In virtually every interview he’s given since 1970, Paul McCartney has been asked about his relationship with John Lennon. You might well ask what else is there to discover about the friendship that changed music history? But, just occasionally, Macca reveals something we weren’t aware of.

The occasion this time was a conversation with the filmmaker Judd Apatow that followed a screening of the Wings documentary Man On The Run in Los Angeles earlier this week. The two men dug deep into McCartney’s early 1970s, when, after the long, drawn-out pain of the Beatles split, Macca gradually got his mojo back again.

Apatow asked him how he felt about John Lennon’s then-irritation at his old friend’s more light-hearted approach in Wings - “Was it a joyfulness to it while he's doing primal scream and you're having fun? What do you think got under his skin about it?”

McCartney replied: “Well, I don't know. I think maybe he expected more from me. He expected something different from me, and I wasn't doing that.

"I was just doing ‘madcap’. I always thought John was very cool, and I still do. But he could be a complete idiot, over some things.”

“And the thing is, if you look at his life, there’s reason for him to be crazy,” he explained to Apatow. “A lot of bad things happened to him. His father ran away from home when he was three or something, so he never knew his dad until we got famous and his dad came back and was working at the pub down the road near where John lived.”

“And John’s mum, who he idolised and I idolised, was a beautiful lady called Julia. And she got run over and killed outside the house… So he’s had to deal with all of that, you know, and so he had a lot of anguish and a lot of this is why all the primal scream and everything - he had a lot of stuff to get out.”

Apatow also asked the ex-Beatle why there were so few photos of Wings from the time they were making Band On The Run in Nigeria. It seems that Linda McCartney had shot several reels of film (along with some McCartney demos) that were lost forever when the couple were mugged at knifepoint in Lagos.

“You think there’s some guy in Africa and his entire house is filled with all those photos?” Apatow asked.

“They stole Linda’s camera, all the cassettes, and we always wondered… We all said, ‘I bet they recorded over them.’” McCartney said, adding that he’d always imagined the thieves putting the cassettes into the player and wondering, “Oh, what’s this shit?”

Given his propensity for self-depracation, Oli Howe would probably say that he puts the ‘harm’ into ‘reharmonisation’. His stock in trade is to take popular songs and use his jazz chops to bash them into sometimes almost unrecognisable forms, pairing the isolated vocal tracks with post-watershed chord progressions.

Hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers and countless professional musicians, though, are in on the joke. Howe has gone viral multiple times – including with muso-skewed reinterpretations by songs by the likes of Backstreet Boys, Destiny’s Child and Dua Lipa – and received likes and comments from many of the artists he’s covered.

The deadpan persona that Howe created has probably helped: each video has him staring blankly at the camera as he plays, while a painfully self-aware set of captions is displayed, entertainingly acknowledging the ridiculousness of the whole enterprise. Imagine the reharmonisation skills of Jacob Collier, but deployed by a man who’s approximately 99% less excitable.

Howe’s musical journey began when he was just three years old and started entertaining himself on the electric organ that was in the family home.

“My mum took me to a birthday once, and when she picked me up, one of the mothers told them that I played Happy Birthday with two hands, and that was before I was four years old,” he tells us. “So she was like, ‘OK, I'll take him to a music teacher and see what he's like.’”

By the time he became a teenager, Howe had reached Grade 7 on piano and Grade 8 on the cello, but classical music was never really his thing.

“I was always learning by ear from TV and film and records and tape cassettes and stuff more than I was learning classical music,” he says.

At the time, Howe didn’t really connect with traditional music theory, either. “I knew my way around the piano, and my ear was good enough to hear most things and pick it up very quickly, but I didn't really have the explanation for it,” he says. “I failed my grade five theory at least two or three times. It just wasn't something I really understood. It wasn't taught to me in a way that made sense.”

It was when Howe went to college and was given a Real Book – a compilation of lead sheets for jazz standards that had chord symbols in it – that things started to make sense, but he never did a jazz degree or a formal course.

Instead, he developed his own method: “I'd been learning jazz transcriptions from a very early age,” he tells us. “I discovered jazz CDs and things like that very early on – I was listening to a few different artists, but not a huge amount of it because back in those days there was no streaming, there was no YouTube or anything like that. So it was just the CDs that I had or records that I had. So I just listened to them over and over and over again, and started to transcribe them bit by bit and make my way through them.

“By listening to them so often, a lot of that vocabulary and those chord shapes and stuff was going into my ears, and then when I started to try and attempt to play them, it became a lot easier to transcribe because I never physically transcribed, you know, to paper. I was just transcribing, you know, into my brain from the CD. So I started to pick up voicings and how these different genres sound.

“Then later, in my mid-20s and early-30s, is the time when I really started to go deeper into the theory and watch videos and things like that about how jazz harmony works, what scales and modes people use for soloing and that kind of thing. And that started to piece together with what I'd transcribed from all these records years ago. So I was like, ‘OK, now I have these formulas that I've been playing for a long time, but now I know how to recreate it and recreate it in every key.”

Howe says that he set about learning the history of jazz, going decade by decade and playing with as many musicians as he could around Brighton, where he was living. Alongside that, he was taking influence from the hip-hop and R&B that he listened to as a child.

“I grew up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, so you know, hip-hop was growing massively in that time, and me and my friends at school were hugely influenced by it. And there's a big tradition of sampling in hip-hop, and a lot of it is sampled from jazz, soft rock and smooth jazz or yacht rock and stuff like that.

“Everything that had any kind of flavour of jazz for me was really appealing. Like early R&B in the ‘80s and ‘90s. En Vogue, SWV – that kind of stuff was really appealing to me. All the pop artists and soul artists like Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Prince and Chaka Khan. There's just tonnes and tonnes of really advanced harmony in that stuff, and the way it's packaged into this commercial thing was super appealing to me. It had a really kind of advanced sound because there's really beautiful harmony involved, really amazing modulations, yet it's mainstream music.”

Alongside this musical education, Howe began to develop his production chops. “As part of the college course I was doing music technology on a very early Mac system with Logic 3, which is a long time ago. At that time, Fatboy Slim was a huge artist and I discovered how to sample and put these funk beats with various things that I could find, and really started getting into music production. And by the time I was 19, when I left college, I bought myself a PC and started producing at home as much as I could, and from then on I was hooked.”

Howe has been able to utilise all of these musical and technical skills in his ‘reharm’ videos, the seeds for which were sown in 2022 during a period when he was posting jazz tutorial content.

“I did a video – I think it was titled ‘Jazz musicians on a wedding’ – and it was a keyboard player and bass player playing Bruno Mars' Treasure, and the kind of back and forth between a bass player and a keyboard player, and the keyboard player is overplaying. He's bored and he's having fun and he's enjoying himself, and the bass player doesn't know where he's going to go with his reharm. So the kind of back and forth between us was kind of funny. I put the text on the screen and kind of had this conversation between the two players, and that went viral.”

Keen to capitalise, Howe started reharming other songs – the Killers, Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan, Oasis, Queen, Amy Winehouse and the Spice Girls all got the treatment. After a bit of a break, he had another success with his smooth jazz version of Kenya Grace’s Strangers, but it was when he posted his reharm of Pharrell’s Happy, in 2025, that things really started to snowball.

“That one got a lot of attention from some really big names in the industry, and that one went really viral,” says Howe. “I think I must have grown by maybe 10,000 followers in a week or so. I did a few more and out of the three that I'd done, two of them went viral, so I was like, ‘OK, I'm onto something here, and the consistency of posting every week is helping.’ So I carried on doing them, and yeah, I've done about 85 reharms now.”

Howe has also picked up some celebrity fans along the way, with the many of the artists whose songs he’s covered responding with likes, shares and comments.

“It's the ultimate compliment, showing their approval like that,” he says “It's an honour to get that kind of feedback from them. I then immediately DM them on Instagram and try to get a conversation going and, more often than not, we do.”

This means that Howe has had some pretty surreal text encounters: “I'm chatting to people that I've grown up listening to and have been massive influences on my musical identity. People like Lenny Kravitz following me was such a huge one. I mean, not a guy that I see posts much on social media, and somebody whose albums had a huge impact on me when I was growing up. Somebody like him, who is a multi-instrumentalist and plays the majority of the stuff on his albums, I just found him to be a hero, one of my heroes, and people like that following me was massive.

And then there was Justin Timberlake, who responded to Howe’s reharm of his 2016 smash Can’t Stop The Feeling, taken from the animated movie Trolls, by saying “Of all the ones in my catalogue… of course he picks the song I wrote for a children’s animated film to completely body!”

“Justin commented on a couple of videos, and then just continued to support, liking posts here and there, and then we started talking,” reveals Howe. “It's amazing to be chatting with these people.”

Howe has also managed to get onto the radar of music industry legend David Foster, famed for his work with everyone from Earth, Wind and Fire and Chicago to Whitney Houston and Celine Dion: “He commented and then he sent me a DM saying, ‘Where did you come from?’ And I was just like, "Oh my God, what do I say to that? Brighton?’”

Aside from his excellent musicianship, some of Howe’s success has undoubtedly come from his work rate. He’s supercharged his reharm output over the past year or so, so what’s his secret?

“I have a template which I've loaded with all my sounds, everything that I like to use – all the drum kits, all of the synth sounds and effects and everything – and everything is mixed to a certain level so that I can just jump in and start writing,” he explains.

“That helps me to get straight into songwriting – I’m not held up by thinking, ‘right, what sound do I need here?’ I've got all of the keys loaded in – Rhodes, piano, electric grands – everything that I could possibly need is already in the template, ready to go, mixed, and that makes my workflow much, much faster.”

This means that Howe can now write and record a reharm in just two or three days, but there are exceptions.

“Some of them take six months,” he admits. “There are songs that I knew I wanted to do, like Livin’ on a Prayer, for instance. I knew that would be such a huge song to do, and I must have made about seven or eight versions of it, trying at least eight starting points where I was just like, ‘I'm not happy with any of these,’ until I found a version where I was like, ‘OK, I think I can pursue this one’. That’s happened quite a few times where I knew it was a big song and I wanted to get the best version that I could have done.”

Musically, Howe says that the core of his reharmonising formula is jazz and gospel harmony, which crosses over into R&B and funk. “The defining characteristic of my reharms, if I was to give you the secret sauce, is that I don't reharmonise the melody, I reharmonise the key,” he explains. “The melody is important to a point, and if there are notes that stick out, then I'm gonna pay attention to them, and in places I might make a point of choosing to play outside the key in a different way than my usual formula does. But essentially, I'm reharmonising the key because the melody is in the key.”

As for those dry-as-a-bone captions, Howe says: “I try to portray a sort of uncomfortably self-aware version of myself. I've done a lot of therapy in my time, I've gone through quite a lot of things that have made me quite self-aware about quite a lot of issues that we all face and might not understand, and, especially the early reharms, I was using a lot of that humour to kind of explain what it's like to be human and what it's like to go through things, and using the lyrics to play off that as well.”

Inevitably, Howe’s success has led to requests for him to share his secrets: “Over the last year, a lot of people have asked for lessons, and they all want to know the same thing: what am I doing to get to the final reharm? How do I get from this chord sequence to the chord sequence that I've written? Over the course of, maybe six months to a year of teaching people what my methods are, I've developed a system which I can now explain to people quite easily, and I've now developed that into a course called the Rehab Group Sessions, which I started in March this year.”

Howe now has a new website where you can book onto one of these sessions: “In my course I show people how I can move in and out of the key very seamlessly and get you back into the key using tension and using methods that feel like they're a lot more complicated than they actually are. It's stuff that, if you've played jazz standards, if you've played certain types of music, even Stevie Wonder music, you'll notice that there are a lot of similarities with the concepts that we use to play that stuff that I'm using in these reharms.”

Fans of his work may be disappointed to hear that Howe doesn’t plan on being ‘the reharm guy’ forever, but at a time when making a career out of being a musician is becoming increasingly difficult, he’s hoping to use the profile he’s built and the contacts he’s made as a springboard.

“One of my goals is to write more with original artists,” he says. “I had a song come out with somebody a couple of months ago, and I've got probably at least three or four other productions that I've done of artist music that will be released. I'm also writing for other people, and my plan is to release music and tour the music, so over the next six months, you'll see a little bit of a shift in how my content looks, and it will be more of an insight into what's going on with me, where am I taking this, and what's coming up in the future.”

Whatever comes next, Howe has certainly left his mark on Instagram – check out his profile to enjoy all his reharms – and as our conversation comes to a close, he has some advice for any musician who wants to make a similar impact.

“On social media, it's very common that people think that for short form content you must use a hook. You must have your videos 30 seconds to a minute long maximum. Your watch time needs to look like this. You need to sort your hook out or your content sucks.’

“It's utter rubbish, to me anyway, because I've broken all the rules. I'm making three-minute-long videos, and I'm never using hooks and I don't follow any of the rules the content creator gurus tell you is the successful strategy to go viral in 2026. It's completely individual, and the strategy is you. You know, you are the strategy. The strategy is being authentic and connecting with rather than trying to grab people's attention. The key is to grab your own attention and then present that. If you like it, somebody else will like it, and you can then connect with your audience over time.”

“I’ll be honest, I just woke up one morning and named myself 808 Prince,” laughs producer and artist Steven Julien, recalling the genesis of his latest musical alias.

Previously known under the moniker of Funkineven and founder of Apron Records, Steven is speaking from Seoul to share the story behind this latest part of his journey through the bumpier end of electronic music. The name change was an intuitive move, and one that echoes his creative process more broadly, a practice driven by spontaneous energy, vibe and shooting from the hip.

“I put this out into the world via Instagram stories, ‘I’m now known as 808 Prince’, and everyone reacted well,” Steven recalls. “I like to go with whatever comes through in terms of ideas, then just execute them. I put 808 Prince out into the world, and it all happened from there.”

The project is a celebration of the iconic drum machines used in its writing and production, with the ten tracks embracing raw drum programming, analogue textures and chest-rattling bass weight.

“Babyxsosa is an American singer and rapper who is a big fan of mine,” Steven explains of the album’s origins. “She’s signed to Roc Nation, Jay-Z’s label. We always wanted to work together and she asked me to make a couple of beats for her.”

“I ended up making about ten tracks and sent them to her. She was like, ‘these are dope, but could you make something more like my previous records Fallen or Bloodline?’ Then I thought I could use the tracks I made for her and put them out under the 808 Prince guise. The skeleton of the songs only took me a week to make, so the whole thing was a very fast process.”

Known for a rhythm-led approach in the studio where feeling and emotion comes ahead of rules or genres, Steven has trodden a nimble and eclectic path through electronic music over the last ten-plus years.

While his tracks ably embody the spirit and sweat of the dancefloor, he’s also collaborated with Yasiin Bey, composed music for filmmakers Steve McQueen and Jenn Nkiru, and contributed sound to projects presented at the Tate, including work connected to the legacy of Keith Haring. Fashion, art and beats are all vying for attention – and speed is an essential element in his studio process.

“I believe that the faster you work, the more it resonates with listeners. It hits harder when you see yourself as a pure vessel for the music,” he states. “I make sure I don’t think too hard when I’m creating something.”

“The 808 has always been a part of my process, my standout tracks in my discography feature the 808 - even though funnily enough, my first album didn’t see me using it that much. But before that, and after, the 808 has been this big signature for me with my sound.”

Tastemakers Alex Nut and Floating Points have had a hand in the success of many London producers via their Eglo label. Steven is a longtime collaborator of theirs, releasing his first music on the imprint in the late 2000s. It was then, at the beginning of his touring career, when synths and analogue hardware began to attract his musical attention.

“I started making money from my music, and – as I’d always been a bit of a geek on the gear, synths and drum machines – I invested in a Juno, an 808 and 303,” he states. “Even though they are expensive now, I managed to get a good deal on these machines, and I’m a massive gear head so I had to collect them.”

It was mostly artists from the ‘80s and ‘90s that inspired Steven and his love for hunting down old boogie, electro and hip hop records. He was drawn to the machine without knowing too much about its history, before digging deeper into its legendary status. From Egyptian Lover to the Yellow Magic Orchestra, Roland’s TR-808 is all over some of electronic music’s finest moments, a vastly influential instrument that many would crown king of the drum machines.

“I initially really loved its sound, then as I got older I started doing more research, learned more about its history and stature within dance music,” he says. “I love it due to how basic it is to use. Making music on an 808 is a fairly simple process, once you know how to make beats, patterns and the 16 notes, then you’re away… it’s kind of easy to figure it out.”

Steven’s current studio home is in London’s Stoke Newington but initially he worked out of a backroom in his small flat in Brick Lane.

“When I first started collecting hardware I lived on Brick Lane, literally almost above one of the bagel places,” he says. “I had this tiny backroom space where I lived with my ex. We were chucked out of the flat due to the gentrification of the area and rising rent prices, then I found this space which is ten times as big.”

“Now 80% of the top floor is my studio and it’s become one of my favourite places to be in the world. It’s got a desk and all my favourite toys, it’s a really amazing space to work in.”

Steve’s studio process involves focusing on limitations. Instead of attempting to simultaneously conduct too many pieces of equipment, his attention is narrowed on just one or two items.

“Most of my first album Fallen was made with the Korg DW-8000 as I usually like to dedicate a machine to one project,” Steven says. “If there’s more than one plugged in and ready to go, it just gets so confusing. I’d rather strip it back and keep it as simple as I can.”

Writing for the club has played a central role in defining Steven’s sound, particularly on the 808 Prince project, with tracks including Lost and Afters destined to be heard on dancefloors once they have been unleashed into the wider world.

“I’m 100% influenced by dancefloors,” he states. “My music is definitely a vibe and a reaction to how people move when they hear me play. I’m directly inspired by this, I always imagine how my productions will go down in a club.”

“Being in a club all the time means you get what happens in these spaces embedded within your blood and how you make music. It’s what I experience there that feeds straight into how I work in the studio.”

Steven’s favourite London spots include OM in Dalston, the Colour Factory and Ormside Projects; the latter is owned and run by Mike Livett, who coincidentally built the desk in Steven’s studio.

“Nightlife definitely went through this weird patch,” he says, pointing to the closure of tastemaking London nightclub Corsica Studios and the gentrification of the surrounding area as a sign of decline. “It feels like things are turning around now, though. There seem to be new things opening up and happening; it’s not replacing it but it’s keeping the flame going, and we’re on an uphill spiral.”

Alongside Steven’s DJing, he’s also in the process of developing a new live show following a hybrid set at The Cause in London. For that performance, he used Behringer’s 808 clone the RD-8, relying on a Roland SP-404 for live effects processing. However, he’s now migrated to the TR-1000, the all-singing, all-dancing flagship drum machine Roland released late last year.

“It has everything built in, it has all the effects you might need, and the capability is crazy,” Steven explains. “It has the analogue 808, the analogue 909, all these other drum machines in there so it’s just so versatile. It’s fun to use, you can just rely on it without needing anything else for effects and processing.”

“It’s really exciting and I’m looking forward to going for it with this hybrid set. It’s all about streamlining the process for me, both in the studio and when playing out.”

