen’. Well, there’s only a little bit in the song that relates to anything that had gone before it, just the end”: Jimmy Page and the story of Led Zeppelin's Bring It On Home
- April 6
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- “That was just the way it was at that point because Ahmet Ertegun was more or less in love with Eric. He thought Eric should be the frontman”: Cream and the trouble with Strange Brew
- "I think it’s time to make a defiant rock record": Noel Gallagher says he's scrapped his planned acoustic album but he's already got the cover art and title for the next one
- 5 pieces of '90s studio gear that we need back right now: "Making music in the '90s, you needed an awful lot of awfully average music gear, a lot of space and a vivid imagination"
- April 5
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- Is Zildjian about to reissue its Z Series? This not-so-covert teaser video certainly suggests so
- Keith Le Blanc, drummer for The Sugarhill Gang, Tackhead and many more has died aged 70
- "Out of all of the guitars in the whole world, the Fender Mustang is my favourite": The story of Kurt Cobain's Mustangs in Nirvana
- "Don't buy any more gear today, friends…": Tom Bukovac's tip on how to improve as a guitarist is something all of us can do
- Issue 408 of Future Music is out now
- Stability AI's music generator can now edit and transform your samples and produce full-length, structured tracks
- Audiotonix releases a build-it-yourself DJ mixer to encourage a new generation of sound engineers
- "I actually became a Nirvana fan when I was no longer in the band": Drummer Chad Channing remembers Kurt Cobain and his 1990 Smart Studios sessions with the band that shaped Nevermind
- Solid State Logic goes off-road with Module8, an easy-to-use modulation plugin aimed at sound designers and experimentalists
- 'As time has taught us, there was a lot more to Kurt Cobain’s guitar playing than the slacker attitude he’d like us to have believed': 5 Nirvana songs that celebrate Nirvana's legacy
- The producer's guide to the Native Instruments Kontrol S61 Mk3: "Let’s zoom into the specifics of how the Kontrol keyboards work in practice, and how they can help you make music"
- "Say hello to a new, inspiring workflow": Tracktion adds clip launching and Wavetable Synth to Waveform Pro 13 update
- April 4
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- EarthQuaker Device refreshes the Spatial Delivery – a preset-having envelope filter that “allows you to step outside the universe of funk while reinforcing your secret love affair with auto-wah”
- “The most advanced analogue amp simulator ever made”: DSM Humboldt launches the Simplifier X, a compact solution for running a full stereo rig without an amp
- Universal Audio launches Verve Analog Machines saturation effects, and makes the 'Essentials' version free until the end of April
- “It looks right, plays very well and most importantly, it’s punching above its weight in the tone department”: Epiphone Dave Grohl DG-335 first-look review
- You can now design your dream StingRay bass with Ernie Ball Music Man’s Custom Design Experience – and there are 30 finishes to choose from
- "If I'm taking high-end off my vocals, I like Soundtoys FilterFreak": Taylor Swift producer Jack Antonoff reveals his top 10 vocal plugins and recording techniques
- “My introduction to fuzz was before I had any on my face”: Alex Lifeson takes his pedalboard journey back to the start with Lerxst’s The Snow Dog – a limited edition octave fuzz with bark and bite
- At last! Behringer ships the MS-5, a "faithful reproduction" of the Roland SH-5
- Orbital on recording The Green Album: "We didn’t have multi-tracking equipment, so we’d get everything working and just run it out live. Any manipulation or synth magic would happen as it was going down - if you didn’t like it, you’d do it again"
- “The sound of this thing is really quite surprising”: Watch Robben Ford demo the 8W tube combo from the amp company that gives his Dumble a run for its money
- April 3
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- Roland updates its SP-404 sampler "in celebration of 404 Day" (and to v4.04, before you ask)
- "The fingers aren't very fast but I think I am instantly recognisable": David Gilmour classic guitar interview
- Gibson switches up the tonewood recipe for three classic Standard acoustics, giving the J-45, SJ-200 and Hummingbird a rosewood refresh for “rich sonic allure”
- "He had no idea how good he was": A treasure trove of Jimi Hendrix music and documents has reportedly been found and is going up for sale
- "I've turned to the natural world for inspiration": Meet the producer and sound artist making music from mushrooms
- "Now small home studio setups, or artists on the road can access the famed 1073 sound": Neve announces the "world’s first genuine" 1073 interface
- Own a piece of Rolling Stones history as a Keith Richards stage-played 1972 Fender Telecaster Custom goes up for auction
- Song Athletics drops Sloppy Drums sample pack inspired by J Dilla and Madlib: "Beautifully captured and behind (and before) the beat in all the right ways"
- "This assault on human creativity must be stopped": Pearl Jam, Stevie Wonder, Billie Eilish and 200 more artists call for protections against threat of AI
- “It unlocks a world of possibilities by blending both circuits in the most unique ways”: Beetronics’ Wannabee packs customisable Klon and Bluesbreaker-inspired circuits into one versatile drive
- 'This excellent amp-inspired tremolo from the Danes can also be used for something else entirely' – revisiting the T-Rex Tremster
- 5 techniques for creative reverb manipulation: "Use your imagination to think about new ways that a reverb could be shifted and warped, and then explore different methods for realising that effect"
- How does reverb actually work?: "Reverb gives us a mainline into our audience’s subconscious, allowing us to influence their aural experience at a subliminal level"
- “More PRS DNA than ever”: The PRS S2 Series now comes with USA pickups and wiring as standard
- "CBS dumped us and we couldn’t get the record out for ages": Jeff Hanneman and Kerry King on the making of Slayer's Angel Of Death – and the fallout that followed
- Spectral Plugins makes three of its plugins free to download as it closes its doors: "It has been an honour serving you"
- April 2
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- “An accessible road to finding your musical voice”: Mapex ups its entry-level offering with its new Comet series beginner drum sets
- 'Recognising rising musicians that are pushing guitar forward in music and culture': Hear the new guitarists who have been selected for the Fender Next Class of 2024
- Danny Carey reveals that Tool have never recorded to a click: “As soon as I count it off, the click goes off. We’ll do however many takes it takes for me to be happy with my thing”
- John Lee Hooker: "Eric Clapton, John Mayall and all those other people over in England made the blues a big thing. In the States, people didn't want to know"
- The story of the Resynator, the long-lost '70s synth beloved by Peter Gabriel and Butch Vig: "Most synthesizers I encounter are more like domesticated animals, but here was this thing, like a wolverine"
- "Its impact on music will continue to resonate for decades to come": Sequential to discontinue the Prophet X due to component shortages
- "If we do this correctly, I think this could be one of the best blues songs ever!": How Joe Bonamassa and Kevin Shirley took an obscure Tim Curry track to a whole new level
- "He knows very little about an awful lot, but it’s how he applies that knowledge - and it’s down to confidence, too": How Brian Eno became music's ultimate renaissance man
- "You were the glue that held the band together": Ultravox bass player and Vienna co-writer Chris Cross dies aged 71
- "Epiphone’s premium recreations of some of the most popular and iconic guitar designs of all time": The 7 new Inspired By Gibson Custom Shop models are a guitar tour-de-force – including Les Paul '59 and Custom models
- "I come from the old-school, the analogue tape and mixing desk-era - but with software, you have so much potential for playing around": The Orb spin-off Sedibus on new project SETI, manipulating samples and the evolution of technology
- Seeing is believing with BEAM, Lunacy’s striking new granular and convolution processor that keeps you in your creative flow
- April 1