Alongside Steven’s own production, he drafted in a range of collaborators for the album including James Massiah, J. Caesar, Touch Sensitive, Jarren and KIAH. He cites his pre-existing relationships with these sparring partners as essential for bringing these tracks to life.

“I have a very natural relationship with all the artists and collaborators on this new record,” he says. “I find it so much easier to work with people who you’re already friends with. If the energy is off, I’d rather not make a song. If the energy is right and it fits together, then we’re gonna be locked in and it will usually feel great.”

Steven’s advice for fledgling producers is to fine-tune their sense of when a song is truly finished. If you end up over-working a track, he warns, then its potential can be limited by too much instrumentation.

“I always think it’s better to let a song be free. If it’s got all the elements and it works, even if it’s just a synth line and drum machine, then sometimes less is more,” he says. “It’s better to avoid overthinking or overcomplicating your music.”

As Steven prepares to take 808 Prince on the road, he’s also a believer that tracks should never be deleted. Instead, he advises producers to sit on them, biding their time for the best moment to revisit or release.

“What’s old to you might be new to everyone else,” he says. “I have loads of material just waiting there, sometimes I go back to it, give it a new touch or a new mixdown as my skills have got so much better. You never know how long something has to sit there until it’s ready for release.”

808 Prince is due for release on 16th October via Apron Records.

Freshly launched this week, the Sweetwater Studio & Recording sale is delivering up to 50% off hardware and up to 85% off software. Whether you want to add some analogue colour to your mixes or bulk up your mic locker, there’s some great gear on offer.

There are some proper industry heavyweights represented in the sale, with Universal Audio, Warm Audio, Shure, Rupert Neve Designs, and PreSonus all getting discounts. There’s no official end date listed at the time of writing, so it’s well worth having a rummage before the best stock disappears.

I’ve had a look through the sale in its entirety to see what’s available, and straight away I had my head turned by a nice $50 saving on the Solid State Logic SSL 2+ MKII. I reviewed it when it came out; here’s a quote from me on it:

“It’s honestly hard to find fault with the SSL 2+ MKII. It’s perfectly suited to the vast majority of home recording tasks, very usable thanks to the plethora of knobs and buttons, and delivers superb sound quality. Its real strength for me is the second in that list, though: with all the controls in reach and not hidden behind menus or companion apps, it’s super easy to get up and recording quickly.”

You can find out more in my full Solid State Logic SSL 2+ MKII review.

For an upgrade to your monitoring, the Adam Audio A7Vs have a $120 reduction per speaker. DSP-based fine-tuning means you can change their output to match your space, and the X-ART ribbon tweeters deliver a really clear high-end response. The large size means that the low-end response on these is really good as well.

Finally, no mic locker is complete without a Beyerdynamic M160 double ribbon microphone. It’s got a huge $150 discount in the sale, and it’s great for recording in untreated rooms. It’ll tame harsh cymbals, work great on a loud guitar cab, and can be pointed at a lot of different sources you’ll encounter in the studio.

Lola Young has been complaining that breathing feels like “a chore”, something she blames solely on her continued penchant for vaping.

In a TikTok video, the Grammy winner, who – lest us forget – did warn us on her breakthrough hit that she was Messy, has said: "Somebody once said to me, 'Lola, there will be a day when you wake up, you'll be 25 or 26, from a deep sleep, and you'll start to feel the effects of vaping'."

"You know what I said? I said 'nah' and rolled my eyes. But let me tell you something, the day has come."

She continued: "My lungs feel like they're battery-powered, like they're just one big battery. Breathing feels like a chore; it feels like hard work, it feels like I should be paid for breathing. It feels like there will be no tomorrow."

Oh dear.

The effects of tobacco on the human voice have been known for years. The wiser vocalists give up early. Others simply have to accept a gradually huskier, raspier voice as the price they paid for their addiction.

Vaping, though, involves ingesting a whole load of chemicals, in addition to some tobacco. Speaking to the BBC about the effect on singers like Young vocal coach Lizzii Hills advised artists against trying it: "Vaping may not affect the voice box just itself, it affects the lungs, the airways, the throat - it's all respiratory, it's all connected. So doing that can affect your vocal technique," she says.

"Breathing is really important. Singing requires controlled inhalation and sustained, efficient exhalation. You end up trying harder, putting in more effort for the same results you were getting beforehand."

Young though doesn’t seem that concerned about the health issues, nor the effects on her voice. She says she’s not giving up just yet. "Let me tell you something, I’ll quit when I’m 35," she said, defiantly.

It was in December 2004 that the news first broke. 13 years after Freddie Mercury’s death, Queen were to return to the live stage with a new singer – Paul Rodgers, the former star of Free and Bad Company, a man widely acknowledged as one of the greatest British rock vocalists of all time.

Rumours that Rodgers was to team up with Queen had circulated ever since they had played together as inductees at the UK Music Hall Of Fame awards in London in November of that year.

That night, Rodgers sang the classic Free track All Right Now with Brian May on guitar, then joined May and Roger Taylor to perform two Queen songs.

May and Taylor finally admitted that the rumours were true when they attended the opening of the Queen musical We Will Rock You in Germany in December.

The new-look band, billed as Queen + Paul Rodgers, first toured in 2005, performing songs by Queen, Free and Bad Company.

The collaboration ended in 2009 after one studio album, The Cosmos Rocks.

In 2005, Rodgers was interviewed by Q magazine. He revealed how he hooked up with May and Taylor, and spoke of his admiration for the man who had fronted Queen in their glory days – the late, great Freddie Mercury.

According to Rodgers, this collaboration happened out of the blue, without any formal planning.

He laughed when he stated: “It’s come as a surprise to a lot of people – ourselves included! I had no plans to join Queen. I was happy doing my own thing, playing 30 shows a year with my solo band.”

The UK Music Hall Of Fame was the catalyst.

Rodgers explained: “I decided to do All Right Now and when I asked Brian to join me, he asked me to sing two songs with them – We Will Rock You and We Are The Champions. I’ve always loved those songs, so I jumped at the chance.

“I always love to jam with great musicians. And I knew we were on to something when we rehearsed those three songs together and the TV crew, all hardened old pros, gave us a standing ovation.”

Asked if he believed this was written in the stars, Rodgers replied: “Yes, dear boy! Well, you know Brian studies astronomy, so maybe it was. It was truly astronomical! It really was just a gas. Smashing!”

He insisted that he had no misgivings about doing a whole tour with Queen.

“No, I don’t think I did. But this thing has kind of developed a life of its own. Initially we were going to do three dates in London. All of a sudden it’s 25 dates in Europe! It took my breath away. I had to draw the line somewhere, as I have solo dates to do.”

He said of his connections to May and Taylor: “I only just met Roger last year, but Brian and I go back years. He played on my Muddy Water Blues album. Brian and myself have played on a few things over the years, usually charity stuff.”

Rodgers said how he had always enjoyed Queen’s music.

“I’d always admired Queen from afar. I didn’t buy every record, but it’s great music. I always loved We Will Rock You – I hear it wherever I go. Is This The World We Created is a beautiful song. I Want It All is fantastic, Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Innuendo.

“I’ve certainly been listening to a lot of their material lately. And the more deeply I look into what they’ve done, the more I’m blown away. When I was last in London I went to see [Queen musical] We Will Rock You at the Dominion theatre, and it was just hit after hit. Queen are so creative, they’re almost up there with The Beatles – and The Beatles are my favourite band.”

Asked to name a few songs that would definitely be performed on the 2005 tour, he replied: “We’re joining forces, so there are two legacies – Queen, and Free and Bad Company, my songs. There are a lot of Queen songs that rock and are in my area: Tie Your Mother Down, Fat Bottomed Girls. And from my past, we’re thinking of Wishing Well, Fire And Water… and we may well do All Right Now.”

He added: “It’ll be great hearing them doing my stuff. Roger says we have an embarrassment of riches. The problem is what not to play! When Brian and myself have discussed setlists, we’ve ended up with four-hour shows!”

Were there any Queen songs that Rodgers didn’t fancy singing?

He answered cautiously: “Some of the more theatrical songs.”

He agreed that Bohemian Rhapsody, as Freddie Mercury’s masterpiece, would be challenging to perform.

“It is his masterpiece,” Rodgers said. “But there are ways we could handle it. And it would be something in Freddie’s memory. Even when Queen did it, they’d walk off stage for the operatic section and show the video footage. Those harmonies were impossible to reproduce live. We maybe could do that. But the rest of the song, ‘Mama, just killed a man...’ That’s something I could do.”

Looking ahead to the 2005 tour, Rodgers considered the differences between himself and Mercury as singers and as personalities.

“Freddie was very much a showman. I come from a blues and soul background, but there’s a lot of showmanship in soul music too. So you’ll see dynamism and movement up on stage, but not flamboyance.”

He joked: “There’ll be no cape – and probably a lack of tights!”

Mores seriously, he stated: “I’m going to bring what I can to the mix. We’ll be paying tribute to Freddie and what he achieved. I have a great deal of respect for Freddie, right down to the way he died. He chose the moment of his death. He stopped taking medication, stopped eating. To do that takes some guts.”

He reasoned: “I’m not actually replacing Freddie – nobody could do that. He’s a completely different kind of singer and songwriter: classically trained. That’s why we’re billed as Queen plus Paul Rodgers.”

Above all else, this great singer was thrilled to be working with two other rock legends.

“I’ve dusted off my old rock ‘n’ roll shoes,” Rodgers said. “We’re gonna let rip and rock! It’ll be fun, dynamic, exciting – I know it’s going to blow my mind.

“I feel a fantastic chemistry and energy between us. I can’t wait to walk out on stage with them. It definitely won’t be painting by numbers – it’ll be far more live and dangerous than that.”

He also opened the door for what happen in 2008 with the release of The Cosmos Rocks.

“We’re all songwriters,” he said, “so there’s a distinct chance that we might write some new songs. I’d day there’s a 50/50 chance we’ll record new material. We’re open to anything – and on a musical level, this blows all my fuses!”

The crackly, hiss-laden sound of magnetic tape is an increasingly popular aesthetic in modern music production, as producers eschew the polish of the contemporary DAW for the retro colour and lo-fi warmth that tapes provide.

Sure, there are plenty of decent tape emulation plugins out there - including some commendable free ones - but what better way to get the sound than by using the real thing? Tape machines can be expensive, but don't worry, we've got you covered.

The latest edition of SampleRadar is a veritable menagerie of tape-treated goodness. Inside, you'll find individual drum hits, drum loops and FX sounds that've been run through a tape machine, a ton of tape-worn synth multi-samples, and a treasure trove of atmospheric tape loops.

Head over to the SampleRadar hub to download over 95,000 more free samples.

Example sounds

Tape treated samples: click to download

Tape treated samples (506MB)

What you need to know

This sample collection offers a variety of loops and one-shots in six folders, labelled by the type of sound they contain.

All the samples are supplied as WAV files so can be imported directly into your DAW or sampler of choice. Because they're royalty-free, you're welcome to use the samples in your music in any way you like - all we ask is that you don't re-distribute them.

The samples are supplied in a zip file, so you'll need to extract them before you can see them. Enjoy!

It's Friday once again, and that can only mean one thing… It's our weekly run-down of music happenings in 10-question quiz form!

Each week, we jam in the stories and test whether you – our loyal readers – have been paying attention or not.

Our quick quizzy recap will soon have you in the know as to who's rocking what, where and why.

Hit the button below for this week's on-site highlights.

You could come up with plenty of reasons why producer George Martin deserved to be known as ‘the fifth Beatle’, but one of the most tangible is the Bach-inspired piano solo from 1965’s In My Life.

The song featured on Rubber Soul, the Beatles’ sixth studio album, which is about to get the special edition treatment with new stereo and Dolby Atmos mixes from Martin’s son Giles and Sam Okell.

In a new interview with Tape Notes, Martin Jr has been discussing that In My Life piano break, revealing that, as he delved deep into Rubber Soul’s history, he discovered that his father originally played it on an organ.

At this point, the Beatles were restricted to recording on four tracks and creating mono mixes. All the main instruments were usually on one track, the next two had vocals, and the fourth was often kept free for guitar or other solos.

“I think what happened with In My Life is [the Beatles] recorded it and they left a hole for a solo,” Martin explains. “The band went off, and my dad sort of decided to have a go at filling in the hole. The first thing he did, which we discovered, was he actually played organ on it and did the sort of ‘baroque ‘n’ roll’, as it were.”

Martin is making a playful reference to his father’s decision to bring a Baroque period sound to a (sort of) rock ‘n’ roll record, and we get to hear that original organ part for ourselves.

The final performance was played not on a harpsichord, as many people first think, but a piano. This is an understandable mistake for a listener to make, though, when you consider how the solo was recorded.

“It's actually a piano that's been recorded at half speed, then sped up,” says Martin, explaining that, when his father played the part, he would have done so an octave down from where he wanted it to end up.

How did we get to this point, though? “I know how my dad was,” says Martin. “He would have [composed] it in his brain first and written it down and scored it, and then realised that, with the counterpoint left hand, he wouldn't have been able to play [it].”

Explaining the switch to piano, Martin adds: “He'd have known that a double speed piano sounds a bit like a harpsichord, which again is quite Baroque. He probably wanted it to sound sort of harpsichordy anyway, and so he recorded a piano at half the speed, and there you have it.”

Martin also notes that the giveaway that this piece of studio trickery was used comes right at the end of the solo, when we hear the too-fast-to-play run down.

As for why it was George Martin who recorded the part rather than one of the Fab Four themselves, Giles suggests that “At that stage, he was the best keyboard player because Paul and John not not developed their keyboard talents as well as he had.”

You can check out the full Tape Notes interview with Giles Martin wherever you get your podcasts.

Conrad Lant, the frontman for hugely influential metal band Venom, has died aged 63.

Known to fans by his stage name of Cronos, he passed away on 1 October.

Lant was born in London on 15 January 1963 and raised in Newcastle from the age of eight. He was just 16 when joined Venom in 1979 as a guitarist but quickly switched to bass and vocals.

Alongside Lant in Venom’s classic line-up were guitarist Jeff Dunn and drummer Tony Bray. Inspired by Black Sabbath and Motörhead, the trio’s mission was to create the heaviest and scariest music ever heard.

To match the darkness in their Satanic songs, the three musicians chose aliases inspired by astrology and ancient mythology. Lant became Cronos, Dunn was Mantas and Bray was Abaddon, the latter two names drawn from Anton Szandor LaVey’s occult bestseller, The Satanic Bible.

In the early ’80s, Venom rose out of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal to define a new form of extreme music immortalised in the title of their second album from 1982: Black Metal.

Lant left Venom in 1986 but rejoined in 1995. He continued to lead the band without Dunn and Bray, and in 2026 the album Into Oblivion was released – his final act with Venom.

In a major interview with Metal Hammer in 2022, Lant looked back on his life and career.

He described his initiation into the world of heavy music.

“In the late ’60s, early ’70s, it was Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and Black Sabbath,” he said. “Those early Sabbath albums really did something to me. But really, Status Quo was the first band where I thought, ‘I can properly relate to this.’ I loved all the denim and the hair and the way they played – heads down! When I was 11, Quo did six nights at Newcastle City Hall and I saw every show.”

Once he became frontman for Venom, his intention was to outdo Ozzy Osbourne.

“I always wanted to carry the Ozzy thing to the nth degree,” he said. “I was always reading up on Satanism and demonology and witchcraft. I loved Sabbath, but I realised that they’d only touched the tip of the iceberg. This could go so far. Ozzy was singing about being chased by the Devil. I thought: ‘I’ll be the Devil!’

“In my lyrics I was basically taking the God squad position and saying, ‘OK, let’s say it’s true. Satan is on his throne and he’s burning souls and he’s gonna come and get you and stick a hot spike up your arse!’ So let’s really push that – because it sounds fucking amazing!”

One of the biggest influences on Venom’s music was Motörhead, and as Lant proudly stated: “We were able to grab the Motörhead audience. We grabbed the punks and the metalheads. I was 14 when punk came along, and that was another lightbulb going off in my head. I thought, ‘If I take the rock image and the punk attitude, then you have a metal band who don’t give a shit.’”

When Venom’s debut album, Welcome To Hell, was released in 1981, Sounds writer Geoff Barton hailed it as “possibly the heaviest record ever allowed in the shops for public consumption”.

Lant said of that influential review: “It was brilliant, and just what I needed at that time, a real confirmation of what I was doing. Geoff Barton was very helpful at the beginning of our career, because nobody else was giving us a fucking inch. When we made our first demos, I sent them off to every record company and I got a letter back from EMI where all it said was: ‘FUCK OFF!’”

In 1982 came Black Metal, which turned out to be one of the most influential metal albums of all time.

Lant recalled: “We made Welcome To Hell in three days. Black Metal was six days of recording, one day mixing. When we did the song Black Metal, I said, ‘Just for laugh, let’s play it as a fast as we fucking can’ – and that was the version that made the album.”

Venom had a huge influence on thrash metal, and in the mid-’80s they had Metallica and Slayer as opening acts on tour.

“I hoped they’d be big,” Lant said, “because they were good bands, friends at the time, and it was fun on the road. But I never would have thought that Metallica would have had the success that they’ve had. They’ve had some shit albums – they’d have to admit that. But the first three albums, fucking great.”

In the ’80s, Lant embraced the rock ’n ‘roll lifestyle with gusto.

“I wanted to live that life,” he said. “I wanted to do that whole rock ’n’ roll thing. How can you be a real rock star if you don’t do it all?”

In a strange twist, it was during Venom’s hiatus in the early ’90s that the Norwegian black metal scene rose to prominence, with bands such as Mayhem, Emperor and Burzum citing Venom as their inspiration. In 1987, Mayhem had recorded a version of the Venom classic Witching Hour.

Venom got back together in 1995, although this reunion ended quickly and acrimoniously.

As Lant remembered it: “I contacted the other two guys and said, ‘Shall we have another shot at this and do it properly?’ So we did the live album, The Second Coming [1996], and a new album, Cast In Stone [1997], but to me it still wasn’t Venom. We hadn’t found that thing that we’d lost. Welcome To Hell and Black Metal are part of that era, and there it shall stay.”

Lant said he enjoyed Norwegian black metal on a purely musical level: “It was so dark and so evil. It was the next generation. But it also created what I call the ‘black metal police’ – all these people going, ‘This band is black metal! This band isn’t!’ And I love this one: ‘Venom aren’t black metal!’ Ha ha! I just wish they’d come up with their own term, like Norse metal. That’s what I say to these guys: ‘You’ve stolen my term, but you’re not really black metal, because black metal is power metal, speed metal, thrash metal, death metal – all the metals together!”

What Lant despised about the early Norwegian black metal scene was its culture of violence, criminality, racism, homophobia and neo-fascism.

“It was disgusting,” he said. “People like that, I want to sit them down in front of TV and play the entire The World At War [26-episode WWII documentary] series. Watch that and tell me fascism is a good idea, you fucking idiots!”

Venom’s first ever UK concert, at the Hammersmith Odeon in London on 1 June 1984, is remembered as one of the greatest and most over-the-top heavy metal shows of all time.

When it came to assessing his career and Venom’s place in the history of heavy metal, Lant said proudly: “I think we were a catalyst. Metal needed a kick up the arse and we came along and gave people permission to try new stuff. I just wanted to be part of the story of rock ’n’r oll. If anything, I helped keep the music alive.”

When asked how he would want to be remembered, Conrad Lant replied with a smile: “As somebody who took chances as an artist and a musician. Somebody who broke the fucking mould. I want people in the future to think, ‘That band Venom was crazy! And look at the influence on all the stuff that came after them.’ That’s where I see my place, as part of the whole big picture.”

What is it?

When it comes to affordable alternatives to the Big F, you aren’t exactly short on options these days, and with parts more accessible than ever, these budget-friendly options are typically well spec’d and include plenty of modern touches. That said, one thing that is often missing from these electric guitars is a nitrocellulose finish. If you want nitro lacquer on a Fender Jazzmaster, you’re looking at the Classic ‘60s version, which retails for £989, and only the top coat is nitro. So, with this PJ-6 coming in at £689, it’s a remarkably attractive package on paper.

The model I’m looking at today would certainly give a more established brand a run for its money in terms of specs. The PJ-6 features a solid offset Paulownia body, a smooth satin-finished roasted maple neck, and a rosewood fingerboard loaded with stainless steel jumbo frets and luminous side dots. For hardware and electronics, Patina has equipped it with a vintage-style tremolo, a Tune-O-Matic-style bridge, locking tuners, a real bone nut, high-quality Alpha pots, and a pair of custom-wound Alnico V P90 pickups.

Impressive stuff indeed for a wallet-friendly guitar. But who is this new brand? Well, Patina Guitars is the official sister brand to Jet Guitars (and Spira). Both brands – alongside the modern metal-focused brand Spira Guitars are designed and engineered in Europe by the same team, but the instruments themselves are manufactured in China.

Patina offers the lightly distressed Relic option we see here, but also models without artificial aging for S and T-type guitars, P-Bass, in addition to this offset guitar.

I put this new guitar to the test and pitted it against my own nitro-finished Jazzmaster to see if it lives up to the hype and whether we’ve found the new gold standard for budget-friendly electric guitars.

Specs

• Launch price: $699/£689/€689
• Made: China
• Type: Six-string electric guitar
• Body: Paulownia
• Neck: Quarter Sawn Roasted Maple, Satin Finish Modern C
• Fingerboard / radius: Rosewood with Luminescent Side Dot Inlay / 13.75 inches
• Scale length: 25.5″ / 647mm
• Nut: Bone
• Frets: 22 jumbo stainless steel
• Hardware: Chrome Locking Tuners, Jazzmaster-style Tremolo with Tune-O-Matic-style bridge
• Electrics: Alnico V JM pickups, 3-way pickup selector, master volume, master tone
• Weight: 1.58kg/7.2 ibs
• Left-handed options: No
• Finishes: Oxblood, Sherwood Green (as reviewed), Purple
• Case: None
• Contact: Patina Guitars

Build quality

Build quality rating: ★★★★☆

I must say, out of the box, this is an undeniably pretty instrument. The dark take on Sherwood Green finish paired with the rich, caramel tones of the dark-roasted maple neck and nicely aged plastic hardware gives the PJ-6 a sophisticated, vintage-inspired aesthetic that immediately catches the eye. Thankfully, it feels robust and giggable right away, backed up by rock-solid construction throughout. Genuinely, I’m finding it hard to fault.

The big selling point here, of course, is the nitrocellulose lacquer finish – a rarity at this price point. As a self-confessed nitro snob whose own collection consists mostly of nitro lacquer-finished axes, I was particularly curious to see how Patina executed it.

In hand, the finish is extraordinarily thin and matte, almost feeling nonexistent. While some players will love how thin the coat is, I’d personally prefer a bit more substance to the nitro coat to give it that tactile gloss feel we associate with vintage instruments.

Then we come to the relicing. Factory ageing is always a polarising topic among guitarists, and the execution here is a mixed bag. In places, such as the top arm carve where your forearm naturally rests, the distressing looks surprisingly organic and is tastefully done.

In other spots, however, the wear looks a little artificial, as though it was applied too systematically in the factory. That said, aesthetics are inherently subjective, and from a couple of feet away on stage, it looks proper.

Where I think the PJ-6 truly excels is the hardware. Everything feels heavy-duty and dependable. The vintage-style tremolo operates smoothly, the Tune-O-Matic-style bridge holds firmly, and the locking tuners make string changes a breeze while ensuring solid tuning stability along with the neatly cut real bone nut.

In a world where many players choose to mod out a budget axe, Patina has done all of that for you, which is rather impressive.

Playability

Playability rating: ★★★★☆

Slipping the PJ-6 onto a guitar strap reveals a neck profile that instantly feels homey and comfortable. The satin finish on the back of the roasted maple neck is silky smooth, offering zero drag whether your hands are bone dry or sweaty under hot lights. Combined with the modern C-shape, it allows your hand to glide pretty effortlessly up and down the fretboard without any stickiness.

In keeping with the modern appointments, the PJ-6 has a contemporary 13.75″ radius fingerboard. Now, while it would be easy to write this guitar off as ultra slick and fast, the truth is, it doesn't feel all that unnatural in person. It's not a shredder. We're not quite at Ibanez 17" territory.

Sure, my own Jazzmaster has the traditional 7.25" board, and some old-school players may still prefer that retro feel, but I think this flatter radius works really well here. All told, it’s a good-feeling guitar.

The crown jewel of the neck, however, is the fretwork. Patina loaded this rosewood board with jumbo stainless steel frets, and they feel absolutely incredible under the fingers.

Vibrato is effortless, bends glide across the board like butter, and you won't have to worry about wearing grooves into them anytime soon. Luminous side dots are another thoughtful modern touch that gigging musicians will genuinely appreciate on dark stages.

Out of the box, the setup was impressively comfortable. The action is very low on my review example, measuring roughly 1.35mm on the low E and around 1.10mm on the high E. Despite such low action, fret buzz was nonexistent. It’s a fun guitar to navigate.

That said, if there's one physical gripe to report, it comes down to weight distribution. Because the offset Paulownia body is pretty lightweight on this test example, at only 7.2 lbs, the guitar unfortunately has a noticeable tendency toward neck dive.

When standing with a basic nylon strap, the headstock definitely wants to dip toward the floor if you take your hands off the neck. It’s certainly not a dealbreaker, and switching to a wider suede or leather strap would keep it more anchored in place, but it’s something to keep in mind.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★☆

I’m a big fan of the Jazzmaster. I’ve owned a few, and still have my ‘64 reissue. I genuinely think it’s a guitar that doesn't really sound like anything else, so I have high hopes that this budget offset will produce that wide, bright, and chimey tone they are so known for.

Comparing it side-by-side with my own Fender Jazzmaster, the PJ-6 clearly pushes more output and brings a meatier midrange to the table. Where classic offset pickups can sometimes sound overly scooped or hollow in the middle, this guitar packs plenty of growl and body while retaining sweet highs and punchy lows. Honestly, it’s just a well-rounded tone that even managed to cut through at my punk band practice without sounding shrill or muddy.

Clean tones from my trusty Fender Twin have plenty of sparkle and chime, and sound even better with an ungodly amount of spring reverb for surf riffs. Step on a dirt pedal, and the PJ-6 transforms into an alt-rock machine.

The pickups handle medium-to-high-gain styles surprisingly well, maintaining decent string clarity even under heavier distortion.

To really put it through its paces, I stomped on my beloved Electro-Harmonix Big Muff to see if it could tackle classic J Mascis-esque noodling.

The PJ-6 handled the wall of fuzz with absolute ease, producing massive, singing sustain and thick, harmonic richness without collapsing into mush. It’s a versatile set of pickups for sure, and to be honest, a rather great-sounding guitar.

The only issue I can find from a sound point of view is that the sympathetic resonance behind the bridge is rather noticeable. Like, very noticeable. If this were my guitar, I’d pop a piece of foam behind the bridge to mute the strings from ringing, otherwise, it would drive me nuts.

Verdict

Taking everything into account, the Patina PJ-6 represents a seriously compelling package for players seeking that coveted offset charm without the steep price tag typically associated with nitrocellulose-finished instruments.

I think Patina has smartly prioritised performance where it matters most with this guitar. The neck, frets, and hardware are outstanding, leaving you literally nothing left to upgrade.

Tone-wise, it hits all the right notes for me. The sound is full, balanced, and immensely versatile. Okay, the model isn't without its minor flaws, of course.

The factory relicing will always be a matter of personal taste, and the lightweight body does create a slight headstock dip that requires a grippy leather strap to keep it upright. But when weighed against the overall quality, premium feature list, and modest £689 price tag (and I've seen it even lower online), these minor gripes quickly fade into the background.

Ultimately, Patina has delivered a stylish, rock-solid, and gig-ready offset guitar that offers tremendous value for money and is an absolute blast to play.

MusicRadar verdict: I genuinely think the Patina PJ-6 punches far above what its £689 asking price might suggest. While the relic treatment won't tickle everyone's fancy and the slightly head-heavy balance requires a decent strap, it delivers an authentic offset experience with modern perks like stainless steel frets and a rock-solid roasted maple neck. If you want a nitro aesthetic and classic offset chime without breaking the bank, this guitar deserves a very close look.

Also try

Hands-on videos

John Nathan Cordy

Universal Audio launched its Volt series of audio interfaces in 2021, promising "classic studio sound" at an accessible price point and providing an affordable alternative to the company's popular Apollo line.

Five years on, the company is unveiling the second generation of Volt interfaces, a six-strong range split between the Volt Gen 2 and Volt Max lines, stretching in price and I/O from the $149 2-in/2-out Volt 1 Gen 2 through to the $499 12-in/6-out Volt 4P Max.

The headline addition is UA's Tone Shaping Preamps, which offer three switchable character modes at the input stage. Warmth, Focus and Shine modes emulate vacuum tube, solid-state and British Class A designs respectively, applying analogue-style colouration before the audio reaches your DAW.

The three Volt Max models (Volt 2 Max, Volt 4 Max and Volt 4P Max) go further with Max Processing, a set of six "one-touch" compression presets based on UA's well-loved emulations of 1176, LA-2A and VCA-style compressors.

Though the first-generation Volt 76 series featured 1176-style analogue compressors, these have been dropped in Volt's second generation and replaced with onboard digital compression (exclusive to Volt Max) that provides a broader variety of styles. UA says this runs in real-time with no added latency, and that the preamp modes and compression presets can be paired up for more than 18 tonal combinations per channel.

The entire Volt range has also received a visual refresh, ditching the retro wooden side-panels in favour of a sleek and minimalist design that's closer to the Apollo range with its muted grey colour scheme.

Every model, save for the entry-level Volt 1, features a handy full-colour Smart Display for monitoring levels and settings at a glance. These models also benefit from smart features such as Auto-Gain and Clip Protection, and can automatically detect mic, line and instrument sources for quick and easy set-up.

All six interfaces are USB bus-powered and capable of 32-bit/192kHz conversion, with ADAT input and MIDI I/O on the Volt 4 Gen 2 and all three Max models. The Max line also adds a built-in talkback mic, and the Volt 4 Max and 4P Max feature speaker switching.

As with the previous generation, there's a generous software bundle included. The UAD Volt Studio Bundle gets you 15 plugins: UA's LA-2A and 1176 emulations, Showtime ‘64 and Lion ‘68 amp sims, Anthem and PolyMAX synthesizers, Topline Vocal Tune and more. Also included is UA's recently-updated Luna DAW, Celemony's Melodyne Essential and a three-month trial of FL Studio Producer Edition.

"Every artist has a sound they're chasing," Universal Audio CEO Bill Putnam Jr. said in a press release. "We want Volt Gen 2 to give people the confidence to explore that sound, experiment, and keep creating, whether they're recording their first song or working on their tenth album."

Find a full breakdown of I/O and pricing for each model in the range below.

Find out more on Universal Audio's website.

• Volt 1 Gen 2: 2-in/2-out, $149/£120/€139
• Volt 2 Gen 2: 2-in/4-out, $219/£170/€199
• Volt 4 Gen 2: 12-in/6-out, $299/£240/€279
• Volt 2 Max: 10-in/4-out, $299/£260/€299
• Volt 4 Max: 12-in/6-out, $399/£345/€399
• Volt 4P Max: 12-in/6-out, $499/£430/€499

Novation has announced the launch of FLpad and FLpad Mini, a pair of MIDI pad controllers designed specifically for FL Studio that promise to bring producers and musicians "new ways to get hands-on with their projects".

FLpad and FLpad Mini take design cues from Novation's Launchpad X and Launchpad Mini, but the company is keen to emphasize that they aren't just reskinned versions of those controllers, and both models have been designed from the ground up to integrate with FL Studio's unique workflow.

Both controllers are equipped with an 8x8 grid of RGB-backlit pads for finger drumming, step sequencing and playing melodies. FLpad is a larger grid controller with velocity-sensitive pads, and FLpad Mini is a smaller, more portable and budget-friendly version aimed at those working with more compact setups.

Both FLpad and FLpad Mini feature a 64-pad grid is lined on two sides with dedicated controls for transport, undo/redo and a number of FL-specific functions. You can navigate the Channel Rack and Step Sequencer; create, select, clear and duplicate Patterns; switch between Pattern and Song modes and adjust levels using the controller's Channel Rack Mixer mode. Custom layouts can be designed to suit your own workflow in Novation's Components app.

FLpad follows the FLkey 2 MIDI keyboard controller range launched back in May, another product of Novation's ongoing partnership with Image-Line, the maker of FL Studio.

Both FLpad and FLpad Mini are bundled with six months of access to FL Studio Producer Edition, along with several instruments and effects from UVI, GForce and Klevgrand.

Image-Line launched FL Studio 2026 back in July, an update that introduced an agentic AI chatbot to the DAW, along with a redesigned Flex synth and cloud-based project backup.

“We’re proud to partner with Image-Line once again and build on the momentum of FLkey 2 with a new line of hardware controllers,” Novation's Mario Buoninfante said in a press release.

“Through our previous collaborations with Image-Line, we’ve gained a deep appreciation for what makes this DAW so beloved of beatmakers. This understanding has led us directly to FLpad — a grid controller made specifically to augment FL Studio’s unique workflows in intuitive and inspiring new ways."

Available now, FLpad is priced at $219.99/£179.99/€168.06 and FLpad Mini is priced at $139.99/£99.99/€92.43.

Find out more on Novation's website.

Key features

• Made for FL Studio: Get hands-on in the Channel Rack, sequence drums and melodies, play parts live, and create Patterns directly from FLpad.
• Make beats in the Channel Rack: Select and trigger your samples directly from the pads. The full-size FLpad features velocity-sensitivity for expressive playing.
• Step-sequence your ideas: Quickly create and edit melodies, basslines, and drum patterns for up to four instruments at once.
• Play drums live: Tap in drum patterns with dedicated layouts for FPC, Slicex, and Fruity Slicer.
• Perform basslines, melodies, and chords: Note mode allows you to play and sequence melodic instruments — either locked to your chosen scale or chromatically.
• Build tracks with Patterns: Develop your ideas directly from FLpad. A dedicated view makes it easy to create, select, clear, and duplicate Patterns.
• Edit every note directly on FLpad: Get hands on with FL Studio’s Graph Editor, directly from the grid.
• Control the Channel Rack mixer: Turn FLpad’s grid into a row of faders with Channel Rack Mixer mode.
• Dedicated transport controls: Stop and start playback and recording, undo actions, and more from FLpad’s buttons.
• Make it your own: With Novation Components, it’s easy to make your custom layouts for FL Studio — or your other software and hardware.
• Everything you need to make beats: FLpad comes with six months of FL Studio Producer Edition, a selection of instruments and effects, and finger-drumming lessons from Melodics.

Welcome to the MusicRadar monthly gear round-up, a highlights package covering all of September’s hottest drops – the signature guitars, the signature stompboxes, and the metal guitars for when you have finally been admitted into the guild of Norwegian black metal practitioners.

This month has brought us – finally – a Phil Collen signature Jackson that is priced for the jobbing musician, with the PS1-E an Ensenada-made version of his Californian über-guitar that has all the bells and whistles, including the Def Leppard guitarist’s signature DiMarzio pickups and the active Sustainer system, but a distressed nitro finish, too.

Harley Benton took the opportunity to upgrade the SC-550 Plus with Fishman Fluence humbuckers, Positive Grid put the Spark and all its tones inside a pedal, and Boss unveiled the EX-4 Effects Expander and promised more from your pedalboard.

It was the month that brought us the Squier Paranormal Troy Van Leeuwen Tele XII, a pair of Gretsch guitars in limited edition black limba, and Tone3000 made its library of NAM A2 captures available via guitar plugin.

Meanwhile, PRS and John Mayer teamed up with Jaguar Land Rover for a limited run of Silver Skies finished in classic Defender paint jobs, Fender promised an end to single-coil hum, and Seymour Duncan’s Joe Bonamassa collab continued apace with the Pawn Shop Special P-90s. Also, in pickups, Gibson and Baggs heralded an all-new pickup system for acoustic guitars.

Speaking of which, lets kick things off with some high-end acoustic guitars. Because Taylor just expanded its Next Generation series…

Taylor Guitars Next Generation 12-Fret Grand Concerts

Those with a little cash to spare, a penchant for a smaller-bodied cutaway acoustic guitars and a taste for the finer things in life – like, say, the scent of immaculately polished sinker redwood – will fall head over heels in love this expansion of Taylor’s Next Generation lineup.

There are five models in total, including the 512ce, PS12ce, K22ce, 712ce plus the 12-string 552ce, each assuming the compact player-friendly dimensions of the Grand Concert, each offering a different take on what has become a real player’s favourite over the years.

You get all the high-end appointments of the Next Generation Series: the Claria electronics, the Action Control Neck and the scalloped V-Class bracing.

The $11,999 PS12ce 12-Fret is Taylor at its most ornate, complete with that aforementioned sinker redwood, and the more restrained builds we know and love, including that very tidy western cedar 512ce that offers a 100 per cent pro-quality instrument for $2,999.

Find out more at Taylor Guitars

Yamaha Matteo Mancuso Signature Revstar RS20MM

Matteo Mancuso’s meteoric rise has reminded anyone who needed reminding that Yamaha’s Revstar remains one of the finest guitar designs of the modern era.

His signature Revstar is based off his Custom Shop model, and features a pair of DiMarzio PAF Pro 36th Anniversary humbuckers, and offers players something a little different.

Just be warned: it won’t make the Sicilian virtuoso’s fingerstyle fusion approach any easier, but with that chambered mahogany body, topped with figured maple, a carbon-reinforced neck that’s glued to the body, and five-way switching to get the most out of those PAF Pros, it’s a lot of guitar for $1,599.

See Yamaha for more.

Yamaha FG/FS7 Series

This has been a big month for Yamaha. Don’t sleep on its F7 Series acoustic guitars.

They are made in Japan, have an exceptional all-solid build, with Sitka spruce on top, Indian rosewood or mahogany on the back and sides, and an understated aesthetic. The natural finish and clean lines belies the fact that playing a flagship Yamaha acoustic can be a revelatory experience.

For £/$1,999, they are a must-try for serious players and jobbing pros, with the series comprising dreadnought and concert-sized models.

Find out more at Yamaha.

Yamaha Pacifica Standard Plus colors

Rounding out the Yamaha launches, we have a round of fresh finishes for the for one of the all-time classic S-style workhorses. Now available in Sonic Blue, Ice Blue, Fired Red, and Tobacco Brown Sunburst.

Gibson DES Series

So this is what happens when the CEO learns how to make electric guitars? The former Gibson CEO now board member and artist ambassador Cesar Gueikian made it a priority in his time in charge of the Nashville-based guitar brand to learn the job from the shop floor up, stealing some time for himself on a Friday to head down to the Craftory in the company of master luthier and sensei Jim De Cola.

Much of being a CEO is about dealing with figures, making decisions that could affect people’s livelihoods. Making guitars was not that; it was a moment’s relief, and the guitars he made have been played by the likes of Billy Gibbons and Kirk Hammett.

Gueikian did tell us we might see his builds for sale one day, and the DES (his motto, “Do epic shit”) Collection is a super limited run that sports the Ghost Burst finish that he developed – and Tool’s Adam Jones named.

The range comprises a Flying V, SG, Les Paul, and Victory, and is all but sold out. But here’s hoping we see this finish again – and this DES aesthetic and spec – now that it is officially a thing. Gibson’s new Alnico VIII Elev8 humbuckers come as standard, compound radius ebony fingerboards. A portion of the proceeds goes to Gibson Gives.

Find out more at Gibson.

Strandberg Boden Essential Tremolo

Every now and again a guitar brand comes along that can claim the revolutionary tag, and Strandberg, this pioneer for neo-headless guitar designs – catnip to the prog-metal and math-rock set – is one of them.

Its latest is a $1,099 version of its flagship model now comes with the Arc TILT tremolo unit, and it is still super lightweight and has that ergonomic neck profile that’s approved by the likes of Plini et al. See Strandberg for more.

See Strandberg for more.

ESP/LTD Black Metal

ESP’s refresh of the LTD Black Metal series introduces a little red to the colour scheme with this new Black Red Burst finish – in satin, presumably because it’s borderline homophonic with Satan, and he/she/it is the core demographic for a shreddable über-metal build that houses a single Seymour Duncan MortalCoil at the bridge position. Just one pickup? Ah, don’t worry, it’s got multi-voices.

The M-7HT seven-string baritone with the reverse headstock is using one of those voices to speak to us. You’ll have to play us backwards to reveal what that message is, but it’s something along the lines of !em yuB !em yuB.

See ESP Guitars for more.

Reverend Billy Corgan Infinite Sadness

Everyone flipped their wig when they saw Billy Corgan play one of these live onstage at Lollapalooza and now Reverend has released the Infinite Sadness – in very small quantities – to mark the 30th anniversary of the Smashing Pumpkins’ most audaciously massive album.

Available in baritone or regular six-strings, these look exceptional in Black Sparkle, especially with that graphic finish. And although they are limited edition, they are affordable.

See Reverend Guitars for more – and good luck finding one.

Sterling By Music Man Cory Wong StingRay II

Finally, the affordable SBMM version of the funk-master’s humbucker-equipped signature model has arrived. We could tell you more about why the Vulfpeck guitarist went for humbuckers, but Cory Wong already told MusicRadar all about it – and what the StingRay II can give him that his Strat can’t.

Guild Starfire 2026 lineup

A semi-hollow Starfire is a wonderful thing indeed, and Guild has just dropped a whole bunch of them. There is a four-string bass version. There is a single-cut, a Deluxe, a Custom. Some have Guild’s Bigsby-esque vibrato. Others have their TOM-style bridge and tailpiece.

There are 17 of them and in some stunning finishes. This being a Newark St release, the price tag is pretty reasonable.

Check them out at Guild.

Fender Lee Sklar Precision Bass

It’s not uncommon for session aces to modify their number one instrument over the years, adding features, taking some away, knowing what works for the widest variety of musical scenarios, and that’s how Lee Sklar ended up with the Precision Bass on which this new signature model is based on.

It’s not your typical P Bass. There are mandolin frets, a pair of active EMGs, a Hipshot BT3 Bass Xtender and a Badass II bridge, and perhaps the most important feature is one you’ll only notice when you pick it up. It has the neck of a “shaved down” Jazz Bass. Wild.

See Fender for more.

Gibson Custom Artisan Hummingbird and SJ-200 Koa

The Artisan Series is not so much end-of-the-month, let’s blow the paycheck kind of proposition. It’s more a blow-the-retirement instrument, but what a way to spend it.

Here the Hummingbird and SJ-200 are giving a bougie koa makeover and we can well believe that those open chords will never have sounded sweet on them.

See Gibson for more.

Vox AC Mini

If the Vox AC30 and AC15 could get you evicted if you were to open them up and throttle them in a domestic setting, perhaps applying a Dallas Rangemaster to the front end to live out your Rory Gallagher/Brian May fantasies, then consider the AC Mini the solid-state compact powerhouse you can crank up at home, and still have a roof over your head the following morning.

See Vox Amplification for more.

Two Notes Engineering Torpedo Captor X Pro

Two Notes’ latest flagship reactive load box, passive attenuator, stereo DI and all-round backline power tool was co-developed with Ampete Engineering and antes up what was already a fully featured proposition.

Those features translate to usefulness. You can use the Torpedo Captor X Pro for “studio-grade” direct recording, taming a fire-breathing tube amp and adjusting its feel, resonance and attack, and with all the key parameters adjustable via the front panel – the centre of which is an easy-to-read colour display – and the accompanying Torpedo app, Two Notes gives you total control over the unit, and, ergo, your backline.

Find out more at Two Notes Engineering.

HeadRush FRFR Cab Series

HeadRush has been building out its digital tone ecosystem nicely, with the latest Core, Prime and Prime Flex guitar multi-effects pedals and amp modellers now offering native support for Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) captures and full integration with the Tone3000 platform. Well, you need something to play these units through, and so these new FRFR Cab Series Speakers might do the trick nicely – and they’re only 399 bucks or so.

See HeadRush for more.

Strymon La Brea

Strymon’s analogue project has already chalked up some stone-cold classics. The Canoga Fuzz is one of the best things we’ve had on the pedalboard this year. The Fairfax was, surely, impossible not to love.

And now this, the La Brea, or just La Brea, a pedal inspired by the development of the Deco tape saturation and double-tracker, which offers you compression and saturated drive, all the way up to fuzz sounds.

Check the sound samples in the demo above. We need to try this one quick.

See Strymon for more.

Fortin 3.33 Fredrik Thordendal signature dual channel boost pedal

Everyone loves ‘the ultimate whatever.’ It’s what we’re all searching for. The ultimate overdrive. The ultimate fuzz. The ultimate moderately powered tube combo with real spring reverb. And so on.

Well, the sequel to Fredrik Thordendal of Meshuggah’s signature Fortin boost pedal might just be one of the ultimate boost for high-gain metal players. It can even change the channels on your amp, and will help shape your sound so that riffs cause maximum damage.

See Fortin for more.

JAM Pedals Wahcko MK2

We lose our minds about vintage gear but what would players in the late ‘60s and ‘70s have done to have one of these on their ‘boards. Chances are, it might sound quite similar to the units they’ve been using, with Jam developing an inductor inspired by the OG TDK inductors in ‘60s Vox wah pedals.

But you’ve got some modern updates, with a six-way adjustable sweep and input gain control. And the enclosure design is very cool.

See Jam Pedals for more.

Flattley Reaper 10th anniversary Dual Mode Distortion

The Golden Age of Effects Pedals is a time of great abundance. Who can remember every drive and distortion pedal that came over the transom? But wait, didn’t Flattley already make a Reaper?

Well, yes, it did, and this 10th anniversary reimagining of the concept swaps out the old rotary control, retains the op-amp architecture, then adds soft and hard-clipping, and a boost mode.

As ever, you’ve got the cool Mexican-inspired enclosure art and what we’d expect to be a tip-top build.

Find out more at Flattley Guitar Pedals.

EarthQuaker Devices Stereo Easy Listening

The tiny pedal amp simulator gets a stereo upgrade. Sure, digital amp modellers are really exciting, what with all those options, but don’t forget you can do this the analogue way, too. Use it for silent practice, going direct into the PA, with “zero latency and no harsh digital artefacts”.

See more at EarthQuaker Devices.

Walrus Audio Fundamental Lo-Fi Delay

Walrus Audio updates its slider-equipped Fundamental range with a delay pedal that could scarcely be more on-trend.

Everyone and their indie-folk soundscaping cousin is turning looking for that gauzy, soft-focus magic in their tone, repeats that sound like a memory fading… Or something like that. Texture is the buzzword we’re looking for. And it is just $99.

See more at Walrus Audio.

Keeley Electronics Tube Drive

And for his next trick, breadboard magician Robert Keeley sticks a a Russian 12AX7 triode into an overdrive pedal, offers two drives (“high-voltage tube drive” and the Keeley Phat Mod) and the capability to stack them and change the stacking order with a flick of your big toe.

It has switchable bypass, is build in Oklahoma, and the tube is already burned in, ready to go, on your ‘board, on the road, and if you look under that K-shaped grille you can see it at work. Let it cook! Okay, $399 is not cheap but it’s a serious drive.

See Keeley Electronics for more.

Warm Audio Mod Series

SolidGold FX Fuzzbox

The Fuzzbox is SolidGold’s modern reinterpretation of a classic Tone Bender MkII, adding Bias and Sag switches, plus switchable Modern and Vintage modes.

Purists can get sniffy about switching up the classics, but when it comes to fuzz pedals, surely it makes sense, a practical and fun upgrade that makes it easier to find that Jimmy Page LedZep fire – and some tones of your own.

Find out more at SolidGold FX.

Like everyone else, U2 have been asked what they think about the Ed Sheeran/ Macklemore controversy that has taken up so many column inches this month.

Bono and Larry Mullen Jr were discussing the band’s upcoming Carnaval De Luz album with Rolling Stone UK when – with a certain inevitability - the subject came up. “I would say with Ed and Macklemore that we shouldn’t personalise this, what’s going on,” surmised Bono. “Brian Eno said today that pop stars are like little fish in a large sea of huge forces and religion and politics. And so I don’t want to dwell on Ed and Macklemore and that incident.”

But the singer did suggest that Sheeran’s non-political stance was obvious when the two parties collaborated on a track on U2’s Days Of Ash EP earlier this year. Sheeran guested on Yours Eternally, which is written from the perspective of a Ukrainian soldier during the current war with Russia. Initially, it seems he was reluctant to sign off on the collab and it took Bono’s formidable powers of persuasion to convince him.

“I will say this,” Bono said. “When we did Yours Eternally, he was saying, ‘You’re not going to get me into politics, are you?’ And I said, ‘This soldier who inspired us, he loved you Ed, and you’ve worked on this song’.”

Apparently Sheeran then said: ‘Yeah, but I just want to keep my thing free,’ which left the U2 singer to reflect that “you can’t be pushing people around.”

Larry Mullen Jr then quoted from the band’s long-time producer: “Brian Eno was saying that artists choose whether they want to be involved, and they are entitled to choose whether they want to be involved or not. And it’s not our job to criticise that, no matter how we feel. He said that it takes time for these things to evolve and people to come to realisations and, not to personalise this.”

“But,” he insisted, “we are absolutely clear about promoters or billionaire owners and the idea that they could have some influence on what you say or what you do on a stage. We’ve talked about this, and (if) you applied that logic to U2, we would have been out of business on Sunday, Bloody Sunday.”

Bono then brought up U2 performing Pride (In The Name Of Love) in Arizona when the then-governor of the state was resistant to the creation of Martin Luther King as a public holiday. “We were told we weren’t welcome there. We’ve been getting into this trouble. It’s what we do, and we’re happy to do that, but we’re also happy to recognise if there’s other people don’t want to get into that kind of fight.”

“I think what Eno was saying is you have to persuade people by reason,” he concluded. “You can’t try to force people into a position.”

Slipknot guitarist Jim Root says that he had no involvement in the decision to have Marilyn Manson as the main support act on the band’s upcoming shows in 2027 in South America and at London’s Wembley Stadium.

These shows were announced on September 28. The Wembley Stadium date is scheduled to be Slipknot’s only UK performance in 2027. Marilyn Manson is one of three other acts on the bill alongside Lorna Shore and Hatebreed.

For Slipknot’s 2027 tour of North America the support acts include Bring Me The Horizon, Lamb Of God and Motionless In White.

Marilyn Manson is also booked to perform at five shows with Slipknot in South America.

Manson – real name Brian Hugh Warner – has faced allegations of sexual misconduct from more than a dozen women in recent years. The singer claims innocence while also settling various lawsuits filed by his accusers.

Manson is due to stand trial on 15 November – accused by his former assistant Ashley Walters of alleged sexual assault, battery and emotional abuse.

In the days after Slipknot’s shows with Manson were announced, a number of Slipknot fans have voiced their disapproval.

In response to this outcry, Jim Root states via Instagram: “I stay out of the logistics of touring and all that. I concentrate on writing and being a guitarist, so forgive my ignorance about who we do shows with. There are other people with much bigger brains than I that coordinate all that and I honestly don’t keep up with new bands or new music.”

Root’s statement continues: “I’m stuck listening to the same music my parents listened to when I was forming myself as a little human. And I purposely don’t listen to or pay attention to what’s ‘trending’ or what’s happening at the moment as to not get influenced by anything.”

Root is currently working with the other members of Slipknot on the band’s eighth album, of which he previously stated: “The vibe feels honest and true to me. It’s uneasy and reminds me of recording in the earlier days.”

To usher in the new month with fresh gear discounts, Positive Grid has launched its autumn Sparktober sale, reducing prices across its line of smart amplifiers and accessories. Now, while the first wave of deals went live today, with a focused on admittedly a very small selection of gear, further price cuts are expected to roll out in the coming days – so be on the look out for those.

Delivering Positive Grid’s acclaimed sound processing in a compact, wired setup, the ultra-portable Spark Neo Core headphone amp takes center stage in this sale. Reduced by an impressive 38% to an entry-level price of $99, it offers a budget-conscious alternative to traditional practice amplifiers. The PG Spark Neo Core was already a great value option for guitar players, but with a massive $60 discount, it's astounding value for money right now. A great option for silent practice, Spark Neo Core delivers a wide range of amp and effects tones that suit any kind of guitar player.

For guitarists who need more volume on stage or in rehearsal, Positive Grid has knocked 25% off both the Black and Pearl editions of the Spark Cab. Normally retailing for $349, either finish can currently be picked up for $261.

This 140-watt powered cabinet serves as a versatile, flat-response active speaker – ideal for existing Spark users as well as players running third-party digital modellers or multi-effects pedals. In addition to a 3.5mm input for the Spark, there are stereo combo TRS and XLR inputs and balanced XLR outputs, making this 140-watt class D FRFR cab ideal for multi-effects pedals with amp and cab modelling, as well as compact amp pedals.

The cab features a 10-inch woofer and two high-frequency dome tweeters, making it an option for electric and electro-acoustic guitars. It even has USB-C and DC-out for powering your Spark, tablet, or phone. That means Spark practice amp owners don't have to worry about running out of power onstage.

Now, with Amazon's Prime Big Deal Days slated to begin on October 6, additional sales across guitars and accessories are coming very soon. Be sure to monitor our Prime Day music deals hub for further updates as new discounts arrive across major retailers.

Billy Joel has collaborated with some pretty big names down the years, but he admits that there are a few who he’d have liked to tick off his list.

Speaking during a phone-in on SiriusXM’s Billy Joel Channel – just imagine being famous enough to have your own channel – the Piano Man was asked who he’d have liked to play live with but never got the chance.

“I would have liked to have performed with John Lennon,” replied Joel. “When he was shot, that was a horrible, horrible thing for me. It was like, he was like an older brother to me. So, John Lennon would have been one of them.”

There was also mention of Jimi Hendrix, though Joel has previously admitted that he just wouldn’t have been able to keep up with him.

“He was from another planet,” he says. “I mean, Jimi Hendrix was such a genius on the guitar. I don't know where that stuff came from, but he was brilliant. I mean, really a genius. Kind of like a Mozart type of talent.

Sharing a stage with Lennon or Hendrix might be out of the question – although AI might have something to say about that at some point – but Joel went on to say that he also wishes he’s had the opportunity to perform with a British rock legend who’s still around: “I love Steve Winwood – I think he's a terrific guy,” he confirmed.

Winwood has recorded with Joel, bringing his Hammond organ chops to 1986 song Getting Closer, but their collaboration never went further than the studio.

“We never played together live, and I always admired Steve Winwood,” says Joel. “I thought he was a great keyboard player, great singer. Always loved his recordings, but that would have been somebody I would have liked to work with too.”

Perhaps a performance together isn’t completely out of the question, but it’s worth remembering that, back in 2025 Joel, was forced to cancel all upcoming shows when he was diagnosed with what was reported as a ‘brain disorder’. Responding to another caller on SiriusXM, though, he was quick to provide reassurance that he’s not doing too bad.

“I know people are worried about me because they read that I have a brain disorder, which sounds a lot worse than it actually is,” he said. “I'm OK. My balance isn't that good. Lost a little bit of my hearing, but that may have to do with my age, too, and the rock and roll life and the loud volume probably didn't help. But I'm fine. I want people to not have to worry about me. I'm OK. And I appreciate your call.”

With the chances of the three surviving members of Pink Floyd ever performing again being virtually nil, Roger Waters has taken matters into his own hands and used the band’s name to front his own tour.

Well, sort of. Waters has announced an extensive tour of North American arenas under the banner Roger Waters Presents LEGACY – A Pink Floyd Show. It’s in two legs, with an initial run starting at Columbus, Ohio on 15 February 2027 that runs until 2 May in Wilmington, North Carolina and a further series of dates from 31 August in Vancouver to 25 September when the whole thing wraps up in St Louis.

His accomplice in all this isn’t another Floyd member or associate, but his own son, Harry Waters. In fact, the live band is entirely Harry’s. His father won’t be performing at any of the dates but the whole thing is “created” under his “direction”.

The pair announced back in April they were looking to launch the tour but needed a singer to front the band: “My son Harry Waters has put a great band and show together to go on the road next year to pay tribute to the music from the golden era of Pink Floyd, and maybe a couple of songs from my subsequent solo career. Harry’s band is missing one thing: The voice I had when I was young.”

They found their man in one Clifton David Broadbridge, a Canadian singer who has worked with Les Claypool on his Claypool Gold tour.

Anyway, Waters Sr has said in a statement: “These songs have meant so much to so many people for so many years, and I’m excited for audiences to come together and experience them live again. Harry has assembled a terrific band, and I can’t wait for fans around the world to see the special show we’ve created together.”

Harry has added: “I fell in love with the music immediately. It really had an impact on me, irrespective of any bias because it was Dad’s music. I still love it deeply to this day. Collaborating with Dad on this new production is such an honour, and I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to bring this music to fans old and new, around the world.”

A European and UK tour is expected to be announced soon. In the meantime, tickets go on sale for the North American dates this Friday via Ticketmaster.

Eric Clapton has admitted that watching two of his most famous electric guitars go under the hammer at Christie’s in 2004 was a momentarily gut-wrenching experience, and that the first thoughts going through his mind were that he was making a “big, big mistake”.

The Crossroads Guitar Auction was ahead of its time. Here was one guitar god parting with the holiest of holies – some of the most revered guitars in the world. There was a whole consignment of Martin guitars (including ‘the Longworth,’ the 1966 Martin 000-28 you see on the back of the 461 Ocean Boulevard cover).

Then there were the superstars of the auction, such as Blackie, Clapton’s Fender Stratocaster put together from 1956 and ’57 parts, for which his love is written all across the wear on its maple fingerboard.

Blackie changed hands for $959,500. The guitar Clapton considered, “the star of the show” was his 1964 Gibson ES-335TDC went for $847,500.

This was the second electric guitar he had ever bought, had it all through his time with the Yardbirds and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and it was the one we all recognise from that night at the Royal Albert Hall as Cream played their farewell shows. Bang! Just like that. The hammer came down and they were gone. Ouch.

But speaking to Guitar Center, Clapton explained his thinking, and why he has no regrets about selling these instruments when the money raised was going to support the Crossroads rehabilitation unit in Antigua.

“When I became an acknowledged alcoholic, and realised I was an alcoholic, I took onboard and still adhere to this thing they call the Preamble, which is my primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics choose sobriety,” he says. “Believe it or not, it’s above me being a musician or a husband or a father. It’s the number one thing, so when the auction was going on I had to keep saying, ‘This is for your purpose. You are an alcoholic and if you don’t stay sober you are not going to help other alcoholics choose sobriety. So this is all for that purpose.’”

So no regrets, even if it was a little bittersweet to these instruments go. At least he can still see Blackie. Guitar Center, who is a long-standing partner of Clapton’s all-star Crossroads Guitar Festival, actually bought Blackie and keeps it on display.

Also, at this year’s festival, the ES-335TDC made an appearance, albeit in a very different guise. Gibson was unveiling its new Epiphone replica at the festival, with the release scheduled for summer 2027.

A collaboration with the Gibson Custom Shop, this Epiphone guitar comes will come with a Gibson USA pickups, the mismatched hardware of the original and with a special custom hardshell guitar case.

Clapton might be at peace with where the 335 and Blackie have ended up, but he acknowledged just how important they were to him. They are not just a tool for making music, they can be a source of “salvation”, too.

“That’s what they represent to me, and that’s what music represents to me,” says Clapton. “It’s the most reliable source of inspiration, and salvation.

“If you’re in a bad place, and you pick up a guitar, there’s a strong chance you will get out of that. You’ll transcend whatever the problem is, if you can keep it up… Find a way to express yourself to the instrument… They are very sacred things to me, these guitars.”

Last month, Guitar Center unveiled its limited edition Crossroads 2026 Collection, featuring a reproduction of Clapton's Blind Faith Telecaster, plus Martin acoustics, Ernie Ball electric guitar strings and a PRS John Mayer Silver Sky in Incline Blue.

Every band eventually reunites these days. But few reformations have been as unlikely, nor as successful as Dinosaur Jr’s. The indie rockers, who very much played John The Baptist to Nirvana’s messiah, didn’t much like each other during their initial burst of late '80s/ early '90s success, but since reconvening in the mid '00s have released six very good, well-received albums.

Now. in an extensive Pitchfork interview, the trio have told their whole story. Back in the day, much of the tension in the band was due its imbalance. Guitarist J Mascis wrote all the drum and guitar parts, and had firm ideas about how the bass should sound.

Mascis was originally a hotshot drummer but switched to guitar and became equally accomplished on his new instrument. “People will be like, ‘How did you learn guitar so fast?’” Mascis explains. “I was only writing what I could play at the time. I couldn’t do bar chords, so I had to just move my fingers around until something would sound good. And then I could play faster than I knew what to do with.”

It was Mascis who convinced bassist Lou Barlow to play the instrument high up on the neck so it followed the guitar’s lead. “The way I play bass to J’s guitar was something that J masterminded, and I completely believed in it,” Barlow says. “I’ve never had musical differences with J. The quality was super high, and the personal parts mattered less to me than that quality.”

The trio released three critically acclaimed albums and a genuine indie rock anthem in Freak Scene, before Barlow left in 1989. Around this time Kurt Cobain asked Mascis to join Nirvana, who at this stage were still signed to the cult indie label Sub Pop. He turned him down: “I had just graduated to being able to stay in motels and not on floors, but they were still in the floor phase. I’m not going back to the floors.”

Mascis kept a version of the band going until 1997. But when the original trio reconvened a decade later, miraculously it seemed to work and they decided to keep going. Older and wiser, they seem to be able to tolerate each other these days. “It’s annoying, because you’re saddled with these guys - God dammit, what the fuck? But it sounds better, so what are you going to do?” says Mascis.

“We came up together, learned how to play together, have a certain sound that is interesting. When we play now, kids are into it, because they haven’t heard anything like this. And maybe they don’t know why.”

Many musicians are understandably wary of generative music models. These tools can represent the worst of AI – performing functions that actively infringe upon human creativity, often trained on copyrighted material and doing so in a ‘black box’ that gives users little oversight or control of the process.

Engram, the debut project of developer Thoughtful Things, is something very different though. Described as a ‘generative audio sampler’, this hardware instrument makes use of generative audio models, but approaches them in a way that its creator likens to circuit bending, allowing users to push the models “beyond their limits and discover expressive, uncanny new sounds to sample.”

The basic format of Engram is similar to what you’d expect from a traditional sampler: It features an onboard mic and stereo line-in for sampling, the ability to step sequence and recall patterns, and both MIDI and CV connectivity. Where it becomes more adventurous though is in its incorporation of what its developer refers to as ‘tiny AI’ – a distinction aimed at differentiating its self-contained models from the ‘big AI’ of Suno or ChatGPT.

The incorporation of AI allows Engram to process and warp recordings in interesting ways, aimed at creating uncanny and glitchy textures out of existing audio using a range of tweakable parameters. It can also generate samples from scratch, which can then be treated with the same processes.

Its onboard mic is said to offer both lo-fi sampling and voice control. There’s also an intention to incorporate plugin-style audio models that can be swapped in and out in a manner described by its creator as being like old-school ROMpler cartridges.

“As a researcher and a musician, I’ve been exploring AI/ML and art for a while,” writes Thoughtful Things founder Evan King on Engram’s Kickstarter page. “I’ve trained models to generate uncanny plants and insects for album art; I've coaxed haunting sounds out of music models by glitching their inputs; I've developed poetic songwriting tools that induce hallucinations from speech recognition models.

“Over time, I've developed a hot take: black box AI art is definitionally boring.

“This is because black boxes are designed for efficiency rather than human agency. Efficiency doesn't leave room for experimentation and human imperfection – the things that make art interesting. Today's tools are great for churning out corporate assets, but they're bad for artists: people who are always in search of new ways to expand their distinct creative processes.”

The post goes on to explain that Engram is designed to explore the aspects of AI that King finds interesting, namely pushing the concept beyond its intended uses and into unexplored territory. Thoughtful Things also confirms that Engram’s models are trained entirely on open datasets that only contain audio licensed for commercial use.

Right now, Engram is live on Kickstarter and, at the time of writing, is more than three quarters of the way towards hitting its target of $10,600 with 27 days to go. According to the developer, the instrument itself is currently a playable and manufacturable prototype that is being actively tested by musicians, after which the aim is to create a final, retail-ready design.

Take a listen to demos in the video above. Those interested in backing the project can secure a first run production unit for $770. Head to Kickstarter or the official site for more information.

If anyone questions whether Robin Trower is 100 per cent badass then just consider how he got his sound. After leaving Procol Harum in 1971 in search of a more suitable vehicle for his burgeoning guitar talents, he was one of the early adopters of the Marshall Super Lead.

There was no master volume control on those things. He had a Fuzz Face in the mix, too. Trower was working with a lot of decibels. And he played a Fender Stratocaster, invariably inviting comparisons with Jimi Hendrix after he too incorporated the heady swirl of the Uni-Vibe in his rig.

Taming all this with single-coil pickups is a fool’s errand or a job for the unnaturally gifted. Like Hendrix, Trower was in the latter camp, and as MusicRadar catches up with him at his Friday morning rehearsal, he is still as bullish about guitar volume as ever; he still has that dragon under his thumb.

“Well, I mean, it comes natural to me to be able to control that volume,” he says. “During a performance and maybe sometimes in the studio as well, I do use the volume control on the guitar.”

But, wait, didn’t he worry about the single-coils and 60-cycle hum?

“Yeah, I mean it was a real problem. There’s no doubt about it,” he says, like a seasoned trawler man talking about a little chop. “I mean, some gigs I have to go to the in-between pickup setting to get rid of the RF.”

That, however, is the extent of Trower’s precautionary measures for reducing the noise floor. The rest is technique, and there is plenty of that on show on his latest solo album, Shine. Trower reveals himself from the first notes of The Missing Piece. There’s no mistaking him. He is, as Paul Gilbert described him, “one of the best warbly guitar players” of all time. You hear that tone, that phrasing, and it’s like a fingerprint, identifying who’s responsible.

As Gilbert said in praise of Trower in a MusicRadar interview from 2019: “In Day Of The Eagle he’s got this looping riff, and when he hits those open top two strings and it warbles – he might have like double-tracked it and bent one with the whammy a little bit – the whole world just comes unglued. When he hits that note, it’s so cool.”

Trower says now: “There was no thinking about it. It’s just feeling it. That’s all it is. It’s just, ‘I like playing this. I am going to play it, and I’m going to give it everything I’ve got. That’s really all it is. I don’t think I ever tried the Leslie. That was the Uni-Vibe was the first thing that gave me that vibe.”

It might tickle Trower to know that listening to his hugely influential 1974 sophomore album, Bridge Of Sighs, made Gilbert feel like someone who had partaken in some of what was being passed around the festivalgoers at Woodstock ’69.

“I never did drugs as a kid but to me it was what I imagined that drugs would do,” said Gilbert. “It was sort of like the whole world was resonating in an unusual but attractive way, and Robin Trower would have that.”

He still has it. Now 81, Shine finds Trower playing in his preferred power trio format, handling guitar and bass guitar, and all of the production duties. Chris Taggard joins him on on drums with Richard Watts on vocals, with British blues/soul singer Jess Hayes providing a guest turn on Truth.

“When I’m writing songs for the new album, I’m hearing the vocalist in my head, so for the songs that Richard sings, I’m writing to hear him sing,” says Trower. “I always put it in a certain key register where his voice is, where I like it best. I know where that sweet spot is. The guitar – especially the lead – is very much my voice.”

Working as a producer might give Trower a different perspective on his work but the goal hasn’t changed. He is always in search of a live take in the studio. If it sounds live, then he has done his job, and the plan worked.

Listening to some of the arrangements on Shine – the vampish late-night groove of Live Your Time, the smoke-show wah of The Race – they sound like they could be extended and jammed out.

Without You is like that, too, and you might find yourself quietly daring Trower to keep it going, or at least take a few more bars for the outro solo, take the song over the horizon (when the song finishes, it even feels like it’s past midnight).

Trower says we’ve got it back to front. He cut these songs down –“so it’s not just all whanging about! [laughs]” – to give them some “form”. The years have taught him a little restraint. He’s also treating that weather-beaten signature Stratocaster of his with a firm hand.

“Well, I think the main thing compared to the ’70s is I have a lot more control of what I’m doing now,” he says. “It was all a bit wild in the ’70s.”

The brand names are different but the main ingredients to Trower’s sound have changed little since the ’70s.

His pedalboard is exclusively Fulltone, with Mike Fuller’s Deja Vibe providing the chewy swirl of the Uni-Vibe, the FullDrive providing the grit, and the Clyde Wah V2 replicating the vintage Vox wah pedal circuits that were designed for the American jazz trumpet ace and magazine publisher Clyde McCoy. And all this stuff sounds really good together. Guitarists sometimes invite ridicule for how obsessive we can get about our tone and yet it’s critical – this is where it all starts for Trower.

“All of my song ideas come from sitting and playing the guitar at home, and that tone is very, very important – it’s inspirational,” he says. “Someone famous once called the guitar ‘the little orchestra,’ so it’s limitless, really.”

Trower is a blues player at heart. He heard BB King’s Three O’Clock Blues and that was him hooked. You can hear the influence. Discovering James Brown was another revelation. When Trower talks about the “power soul” on Shine, it’s coming from the Godfather of Soul.

“The main things that I would play during the ‘60s would be BB King Live At The Regal and James Brown Live At The Apollo,” says Trower. “And I think the other big album for me – well, there’s a couple – Moanin’ In The Moonlight, by Howlin’ Wolf, then later on in the ‘60s, Albert King’s Born Under A Bad Sign. It was simple but very, very powerful. I think that’s the whole thing about it, it had real potency to it.”

Trower was blues but he was no purist. He was among a cohort of players who were changing the form of the blues throughout the ‘70s, plays such as Frank Marino, Jeff Beck Rory Gallagher and Freddie King, who would flavour it with psychedelic rock, fusion, folk, R&B and soul.

“Well, I wasn’t really intellectualising it. I was just doing what comes natural,” says Trower. “The most satisfying music I come up with is always where the heart leads the head, definitely.”

Of all the parallels to be found between late ‘60s and early ‘70s society and the present day – the sociopolitical upheaval, the economic hardship, and the sense that the centre will not hold – the music is not one of them, at least not to Trower’s ear. These days, Trower finds himself listening to movie soundtracks.

He argues that the sounds he hears from contemporary pop lacks “depth”.

“Most of what I hear now seems very thin to me. It’s thin, just no real depth to it,” he says. “For instance, if you listen to Help! by the Beatles, there’s nothing in pop music today that’s as strong as that – it’s very potent stuff – and I’m not even a Beatles fan, though I recognise talent when I hear it.

“With all those early Beatles tracks, you know, there’s something happening there! There’s something going on! It’s a recording of a happening, which you don’t really get today. It’s like I said to you earlier, that’s exactly what I’m trying to recreate in the studio.”

But how do we create a happening in the studio? Musicians have never had so many tools at our disposal, plugins that give us digital versions of studio kit that was hitherto only available to bands booked in at EMI Studios or Sound City. These sounds are now available at the click of a mouse.

This is only a good thing, so long as we remember as Trower does, that if you are going to record electric guitars, the magic happens when you introduce an scarcely controllable element to the controlled environment of the studio.

We’ve got to turn the volume up.

• 5 guitar tricks you can learn from Robin Trower

Spitfire Audio has teamed up with composer, producer and music technologist BT for the release of Phoenix, a hybrid software synthesizer that brings together samples from BT's private archive with wavetable and FM synthesis, a versatile effects engine and extensive modulation capabilities.

Equipped with 16 voices of true stereo polyphony, Phoenix is built on six synthesis engines: a spectral wavetable engine, a six-operator, 34-algorithm FM engine, and a multi-sampled instrument engine with a broad sample library covering strings, brass, woodwind, choirs, guitars, pianos, and percussion from Spitfire Audio's library, alongside more experimental sounds from BT's own collection. These are joined by a dedicated transient engine, a sub-oscillator and noise oscillator.

Phoenix's wavetable engine is built around a "stereo-from-the-ground-up" architecture with two independent synthesis chains per-voice across both left and right channels. This means that key parameters can be can be independently modulated across each channel, creating complex spatial effects. There's also a deep cross-modulation bus with 20 modes spanning FM, AM, ring modulation, phase distortion, wavefolding and more.

The synth's modulation engine comprises 37 sources in total, routed via a matrix with no fixed slot limit. You get multiple four-stage curve sequencers, five-stage envelope generators and LFOs with freely drawable waveforms, alongside four random generators that draw on sample-and-hold, noise, stochastic models and libraries of rhythmic patterns lifted from BT's Stutter Edit plugin.

Paralleling the modulation engine in its depth, Phoenix's library of effects features 37 processors, spanning multiple styles of reverb and delay, along with a multimode filter, chorus, flanger, phaser, tape emulation, saturation, distortion, multiband compression, and – as is to be expected in a BT plugin – glitchy rhythmic stutter effects.

That's not all: you also get a 128-step sequencer and arpeggiator with probability control, and Phoenix is MPE-compatible, giving you per-note control over all five dimensions of expression when used with an MPE controller. All in all, this looks like a beast of an instrument, and one of the most ambitious projects we've seen from Spitfire Audio in a long time.

"This is true cross-synthesis," BT said in a press release. "I've spent my entire life exploring synthesis modalities, built on the back of giants, to be sure, and combined and augmented this way, none of this existed before, not even in a related form. This is a dream inspiration engine fully realized."

Currently priced at an introductory discount of £199, Phoenix is available for macOS and Windows in VST3/AU/AAX formats. The synth currently requires an active internet connection to operate, but Spitfire Audio says it will be introducing offline operation in a future update.

Find out more on Spitfire Audio's website.

Watch a conversation between BT and Spitfire Audio's Paul Thomson below.

Rick Wakeman has played to what must be one of his most unusual audiences in his long career: an enclosure of 150 bears in Vietnam.

No jokes about a captive audience please – these bears have been rescued from a truly horrific life chained in cages, their bile extracted for use in traditional Chinese medicine. The practice has just been banned in Vietnam, but despite this, it’s still the fourth largest market in the illegal wildlife trade in East Asia.

Wakeman has long been a keen supporter of animal welfare and has rescue cats and dogs of his own. He set up his Yamaha piano outside the sanctuary at the Tam Dao national park and played some specially selected compositions for the animals.

Interviewed by the Guardian, the 77-year-old prog veteran said: “It’s a well-known fact that all animals react to music, especially gentle melodic music. So what I am going to do is piano music that is melodic, and I can only hope that they will come up to the perimeter of the sanctuary and have a listen.”

And as you can see from the video above, that’s exactly what some of the bears do, sniffing around near the perimeter and nodding their heads in appreciation before they find a perch to hear what Wakeman is playing.

Wakeman urged the Vietnamese government to do more to help the remaining bears that are still living in cages. “We have 150 bears at the sanctuary, but there are 125 bears left in cages in the old bear bile farms, and there are four dying a month. We have to get them out quick and into the sanctuary.”

The concert was organised by Animals Asia, which runs the sanctuary. Its CEO Dr Jill Robinson said of the performance: “We are beyond blessed to have Rick’s support for Animals Asia and the bears. His love for them is immeasurable and can be heard in the beautifully haunting music he has written for them.”

And Wakeman was clearly moved by what he saw: “If you see these bears it is hard to put into words, they are almost human the way they look at you. If you see them, you can’t help but be moved. They aren’t tame but they are very safe, very happy, they play, they romp. I witnessed two today jumping in a bubble bath and playing. They’ve got a life back.”

On 5 December 1980, three of the most gifted guitar players of all time performed together at the Warfield Theatre, a 2500-capacity venue in San Francisco.

The recording from that night turned into what is arguably the most famous and influential acoustic guitar album ever released. Its title: Friday Night In San Francisco. Its creators: Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucía.

Friday Night In San Francisco was released in 1981. Now, 45 years on, Al Di Meola tells MusicRadar how this legendary collaboration was conceived and perfectly executed.

“The funny thing about Friday Night In San Francisco is that nobody could have planned what that record would become,” Di Meola says. “Nobody was sitting there saying, ‘We’re going to make one of the biggest acoustic guitar records ever.’”

He explains how he first encountered Paco de Lucía, a master of Spanish flamenco guitar. This was in 1973, when Di Meola was a member of groundbreaking jazz fusion group Return To Forever alongside pianist Chick Corea, bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Lenny White.

“My connection with Paco actually goes back several years before the trio,” Di Meola says. “I was 19 years old, touring Europe with Return To Forever, and when we were in Spain, I started hearing about this guy Paco de Lucía.

“Then I heard him. The rhythm was the first thing that got me. I already had this huge attraction to Latin music and rhythm, but Paco had something I’d never heard before. The articulation, the right hand, the rhythmic power. It was unbelievable. I remember thinking, ‘I’ve got to play with this guy.’”

Di Meola’s wish came true when he was recording his second solo album, Elegant Gypsy, which also featured appearances from Jan Hammer on keyboards and Steve Gadd on drums. The album was recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York, and de Lucía played on the landmark track Mediterranean Sundance.

Before the trio of Di Meola, de Lucía and McLaughlin came together, the latter pair had performed in a different trio with Larry Coryell, the guitarist hailed as ‘godfather of fusion’.

As Di Meola recalls: “John had already been playing with Paco and Larry Coryell before John, Paco and I became the trio. Larry, by the way, had been very important to me when I was young. I followed him around and took some lessons with him when I was about 15. So, there were all these connections already there.”

He continues: “When I came into the trio, you suddenly had three guys from completely different musical worlds. Paco came from pure flamenco. John had Miles Davis, Tony Williams, Mahavishnu Orchestra, jazz, Indian music, and all of those rhythmic concepts. I had Chick and Return To Forever, Latin music, rock, The Beatles, and my own compositional thing.

“What connected the three of us was rhythm. And there was competition. Absolutely. We wanted to impress each other. If Paco played something unbelievable, believe me, John and I heard it. If John did something, I heard it. And if I played something, they heard it.

“There was a healthy competition every night where you wanted to make the other two guys turn their heads. People sometimes have this romantic idea that we just walked onstage and magically played this incredibly complicated music. No. We worked our asses off.”

He recalls how they worked together in the build-up to the San Francisco show.

“That first tour was roughly two months. There were no cell phones. No computers. Nobody was sitting in a hotel room for five hours looking at Instagram. We played. We rehearsed in the hotel rooms. We’d do the concert. We’d play some more.

“So, by the time we reached the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco on 5 December 1980, we had developed something you couldn’t have created by putting three guitarists into a recording studio for a couple of days. We knew each other. When we got to San Francisco, the three of us were playing at an incredibly high level because we had been living with that music every night.

“The arrangements were very tight because they had to be. At those tempos and with those rhythmic figures, three acoustic guitars can become a train wreck very quickly. But once we were inside that structure, there was tremendous freedom. That’s where the excitement came from.

“And there was nowhere to hide. No drummer. No bass player. No keyboard player. Nothing underneath us holding it together. Just six hands.”

Di Meola says that the three players took great care in their choice of guitars for this project.

“The guitars themselves were important because the three of us didn’t sound alike,” he notes. “I was playing my Ovation steel-string. Paco had his Conde Hermanos flamenco guitar. John was playing an Ovation nylon-string.

“On the recording, you can actually locate us. Paco is on the left, John is in the centre when all three of us are playing, and I’m on the right.”

He adds: “The material reflected our different personalities too. Mediterranean Sundance was mine and Rio Ancho was Paco’s, and putting those two together became this incredible vehicle for Paco and me.

“Short Tales Of The Black Forest was Chick’s composition, which John and I played as a duo. John and Paco played Egberto Gismonti’s Frevo Rasgado. Fantasia Suite was mine and became the big three-guitar piece. And then there was John’s Guardian Angel.

“One thing people don't always realise is that Guardian Angel on the original album wasn't recorded at the Warfield that Friday night. We recorded that later at Minot Sound in White Plains, New York.”

For Al Di Meola, a part of the magic in the Friday Night In San Francisco album is the audience’s reaction.

He advises: “Listen to the record with headphones. They’re going crazy. It sounds like a rock concert. Think about that. Three guys sitting in chairs with acoustic guitars in 1980, and the audience is reacting like they’re watching a rock band.”

As for the stature of this album in the canon of guitar music and jazz, Di Meola says cautiously: “That's difficult for me to answer because I’m on the record. I’m not going to sit here and tell you where my own record belongs in history. But I can tell you what happened. It became far bigger than anybody thought an acoustic guitar album like that could become.

“Suddenly, guitar players all over the world were wearing out the record trying to figure out those parts and who was playing what. And what I’m proudest of isn’t the speed. Everybody talks about the speed. It’s the interaction.

“You had these completely different musical cultures colliding – flamenco, jazz, rock, Latin music, Indian rhythmic concepts, composition, improvisation – and somehow we found a common language. And 45 years later, people are still talking about that night. That’s pretty amazing to me.”

Johnny Marr’s fifth solo album, The Age Of Everything, comes out on Friday and the guitarist has given an interview to the NME about the new record.

What did we find out that was new? Well, it seems the guitarist has long been an admirer of Robert Smith, which is interesting given that the Cure man has never had much good to say about The Smiths.

When the interviewer mentions that the track Fire With Fire has a ‘Cure vibe’, Marr agrees. “There were a couple of Cure-y moments on (previous album) Fever Dreams too, like Aerial,” he says.

“When The Cure came out, I thought of Robert Smith as a guitar player. He’s a frontman, but what he was doing on Seventeen Seconds was really very much on his own and really on point. That was a few years before I came out. I saw them a couple of times when I was 16 or 17 and really liked them.”

Expanding on a theme, he continued: “I’ve actually covered Depeche Mode’s I Feel Love, and when I did The Tracers on (his 2018 album) Call The Comet, I woke up to Maxine Peake praising me because it sounded like Sisters Of Mercy. That was great. They were the first big band that The Smiths supported, so it is in my DNA.”

Much of The Age Of Everything, though, sticks to the guitar pop that Marr has long traded in. “I’m able to write catchy tunes, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There will be times for me to write my acoustic opus where I get miserable. I’ve taken the liberty of sounding like other things over time and I always get, ‘Oh, that sounds a little bit like what you were doing with Electronic’ or, ‘Oh, that’s a bit Smiths-y’, but really it’s no more complicated than, ‘Why wouldn’t you?’”

And conversation also turned to a current politician who seems (unlike some) to be utterly genuine in his love of Marr’s old band. Last month British Prime Minister Andy Burnham was caught on camera playing Rusholme Ruffians (from The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder) on guitar with a Ukrainian soldier during a visit to Kyiv. “It’s heartening to see any Labour leader last six weeks without getting absolutely piled in on by everyone,” is Marr’s considered take.

“Some people are alright,” he added. “I understand cool by association when I see it, do you know what I mean?”

YouTube has become the biggest music-learning platform in the world, but it does have certain limitations. Looping specific song sections involves frequent clicking/touching and dragging of a progress bar and you have a limited amount of control over playback speed, so trying to master a tricky passage can be frustrating.

Enter Benjamin, “a control surface for practice”. Designed for use with iPads running iPadOS 16 and later, it enables you to loop sections of video with just two physical button presses (one at the start of the section and one at the end). These loop positions can then be fine-tuned using the scroll wheel and nudge buttons.

The scroll wheel can also be used to precisely navigate videos. This can be done by chapter, in 10-, 5- or 1-second increments, or even frame by frame. Speed can be adjusted in 5% increments, so you can increase the tempo very gradually as you get better at playing something that you’re learning.

Benjamin also gives you regular video playback controls – play/pause, volume, mute, fullscreen and captions where supported – further reducing interaction with the touchscreen. A companion app enables you to bookmark and organise videos and to save sections and loop points, making it easier to pick up from where you left off at your previous practice section.

Controls include 13 switches, one rotary encoder and one volume slider, and Benjamin connects to your iPad over Bluetooth. It also serves as an adjustable stand for your iPad, and the 3,200 mAh rechargeable lithium-ion battery can power the unit for around nine days based on three hours of daily use. You can also operate it over USB-C as it charges.

“YouTube gave me access to more music teachers than I could ever have imagined, but the frustration of navigating with a touchscreen constantly interrupted my actual practice,” says Robinson Kelly, founder and inventor of Benjamin. “As a former video editor, I knew how much faster and more precise physical controls could be. Benjamin came from wanting that same immediacy while I was learning bass – one action, one control, always where you expect it to be.”

Benjamin is about to launch on Kickstarter, with early backers getting access to a Super Early Bird price.

George Lynch is one of the most acclaimed and influential rock guitarists to have emerged in the ’80s.

He could have been Ozzy Osbourne’s right hand man. He lost out on that gig twice – first to Randy Rhoads and later to Jake E. Lee.

But Lynch’s brilliance eventually made him a star with Dokken, one of the leading hard rock bands of that decade.

Dokken sold millions of albums despite the hostility between Lynch and the man whose name was on the covers of those albums – singer Don Dokken.

In an interview with Rock Candy magazine, Lynch looked back on his career with Dokken and recalled the years before he joined the band when he was first making his name on the Los Angeles rock scene.

He began with his early influences.

“I was ten when The Beatles emerged,” he said. “That was good timing. I identified with George Harrison quite a bit due to the name. Later, the guitar hero appeared – Hendrix, Clapton, Page.

“My dad was a traveling salesman, so we moved around the country a lot. My guitar was my solace and my friend. But around the age of 14 I started getting in trouble, drinking and drugging and being defiant. I was constantly running away from home.

“I wanted to get out into the world, ride the rails. So my guitar was taken away, my head was shaved and I was shipped off to live with my very strict godparents in a little place in southern California, just a lumber mill and not much else. That straightened me out, and I got my guitar back.”

Lynch recalled his experiences with his early bands.

“I moved to northern California and we had a band called Sgt. Roxx – glitter rock, very influenced by Kiss and the New York Dolls. We had a band room with egg cartons all over the walls, and we’d do full rehearsals in there with pyro. One day it caught fire and burned the whole place the ground, with all our equipment. That was the end of that band!

“Then I formed The Boyz with [future Dokken drummer] Mick Brown. I was the singer and lead guitar player, and we played covers – Montrose and Deep Purple. Eventually we decided to give it a go in Los Angeles.

He continued: “We got a singer, Michael White, a Robert Plant lookalike, except he played flute like [Jethro Tull frontman] Ian Anderson. I don’t know how, but he would blow fire out of his flute. We weren’t crazy about it, but he said, ‘If the fiery flute solo doesn’t go over like gangbusters I’ll drop it.’ And he wore these see-through stretchy pants, with no underwear. It was really hard to watch, so we ended up getting rid of him and got Greg Sanford, whose brother was Rick the singer in Legs Diamond.”

It was after The Boys morphed into a new band, Xciter, that Lynch first encountered Don Dokken, who was then singing with a group named Airborn.

“When the band became Xciter we wrote Paris Is Burning and some others that became Dokken songs,” Lynch said.

“We played a gig with Airborn at the Starwood, and they were playing one of our songs. I asked Don about it and he said it was one of his songs that he’d written. ‘Oh, okay.’ That should have been a big red light.”

He added: “Don wasn’t like a normal guy you could talk to. It was strained and weird. He had to control the conversation in the room. All eyes had to be on him. There was obviously a little bullshit going on.”

Despite his reservations, Lynch accepted an offer to record an album with Don Dokken in Germany in 1981. Mick Brown was the drummer. Juan Croucier, later of Ratt, was the bassist.

That album was initially released as a Don Dokken solo album but was subsequently released as the Dokken band’s debut, Breaking The Chains.

Lynch admitted: “We had no idea what was going on business-wise. It was Don who was handling it. In Germany, Don took care of himself. He had a woman he was seeing, and he lived at her flat right on a lake, eating good food. We were all stuck in a Czechoslovakian hotel in an attic with no door on the shower.

“Don told people that he paid us, but to get home from Germany I had to sell some equipment to get a plane ticket and I also very fortunately got a last minute job writing songs and playing guitar for Udo Lindenberg, a German artist. I made eight hundred marks and I was able to get myself home.”

In 1982, following the death of Randy Rhoads, Lynch auditioned for Ozzy Osbourne’s band for the second time. Lynch was heartbroken when the job went to Jake E. Lee, but in the wake of that disappointment he rejoined Dokken alongside Brown and bassist Jeff Pilson, and by 1984 the band had achieved a major breakthrough with their second album Tooth And Nail.

“We were full of piss and vinegar and wanted to show the world we had what it took,” Lynch said. “We dedicated ourselves to taking it to the next level, which we managed to do with Tooth And Nail, which went gold.”

Dokken’s rise continued with the million-selling albums Under Lock And Key (1985) and Back For The Attack (1987). Lynch acknowledged the role that the band’s management played in that success.

He recalled: “If you have to give one element of the machine the most credit for the success that Dokken had, it would be Cliff Burnstein and Q-Prime. These guys got us on radio and MTV, on these giant tours, and in all the magazines. So we owed our success to them. And to Don’s bullshit and perseverance, and maybe some of our talent and chemistry as well.”

The tension between Lynch and Don Dokken was exacerbated by the fact the singer felt isolated in his own band, unwilling to embrace the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle in the manner enjoyed by Lynch, Brown and Pilson.

As Lynch put it: “We had our little clique because we were partying together. Don wasn’t.”

It was after a disastrous spell on the Monsters Of Rock stadium tour in 1988 that Dokken split up.

Lynch subsequently formed the band Lynch Mob, whose debut album Wicked Sensation was released in 1990, featuring Mick Brown on drums.

“It was an equal four-way split in Lynch Mob,” the guitarist said. “We found a great singer with Oni [Logan], and we had a real chemistry while it lasted.”

Lynch rejoined Dokken in the mid-’90s, but the grunge-influenced 1997 album Shadowlife was his last studio recording with the band. He left the band after a tour opening for Alice Cooper.

“I had no intention of quitting Dokken,” he said. “I was hopeful that we could evolve and get to a better place. But when we finished the Alice Cooper tour I got a fax telling me I was fired. No explanation, just a cold, one-sentence statement. I was owed quite a bit of money, but later I got a letter saying if I wanted to get paid I had to sue them. ‘Oh, great!’”

There was one last reunion of the classic Dokken line-up in 2016 when the quartet performed live in Japan. Across the years Don Dokken has carried on recording under the band name with an entirely different line-up. Lynch has had various projects in recent years, including a band named The End Machine with Brown, Pilson and another ex-Lynch Mob singer Robert Mason.

In his interview with Rock Candy, Lynch reflected on what might have been.

He stated: “We are definitely different animals, Don and I. We really aren’t meant for each other. In any band there are complicated, triangulated emotions. Egos. And Don’s ego was just gigantic.

“He built himself up and tried to crush everybody else. He always had to be right and everybody else was wrong. He had to be the absolute alpha male top dog. And I guess my lack of diplomacy didn’t help. I didn’t have the patience or I wasn’t mature enough to really think before I said something. I would just say things that were true, but probably pretty hurtful.”

Lynch ended with a confession.

“I’m not pointing fingers,” he said. “Dokken had more success that anything else that I’ve done in my life, so maybe there is something there. I’m as much to blame as anyone else.”

Last weekend, we sat down with house legend, UKG innovator and sampling wizard Todd Edwards for a wide-ranging conversation that surveyed his 34-year career, touching on his iconic first UK show, his multiple Daft Punk collaborations and his take on contemporary DJ culture.

During our chat with Edwards, he also gave us an insight into the gear and production techniques behind his signature style of house music, which collages deftly chopped samples over low-slung beats and deep, fluid basslines, influencing everyone from Burial to Disclosure.

As is so often the case with pioneering electronic artists, Edwards' singular sound was shaped in large part by the limited technology that he had access to. In our conversation, he paraphrases Orson Welles, suggesting that limitations like these motivate artists to take their creativity to new heights.

Looking back to his early days, Edwards tells us that his first piece of gear was an Ensoniq EPS sampling workstation, which lent his tracks a gritty 13-bit sound and his famous swing, born out of the ESP sequencer’s quantization. "It came out of me trying to imitate Masters at Work's drums," he recalls.

After getting paid $2000 for an early remix—a take on St Germain's Alabama Blues that would ultimately catch the attention of Daft Punk—Edwards bought an Ensoniq ASR-10, loaded with effects and more sample time. (He had to borrow a friend’s Ensoniq EPS to double his sampling power in order to make the remix—the machine had a paltry maximum of 41 seconds at its lowest sampling rate, and less than 5 at 52.1 kHz.)

Throughout the ‘90s, Edwards upgraded through successive rackmount Akai samplers—the S2000, S3000 then S6000—which despite their increasing levels of sophistication, were still lightyears behind the convenience of modern software. "With the S6000, it took minutes to stretch small samples, and even then it might not sound good," he says. "But now it’s just instantaneous, the way you can tweak things. You kids don’t know how good you have it! [laughs]"

Searching his studio for formative pieces of gear that shaped his sound, Edwards singles out the Roland Juno-106. "This was the first analogue synthesizer I ever got," he recalls. "I worked at a music store called Rondo’s Music, I was a cashier. Someone was selling it used and I bought it for $200. You can get them for $1500 now!"

Working with such a stripped-back set-up at a time when gear was prohibitively expensive, Edwards was forced to find creative workarounds. "When I started out I didn’t have any effects units," he remembers. "If I wanted a delay or an echo, I would have to loop the sample with a fade in it to emulate a delay. If I wanted to emulate a reverb, I’d have to put a very low release on the sample."

Edwards famously collaged hundreds of short samples together to create the music and lyrics he wanted, resulting in a thrillingly fresh sound that he continues to expand on to this day. "I didn’t have keyboards—aside from the Juno, there was no keyboard, so I literally had to use samples as my musical instruments," he says. "This whole cut-up sound came from a lack of keyboard equipment… I was treating records like paints, like raw materials."

Given how Edwards incorporates hundreds of micro-samples in some of his songs, it would be a Herculean task to clear them. As AI makes it easier to identify samples and copyright lawsuits become increasingly commonplace, Edwards has been compelled to take a different approach.

"In the beginning of 2025, I felt like I was going through the motions. I was feeling down. I was trying to make samples without samples, but I missed going through records… I was making my own samples by playing synths or using Splice. It just got depressing," he explains.

While he's initially hesitant to discuss his excitement about the creative applications of AI, Edwards decides it's time to lay his cards on the table, telling us that using AI music platform Suno Studio to generate material to safely sample has reinvigorated his joy in making music.

"There’s so much potential there, and it’s been able to reignite the idea of what you can do as a sample artist," he says with enthusiasm. "I resent the way people talk about this technology as if it’s from the devil. I feel like the seasoned producer will see it as a potentially powerful tool, but the amateur or the person that doesn’t have the skillset will see it as a threat."

"What ticks me off is that there’s so many negative things that get said," Edwards continues. "They say ‘you’re taking money out of artists’ mouths’, but I’m sorry, I don’t remember every single artist on Beatport clearing samples! Is everyone clearing samples? Because if you’re not, it’s the same thing, just on a smaller scale."

In Edwards’ view, using AI to generate stems to sample is no less creative than combing through Splice for loops. "They say that it’s synthetic, but you’re using Splice packs," he says. "You’re using other people’s sounds and you’re paying a credit to do that. If you build a whole track out of loops, that’s no different, in my mind. The hypocrisy in the industry is insane."

"You can make amazingly beautiful shit if you actually put some musical ideas in there. It acts like a co-producer, I’ve seen what it can do. If you prompt alone, it’s gonna sound very generic. But I can put ideas in, make my own disco or soft rock songs, then take that out, cut them up and use them as samples, and never worry about another lawsuit again—because it’s mine, all of it."

Electronic music was born from using technology in fresh and unexpected ways. While there’s plenty of uninventive new music made with and without AI, how will AI reshape the sound of dance music? Can it be a powerful tool in the hands of innovators?

"Do you think I need to use AI? I've been making music without AI forever. I'm using it because it's an amazing adventure, I wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't. I know how to play chords. You could take away my sampler, and I'd still be able to make dance music and house music and garage," he says. "It frustrates me to hear people bashing something that's so amazing. I guess it's all about how you use it."

What is it?

Having owned an HX Stomp for many years now and been a big user of Helix Native, I jumped at the opportunity to review the latest iteration of Line 6’s software offering in Helix Stadium Native. Arriving not too long after the hardware units, it promises some serious upgrades over the old one and, somewhat unusually for the world we live in, stays at the same price.

However, $/£399.99 is a lot to pay for software. Admittedly, I got the original for £99 as a Helix hardware user, and to be totally honest, I don’t think I’d have paid full price. It is often available at a discount, however, so if you’re willing to wait for a sale, then you can sometimes get it for half price. It’s definitely a steep entry point, although for some it will be worth it thanks to the huge number of amp and effects models included, and the regular updates the original received.

New to Helix Stadium Native is the ability to load Proxy Clones, Line 6’s version of amp and effects capture. It supports up to 48 clones per preset. Cab IRs now run at 32-bit float, and every cab block now has the option for dual sounds. You can place effects between linked amps and cabs, and sidechain dynamics and certain filter blocks.

The UI has had an upgrade with higher-resolution graphics, with a graphic control of mic placement and EQ, plus a graphic view of impulse response curves. You can now search the plugin for presets or blocks, DAW integration is improved with clear names in the automation lanes, and the tuner has been improved upon.

You can import your old presets from Helix Native, but they won’t go the other way. Ditto with trying to use presets from Stadium Native on non-Stadium hardware. The minimum requirements have also changed, with Stadium Native requiring 8GB of RAM and 1GB of hard drive space, where the previous version needed 4GB of RAM and just 100MB of disk space.

If you’re unsure about committing such a huge amount of cash, Line 6 offers an Intro version you can download for free. It’s got 5 Agoura amp models and 16 effects you can sample, as well as the ability to load four Proxy Clones per preset.

Specs

• Launch price: $399.99 ($99.99 upgrade for existing Helix Native and Stadium hardware users available)
• Type: Amp modeller and effects plugin.
• OS: macOS v14 Sonoma, 64-bit (Intel and Apple Silicon processor types are supported); Windows 11 64-bit
• Amps: 27 Agoura, 111 HX, 46 cabs
• Effects: 274
• System requirements: Intel i5 or M1 2.50GHz processor or higher, 8GB of RAM, 1GB of free disk space. An Internet connection is required for initial license authorisation and for using the 15-Day Trial version.
• Plugin Formats: On Mac, 64-bit AAX Native, Audio Units version 2 (AUv2), VST3. On Windows, 64-bit AAX Native or VST3. Available on up to 4 different computers.
• Contact: Line 6

Usability and features

Usability and features rating: ★★★★½

Installing Helix Stadium Native on my laptop is a breeze. I activate it via the code on the Line 6 site, download the software, and follow the installation process. I then head to my DAW of choice, Pro Tools, sign in, and I’m ready to go immediately. It pops into my plugin folder under ‘Instruments’ alongside my previous version of the software; no need to search for the raw files and put them in the correct folder.

I plug a HSS Sire S-type into my audio interface, set my levels, load an instance of the plugin on a stereo channel, and I get a sound immediately. So far, so good. It looks remarkably similar to the previous version, but everything is much higher definition. It’s a noticeable change, with sharper blocks and bolder text, but overall it looks very similar, and I’ve got no issues getting stuck into moving things around the signal path.

The window is resizable, which is good as there are so many amps and effects in the lists at the bottom half of the window, and it remembers the size I set it at when clicking back and forth between the mix window of my DAW and the plugin itself.

New for this version is ‘Focus View’, accessible via a click of the aperture icon on certain amps and cabs. It unlocks a fresh graphic mode, and on the amp models allows you to drag a red circle around to quickly dial in sounds. This mode is also available on many of the effect blocks, making quick overall changes very simple. On a cab block, this function lets you move the mic further or closer to the amp, or closer or further away from the centre of the cone.

Continuing through the presets, I come across one called ‘Brit MegaGuitar’, with a lot of blocks in it. Activating all 16 blocks, I’m amazed that I’m able to run it with my audio interface at 32 samples, even with a pitch block in there, which is notoriously DSP-heavy. There are no pops or clicks as I run through some Oasis-inspired leads, as per its namesake.

As I start getting into recording some demos, which you’ll find further down the page, I start to notice that it takes a second or two for the Helix Stadium Native plugin instance to load when I click it.

When recording, I’m often moving between the mix, edit, and plugin windows, and I keep thinking that I’ve misclicked when, in fact, it just takes a while to load up. It’s something I get used to, and it could also be a Pro Tools-specific issue, but it would be great if it loaded a bit quicker to speed up the workflow when I’m in the midst of inspiration.

Another thing that irks me is that the button to activate the blocks is absolutely tiny. When a block is deactivated, it's quite faded, so hitting that button accurately every time becomes a problem for me. A better workflow might be to double-click to activate; either that or make the button a bit more obvious, as there’s plenty of space for it.

These small niggles aside, it’s just as easy to use as the previous version. The dragging and dropping of blocks will be intuitive for all sorts of players, and even things like loading the Proxy captures are easy enough thanks to the ‘Show Finder’ button in the appropriate window. Some may call it outdated, but I think the workflow is great for recording guitarists who want to quickly be able to move stuff around in the signal path and get to a good result quickly.

Sounds

Sounds rating: ★★★★½

With such a huge number of sounds contained within, it’s difficult to get across the length and breadth of it in just this review. I’ve added some sound samples for you further down the page if you want to get hands-on, but I also highly recommend trying the free tier to hear it for yourself. I test it by running through the presets to see what’s on offer, and the first to catch my ear is the aforementioned Brit MegaGuitar, which is based on the Marshall Super Bass amp.

On its own, it’s warmer and cleaner than the more popular Plexi, making it a great platform for ladling on the various effects in the preset. When I stack a fuzz, clean boost, and overdrive into the front end, it retains its clarity and continues to do so as I add three delay blocks and two reverbs into what is a rather busy signal path. It sounds awesome, and I’m immediately impressed with the quality of the presets that have clearly had some attention paid to them.

Next up is the Callisto Chatter preset, which takes a Fender Deluxe Reverb model as its clean base, and adds a shedload of delay blocks into the signal path. It results in a self-oscillating tone that absolutely could be the communication of satellites in orbit. Without the effects, the Agoura amp model recreates the sound of a black panel Fender remarkably well, clean and clear with that mid scoop and a touch of breakup when I really dig in with my pick.

The dual Twin Reverbs from the Double Double preset are next, with each amp panned hard left and right for some glorious stereo sounds. Here I want a little more, so I set each amp using the focus control, with the left one to get it a bit more present in the overall balance. Again, the sounds of the Agoura amps are incredibly lifelike, reacting beautifully to my picking dynamics, and responding realistically when I stick a Klon clone block in front of it.

The incredibly fun Knife Fight follows, again with two amps panned hard left and right. In this instance, it’s an Agoura Ampeg SVT and an Agoura Soldano Slo-100, perfect for some hard rock riffs. I add in a fuzz based on the Zvex Fuzz Factory for the Ampeg and a modded DS-1 model for an absolutely titanic rhythm sound that keeps me playing for a good half an hour.

I also land on the Orange Rockerverb 100 Agoura emulation, which is a relative of my own tube amp, the Rocker 32. It’s got that classic Orange midrange punch in spades, with plenty of oomph in the low end and a smooth overdrive sound. Again, I find the focus view really useful here for dialling in a quick sound, which I can then perfect with the individual controls. It’s the mark of a good tone when I can keep having fun playing despite the fact that I’m sitting in front of a laptop rather than a full-blown tube stack.

Verdict

With such a huge array of sounds on offer, Helix Stadium Native delivers any sound a guitarist can ask for. It’s really easy to set up and use if you already know your way around a DAW, and for the most part, the UI is very intuitive. Changes to the signal path happen quickly, and there’s a huge number of options for sidechaining and signal splitting, as well as clearly marked automation options if you want to get really in-depth.

It is very expensive, though, especially if you consider things like Universal Audio’s Paradise Guitar Studio, which retails at half the price and can often be found cheaper on sale. The UA option isn’t as complete as this, though, and offers much less flexibility with signal routing and tweaking the cabs. Some users will also bemoan that there’s no standalone option if you just want to quickly play while plugged into your interface.

MusicRadar verdict: For non-hardware users, it’s a pricey option, but if you want a huge amount of choice and flexibility in a self-contained unit, it’s hard to look past Line 6 Helix Stadium Native. The sheer number of amps and effects on offer make it one of the most complete guitar plugins out there, and the quality of sounds is such that you won’t be disappointed when it comes time to mix your recordings. The lack of a standalone version might put some users off, but if you’re already using a DAW, this could well be the amp simulator to rule them all.

Also try

Hands-on videos

Jason Sadites

Signal Theory

Ben Hartwell

It looks like Rod Stewart has finally reached the end of the road. He’s announced The Final Encore, which he’s flagging up as his last ever tour for next year.

In a statement, the 81-year-old singer has said: “My dear friends, The time has come to say farewell to life on the road. After more than six decades, The Final Encore will most definitely be my last.”

“I’ve been singing the music I love since I was 19 years old, and I’ve had the privilege of taking it around the world to all of you. It has given me a life beyond anything I could ever have imagined, and I hope I’ve given you some fond memories in return.

"So, may I take this opportunity to thank you for making this extraordinary life possible. I hope you’ll join me so I can thank you the best way I know how… with the music and one hell of a show. See you there.”

The tour begins in April in Ireland and the UK before heading to mainland Europe in June and July. He’s pencilled in five UK dates, in Belfast, Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester and at London’s O2.

Rod has not been in the best of health of late. Last month he cut short his final US tour for what was described as “routine” heart surgery. This followed an episode in June when at a date in Utah, the singer had to receive oxygen mid-set and was forced to sit down for a section of his performance.

The surgery was a success. Indeed, soon afterwards Stewart posted on Instagram: "I'm already feeling better and very much on the mend. I want to thank the doctors, nurses and everyone who has taken such wonderful care of me.”

Fingers crossed his health holds for what is bound to be an emotional final traipse round the arenas and festivals of Europe. For more details about the tour head over to Stewart’s website at rodstewart.com.

For the rock artists who defined the 1980s, the early '90s were tough. Hair metal was out, grunge was in and for guitarists such as Steve Stevens it meant a necessary period of adjustment.

That’s what the man best known for his work with Billy Idol has been reflecting on in an interview with the VPR Rocks podcast. Stevens recalled working on Exposed, the solo album by Mötley Crue singer Vince Neil, when grunge broke in 1991 and feeling the change in the air. He defended the record, suggesting it was just released at the wrong time.

"I think a lot of people like it,” he argued. “I've seen it come around (and) it gets the recognition, and also the Mötley record they did with John Corabi, because that was a really great record. You know, it just so happened that the whole Seattle thing hit right at that same point, and the tides were changing."

Of course, Stevens was old enough to remember this happening before during punk: "I'd seen the sea change in guys that were listening to Emerson, Lake & Palmer suddenly having to cut their hair and like New Wave."

“It's healthy, you know. You know, music every decade has to belong to the kids, the youth of that decade. They have to make their own music and believe in it. I didn't want to listen to the music my older brother listened to, or he didn't want to listen to music that my parents listened to. So, I was never frightened by the change."

He recalls a session he did during this time which summed up the shift. "You know, I just found it really funny. I remember going in to do a session in the '90s for somebody, and they said, 'That's great, Steve. But could you play not so well? And less vibrato'. And I just laughed.

"I knew exactly what they were saying, you know, play more like the grunge thing. But, you know, that was cool."

"I loved Soundgarden right from the moment I heard them,” he added. “And I never attached a lot of those bands to a name, you know? I think names get thrown at bands; you can't pigeonhole the great bands.

"So, I think that it's really healthy. It's good to challenge what you already know. And I look for the good in everything. I don't know. That's just my nature."

As we know now, the first new U2 album in almost ten years comes out in November and the band have given a lengthy interview to Rolling Stone covering all aspects of Carnaval De Luz.

Aside from the group’s collaboration with Dolly Parton and their tribute to Rosalia, there’s the lowdown on Larry Mullen Jr’s injury, which at one stage threatened his place in the band and U2’s unbroken unity: famously, no other rock band has made it to fifty years without any line-up change.

It seems the drummer had been suffering from neck pain for some years before his 2022 – 24 layoff. It was the result of a congenital fusion in a facet joint and by the time Covid came around Mullen was in so much pain he couldn’t play. “I realised that I was physically damaged beyond repair… I shut down, and my body just went, ‘You’ve had enough.'”

He - like the rest of the band - had already agreed to play The Sphere in 2023. “ I signed up to do it. And then a couple of weeks later my physio said to me, ‘You won’t make it through rehearsals. So you need to undo that,’ which was very difficult, very complicated to undo it, ’cause I’d made a commitment.”

Watching U2 play with another drummer was difficult, he says. In fact, he didn’t even see them play with Bram Van Den Berg until their penultimate show at the Las Vegas venue. “There’s a certain amount of humiliation when you get injured, and you can’t get over it, and I felt humiliated,” he says, “And it’s my own - that’s my own shit.”

“I absolutely understood,” he says. “Business is business, and nothing can get in the way of the process, and I accept that 100 percent. So the unspoken rule (that a band member could be replaced onstage) “applied to me in that case. It could apply to somebody else in another case. And that’s the cost of doing business. It is complicated being friends, being friendly, being in business.

"So yeah, we all have feelings. So I’m not gonna lie that it wasn’t difficult, but nobody imposed it.”

For a while the future of the band seemed uncertain. “We didn’t know if Larry was gonna come back,” Adam Clayton says. “Could we keep going? Would we wanna keep going? That’s still an open question.”

Luckily, Mullen made a full recovery following surgery - a procedure which doctors warned him entailed a real risk of full paralysis - and U2 returned to complete their fifteenth studio album.

“I don’t think we would’ve made an album if Larry hadn’t been able to play,” The Edge admits. “We would’ve just gone, ‘Why? Why make an album without Larry Mullen on it? Doesn’t feel right.'”

What is it?

Despite proudly displaying ‘Nu:Tekt Synthesizer’ along its bottom edge, the latest addition to Korg’s range of build-it-yourself gadgets is not another sound-generating device. Rather, the NTS-4 is a compact desktop mixer designed to act as a hub for synths, drum machines and modular gear.

The NTS-4 fits into the same lineage of cheap and fun music making devices as Korg’s Volcas and Monotrons. It’s small, lightweight and easy-to-use, trading some of the depth and flexibility of higher-end mixers for an emphasis on accessibility and hands-on creativity.

That said, there’s a surprising level of versatility crammed into a device with a footprint roughly the size of a DVD case. It features six input channels, four of which are stereo and two mono with individual pan controls, each fed by a 3.5mm input jack. Its rear panel has a stereo pair of 6.3mm jacks as a main output – the only ‘full sized’ connection on the whole device – joined by a USB-C port used for power, audio and MIDI.

On the top panel are further connections providing a headphone output, MIDI out and stereo send and return connections – all via 3.5mm jack.

Each mixer channel comes equipped with a level control, mute, cue and send rotary. As well as its external effects loop, the NTS-4 has a digital effect engine that can apply processing to both the send/return and master output.

Pricing

Launch price: £199 / $249 / €219

Performance

Like other Nu:Tekt devices, the NTS-4 ships as a simple kit that users piece together themselves. This DIY aspect is mostly a novelty; the pieces clip and screw together in a matter of minutes with no soldiering required, meaning that the process provides no real insight into the electronics under-the-hood. There is something pleasantly therapeutic about the process though, and it arguably creates an increased sense of ownership. In any case, the finished product feels reassuringly solid inside its robust metal enclosure.

The NTS-4 isn’t Korg’s first attempt at a desktop mixer. Back in 2018 the company released the Volca Mix as a companion to its popular synth and drum machine range. That mixer had a few neat Volca-centric tricks up its sleeve – namely the ability to power and sync multiple Volcas from a single hub – but its fiddly controls and lack of MIDI or USB connectivity left it feeling like something of a missed opportunity.

Although it’s not pitched a part of that same range, in several ways the NTS-4 comes across like a more successful attempt at achieving what the Volca Mix tried to do. Obviously those Volca-specific features are gone, but in their place are functions that more broadly suit the cheap-but-creative desktop music making ethos that the range epitomises.

That emphasis on 'desktop' gear – ie compact synths, drum machines, samplers, Eurorack rigs – is evident in the NTS-4's choice of inputs, all of which are line/modular level, with no options for mics or instruments. While that results in a lack of flexibility, it also makes the NTS-4 feel more focused on its target demographic.

Perhaps the most useful aspect of the mixer in this regard is its USB-C connection, which can be used simultaneously for power, MIDI and audio streaming. Although hardly revolutionary on a device like this, those simple interface capabilities mean that the NTS-4 can act as an incredibly useful bridge between your DAW and a small scale hardware setup.

The effect routing capabilities are a major plus point on this front too. While the range of internal effects is neither the most extensive or most characterful you’ll find in a hardware mixer, they generally sound great – particularly the reverbs – and provide plenty of functionality for manipulating or mixing sounds.

More exciting is the inclusion of a fully stereo send and return loop, which makes the NTS-4 great for pairing with hardware effects, Eurorack modules or running sounds through the audio input of your favourite hardware synth.

The DJ-style cue functionality is a nice touch too. Thanks to those effect capabilities, it’s not hard to image the NTS-4 as a neat little hub for live performance. By having the option to cue channels via the headphone output, separate from the main outputs, it gives performers the ability to configure, shape and adjust sounds before bringing them into the main mix.

A few of the issues we had with the Volca Mix do remain though. The most significant is the fiddly controls. While some of the NTS-4’s rotaries benefit from sizable, solid-feeling caps, others – most notably those controlling send levels – are the same pokey controls found across the Volca range. It’s a bit of a shame when it comes to the effect sends, as these are the mixer elements you’re most likely to ‘play’ expressively when performing with or recording sounds.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the NTS-4’s use of a single 3.5mm input on each channel, for both the mono and stereo tracks, is likely to require the use of a fair few adapters or stereo splitter cables in order to properly interface with the rest of your synths and drum machines.

Verdict

In the grand scheme of mixers and interfaces, there’s a lot that the NTS-4 doesn’t do – there are no preamps, mics or instrument inputs, no channel EQs, limited analogue outputs, only one stereo channel of audio streaming via USB. In short, it’s unlikely to replace your 32-input rack interface any time soon. Neither is it the cheapest option, if you’re simply in the market for something compact with a few input channels there are plenty of cheaper, more basic mixers out there.

But for a device that’s small enough to stash into a pocket of your laptop bag, Korg’s mini mixer is surprisingly capable. What’s more, the functionality that is included here feels perfectly pitched at the sort of casual, hands-on production setups that this mixer would slot right into. Now if only Korg would release a few new Volcas to go with it…

Hands-on demos

Soma Laboratory

Alternatives

Specifications

Early in the evening of Saturday 8 August 1970, one of the most uniquely talented singers of the age was sitting in a bar called Vahsen’s, Port Chester, a village situated in the affluent environs of Westchester County, 30 miles north-east of midtown Manhattan.

The singer was Janis Joplin, an artist inspired by the likes of Bessie Smith, Lead Belly and Big Mama Thornton, who melded blues, soul, gospel, country and rock into a radically distinctive sound.

There was a powerful emotional intensity to Joplin’s performances and her voice could shift from a vulnerable whisper to a raw visceral scream in a heartbeat. She also had an astonishingly physical and charismatic stage presence.

Joplin was appearing later that evening at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester with her band Full Tilt Boogie. They had just finished their soundcheck and she was in Vahsen’s bar with songwriter and producer Bob Neuwirth – a former road manager and associate of Bob Dylan’s – as well as the actors Rip Torn and Geraldine Page.

Also in the bar was rising-star singer and poet Patti Smith, a good friend of Neuwirth’s, who recalled the events of that evening at Vahsen’s in her 2010 memoir, Just Kids. Smith recalled that Joplin began reciting the line, “Oh, Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz”, which was adapted from a short, rhythmic poem by San Francisco beat poet, Michael McClure.

The poem was a wry comment on the futility of consumerism, the counterculture’s rejection of the idea that the accumulation of material goods will bring happiness and contentment.

According to Smith, the others started banging beer mugs on the table to form a rhythm. Joplin and Neuwirth then came up with lyrics elaborating on the premise of McClure’s short poem. Neuwirth hastily wrote them down.

“At the Port Chester bar, Janis sang the line a few times,” Neuwirth told The Wall Street Journal in 2015. “It was like a sea shanty. Janis came up with words for the first verse. I was in charge of writing them down on bar napkins with a ballpoint pen. She came up with the second verse too, about a colour TV. I suggested words here and there, and came up with the third verse – about asking the Lord to buy us a night on the town and another round.”

One hour later, Joplin performed the new song a cappella during her show at the Capitol Theatre. “I just wrote this at the bar on the corner,” she told the audience. “I'm going to do it Acapulco,” she joked.

All of which came as something of a shock to the Full Tilt Boogie Band who were on stage with her.

“On Mercedes Benz, Janis wanted to accompany herself on guitar,” bassist Brad Campbell told the Wall Street Journal. “She took out her Gibson Sunburst and whispered to us, ‘Watch me, boys.’ But instead of playing it, she just sang. We eventually played a few notes here and there and sang where we could, figuring she wanted us to follow her.”

There is an alternative version of how the song came into being. In his autobiography Midnight Mover, singer-songwriter and musician Bobby Womack – who was commissioned by Joplin to write the song Trust Me for her album Pearl – suggests that Joplin was inspired to come up with the song while going for a ride with Womack in his new Mercedes Benz 600.

The show at The Capitol Theatre in Port Chester on 8 August 1970 was recorded and widely bootlegged. On 1 October 1970, Joplin recorded the song Mercedes Benz during sessions for her debut solo album Pearl. Three days later, she died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27.

If there is one moment that defines the breakthrough of Janis Joplin it is her appearance at The Monterey International Pop Festival on 17 June 1967, with the band Big Brother And The Holding Company.

The audience was stunned by Joplin’s performance as is evident in the documentary of the festival when Joplin and the band perform the song Ball And Chain.

As Joplin unleashes a mercurial performance on stage, the camera hones in on Cass Elliot of the Mamas & The Papas, who is watching, spellbound, from the audience below.

Clive Davis, the newly appointed president of Columbia Records, was also in the audience that day and signed Janis Joplin and the band to Columbia Records.

Joplin and the band’s self-titled debut album fared reasonably, but their second album Cheap Thrills had a raw, visceral quality. Released in August 1968, the album launched Joplin as a star and reached No 1 in the Billboard Hot 200 chart, where it stayed for eight weeks.

Joplin’s ascent as an artist was beset with profound challenges. Throughout her adult life, she struggled with drug and alcohol addiction.

She performed at Woodstock, walking out on stage around 2 am on Sunday 17 August 1969, following consistent delays, which meant it was ten hours after her allotted stage time when she finally began her performance.

In his 2012 memoir, Pete Townshend of The Who wrote: “She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn’t at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she’d consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible.”

By the time Joplin began planning the recording of her second solo album in 1970, the stakes were high. After leaving Big Brother & The Holding Company in 1968, she recorded her first solo project I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, backed by new outfit the Kozmic Blues Band. Some reviews at the time were extremely negative. While it reached No 5 on the Billboard Hot 200, some critics lamented her shift from psychedelic rock to horn-heavy soul and R&B.

When it came to her choice of producer for the follow-up solo album, Pearl, Joplin opted for The Doors’ producer Paul Rothchild, who began by insisting that they record at Sunset Sound Recorders studio in Hollywood, not at her label CBS’s own studio. Clive Davis reluctantly agreed and recording sessions began on 27 July 1970.

Before she recorded the song Mercedes Benz, Joplin wanted the agreement of Michael McClure, who had written the original short poem. Joplin phoned McClure at his home in Haight Ashbury, as Joplin’s sister Laura recounts in her 1992 book, Love, Janis.

“Janis finally called Michael, saying, ‘I'm singing a song with your Mercedes Benz line in it.’ He said, ‘Will you sing it for me?’ So, she sang it over the telephone. He said, ‘I like my song better.’ ‘Do you mind if I use it?’ she asked. ‘No, go ahead,’ he said, ignoring any discussions of money or credit.”

McClure was credited as co-writer along with Joplin and Neuwirth. In an interview with SF Gate in 2003, McClure said he never earned a cent from his poetry but the significant royalties from Mercedes Benz helped pay for his house, high in the Oakland Hills, on the eastern side of San Francisco Bay.

Joplin recorded Mercedes Benz during a lull in sessions on 1 October 1970 and none of the band were present. It was recorded in one take and her performance reportedly left Paul Rothchild and engineer Phil Macy mesmerised.

In so many ways, Mercedes Benz is far more than a song. It is an electrifying glimpse into the personality of the ferociously talented blues singer from Port Arthur, Texas, who fought against the stifling conservatism of suburban Texas in the early ’60s and fetched up one of the few places on Earth that would allow her to be herself – San Francisco.

It starts with an announcement. “I’d like to do a song of great social and political import,” she quips. “It goes like this…”

And so it begins, with Joplin stomping out a beat with her foot on the studio floor before the vocal comes in. It’s an astonishing sound, big and gritty, achingly soulful, ragged and whiskey-soaked, with the lack of any instrumentation only accentuating its power and emotion. “Oh Lord won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz/My friends all drive Porches I must make amends.”

Across the 1:46 of Mercedes Benz, we see everything – her zest, her humour, her fragility, her fearlessness and her audacious, unbridled talent. It’s all captured on tape, a unique document that says far more than most massively-produced songs ever could.

As Jim Beviglia of American Songwriter magazine put it in 2023: “Very few a cappella songs have ever made an impact on the world of classic rock, but Janis Joplin’s Mercedes Benz packs more wallop in its way than countless tracks by full bands.”

Two days after she recorded the track, at around 11 pm on 3 October 1969, Janis Joplin left Sunset Sound studio and returned to her room at the Landmark Motor Hotel. She died from a heroin overdose during the night. According to Performing Songwriter magazine, Joplin had explained to a friend that she was only using heroin to avoid drinking again, because hangovers hindered her performance in the studio.

The deeply devastated Rothchild and the band worked for the next two weeks to finish the Pearl album, which would feature some of Joplin’s finest work.

In an interview with Yahoo! Music, Bob Neuwirth said that if Joplin had not died, it would have been unlikely that Mercedes Benz would have been included on the album.

“The album wasn’t finished,” said Neuwirth. “They didn’t really have enough stuff. And Paul Rothchild thought it captured her personality, so they included it on Pearl. You know, it’s one of those songs that was never meant to see the light of day. It was just a bar improvise on the back of Michael McClure’s thought.”

On 11 January 1971, three months after Joplin’s death, Pearl was released. The album reached No 1 in the Billboard Hot 200 where it stayed for nine weeks. In 2003, the song was remixed adding a beat and background melody. This version was featured on the CD collection The Essential Janis Joplin

In a retrospective review in AllMusic, Joe Viglione notes that on Mercedes Benz, Joplin “stands naked before the listener providing a clear picture of what a commanding presence her voice was, and the texture of that extraordinary instrument as well”.

He then ponders the question: “Can anyone name another short and sweet solo performance which has left such an indelible mark?”

If you like your sounds distorted, degraded and loaded with lo-fi character, then the humble bitcrusher is your friend.

By reducing the bit depth and sample rate of a signal, this audio effect produces crunchy textures, gritty timbres and artifacts reminiscent of vintage digital gear: it’s a powerful tool for creative sound design, capable of achieving everything from subtle fuzz to total sonic destruction.

Many DAWs have a stock bitcrusher onboard, like Ableton Live’s Redux or Logic Pro’s Bitcrusher, but these tend to be on the simpler side. Bit Layer, a new plugin from RiverFlux Audio, takes things to a different level, allowing you to precisely target your digital degradation with a multiband architecture, mid/side routing and tonal/transient processing. This adds up to more versatility than many paid-for bitcrusher plugins, and it’s totally free.

Bit Layer can dial in up to eight independent layers of processing, each with dedicated controls for bit depth, sample rate and jitter (all three can be reordered in the signal path) along with mute, solo, gain and dry/wet mix.

The plugin’s multiband functionality makes it possible to apply lo-fi texture in varying degrees and styles across the frequency spectrum, and this can be seriously useful for surgical sound design. You could crunch up the hi-hats in a drum loop while leaving the kick drum untouched, for example, or add some ear-catching grit to the high-end of a vocal without distorting the mids and lows.

The plugin’s targeting abilities extend beyond the frequency spectrum and into the stereo field, too: all three modules across each band have mid/side routing, so you’re able to apply the effect independently across mid (the sum of the left and right channels) or side (the difference between the two) channels.

There’s also tonal/transient splitting across each band, meaning that you can treat the transient (attack) portion of a signal independently to its sustained tonal content, once again opening up new possibilities for fine-tuned signal corruption.

All in all, this is a respectable amount of flexibility for a free plugin. If you’re looking for an upgrade to your DAW’s stock crusher but you’re not already in possession of one of the more full-featured paid-for options on the market, Bit Layer looks like a capable alternative.

RiverFlux Audio Bit Layer is available now for Windows and Linux in VST3/CLAP formats, with AU support on macOS.

Head over to Gumroad to download the plugin.

Released exactly 50 years ago, Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life is often regarded as his crowning glory, and the last in his astonishing run of five great albums that began with 1972’s Music of my Mind.

Songs’ was originally released as a double album that also came with a bonus EP, called A Something’s Extra, but half a century later, Wonder has sprung a surprise by releasing another EP – again called Songs in the Key of Life – that features a further four unreleased songs that didn’t make the original release.

“We’ve lived with Songs in the Key of Life for 50 years, but there’s still more to hear,” says Wonder. “We didn’t add these songs to the album, but they were part of what I was feeling and discovering as we made it. They bring me back to that time in my life, and now they get to become part of yours.”

The EP was personally curated by Wonder, and mixed for release by John Fischbach and Gary O Adante, Songs in the Key of Life’s original recording and mixing engineers. Adante was credited on the original LP as Gary Olazabal.

The four songs – It’s Easier, My Life Story of Love, I Can See the Sun In Late December and I’m Into Livin’ – sound typical of Wonder in his golden period, and will delight fans who may have thought that there was nothing more to hear from that time. The star wrote and produced on all the tracks, with former Supreme and Motown artist Susaye Greene co-writing the lyrics for My Life Story of Love.

Musicians to feature include Greg Phillinganes, Michael Sembello and Wonder’s longtime bassist Nathan Watts, while the funky I’m Into Livin’ has backing vocals by Shirley Brewer, Thelma Houston and Deniece Williams.

Wonder is soon to head out on a celebratory tour of Songs in the Key of Life’s anniversary, with tickets available now.

Jason Newsted, the former Metallica bassist, has posted a heartfelt tribute to his predecessor in the band, the late Cliff Burton.

Burton died aged 24 on 27 September 1986 when Metallica’s tour bus crashed on an icy road in Sweden during the band’s Damage Inc. tour in support of the album Master Of Puppets.

Newsted joined Metallica as Burton’s replacement and his first public appearances with the band were in late 1986 when they completed the tour dates cancelled in the wake of Burton’s death.

Burton made three albums with Metallica – the debut Kill ’Em All (1983), Ride The Lightning (1984) and Master Of Puppets (1986). His virtuoso bass-playing was showcased on the 1983 instrumental track (Anesthesia) – Pulling Teeth, and he co-wrote landmark Metallica songs such as Creeping Death, Fade To Black, Ride The Lightning, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Master Of Puppets and Orion.

Jason Newsted served as Metallica’s bassist until 2001, having performed on the studio albums …And Justice For All (1988), Metallica AKA The Black Album (1991), Load (1996), Reload (1997) and Garage Inc. (1998).

Speaking on the anniversary of Burton’s passing, Newsted said via Instagram: “I could get up and practice for five hours to get myself warmed up and get my brain back together and get myself sharp again. Cliff could wake up and do it.”

Referring to Metallica guitarist/vocalist James Hetfield, Newsted continued: “James could wake up after however many beers and do it. Just wake up 10 minutes out of bed and play as good as I could after working for five hours to get to that spot. Some people have this natural thing.”

Newsted likened Burton to another bassist who emerged from the California rock scene of the early ’80s – Les Claypool of Primus. He also related the story of how Hetfield and Metallica drummer and co-founder Lars Ulrich were so desperate to have Burton in the band that they relocated from Los Angeles to Burton’s hometown of San Francisco.

Newsted said of Burton’s early life: “He was able to soak up the music and playing, an osmosis type of trip, he was able to harness that in a fucking serious way, so by the time he’s 16, 17, pretty goddam good already. Same as Les [Claypool], they’re the same age, same trip.

“By the time they’re 17 they’re already there – enough that people like James and Lars that are very exceptionally talented people recognised it so strongly that they moved their lives to be in a band with the guy before they even made a fucking record! He was that fucking good, like, ‘He might be the key to our success if that guy can fit in with what we’re doing.’”

Newsted was a member of Phoenix-based thrash metal band Flotsam And Jetsam when he first saw Burton perform with Metallica.

“I saw him play in 1985,” he recalled, “not much more than a year and a little bit before he died.”

Seeing that show left the young Newsted with mixed emotions. On one hand he thought, in his words, “Why do you even fucking bother?” But on reflection he decided to try his best to emulate Burton. As he remembers thinking: “Maybe if I try really hard, I could be a tenth of as good as that.”

Newsted recalled: “I think ultimately it was inspiring and made me want to try harder – ultimately – but it was intimidating as fuck the whole time.”

His tribute to Burton ended: “What I like the most and what I appreciate is how everyone continues to show such respect for his efforts because they were so fantastical in his brief span.”

Madonna and Taylor Swift were the big winners at last night’s MTV Video Awards, winning seven and three prizes respectively, and there was also an on-stage reunion for the surviving members of Nirvana as they accepted the VMA Video Vanguard Award.

It was Madonna who opened the show with performances of Confessions II single Bring Your Love, with Sabrina Carpenter, and Danceteria Afterhours, her recent collaboration with Charli XCX.

Swift didn’t perform, but did premiere the self-directed video for Patient Zero, her new single, which stars Dakota Johnson and Colin Farrell. She also won the first ever Artist Director award, which celebrates – wouldn’t you know it – artists who direct their own music videos.

One of Swift’s other wins came in the prestigious Video of the Year category, for The Fate of Ophelia, but it was Madonna who was named Artist of the Year, and she also won the collaboration statue for Bring Your Love. British singer-songwriter Sienna Spiro was named Best new Artist, and sang the appropriately-named Great Expectation at the ceremony.

Accepting her Video of the Year award, Swift took a moment to remember Dolly Parton, who she called “the ultimate showgirl”.

“Listening to her songs, it’s like watching the best music video you have ever seen in your life, every single time you hear what she has written,” she said. “She handled this thing with such grace and joy and love and gratitude for the fact that she got to do this, and everything that happened in her life or her career, she channelled back into love and gratitude and appreciation for her fans.”

Nirvana’s award was accepted by Krist Novoselic, who appeared on stage alongside Dave Grohl and the band’s sometime touring guitarist Pat Smear. Novoselic was quick to acknowledge Kurt Cobain in his speech, calling him “one of the greatest artists of all time” and praising his vision for Nirvana’s videos.

“Kurt was one of one. None of us could have imagined that our band, our sound or our aesthetic would mean so much to so many people, but ultimately, the music had a life of its own. It charted its own course. Nirvana continues to resonate so deeply because people are still hungry for authenticity, for something real, something uncompromising. Something that tells you it’s just OK to… come as you are. Kurt would have loved that legacy.”

Other performers on the night included Bruno Mars, Lisa and Raye, and there were also a couple of notable musical tributes. Kacey Musgraves honoured Dolly Parton with a touching rendition of I Will Always Love You, beginning her performance by harmonising with footage of Parton singing it herself, while Sombr, Raye, Teddy Swims, Adam Lambert, MNEK, Saint Harison and MEEK marked the upcoming 10th anniversary of George Michael’s death by singing a medley of his hits.

Fred Again has shared his thoughts on the use of generative AI tools in music creation, joining the increasing numbers of well-known musicians and producers that have spoken out against the technology in recent months.

The British electronic artist and DJ shared a series of Instagram stories on 25 September containing notes he had made on the subject "close to a year ago".

"I've been thinking for a while, the opposite of AI music maybe isn't human music. It's making music," the story reads.

"The process is the magic," Fred continues. "Anyone who's been lucky enough to make music, or make anything, has been able to feel this in different ways since forever."

Fred says that he has felt "no pull whatsoever to even try" AI-powered musical tools: "I place so so so much of my identity in that process, and I haven't found that to be a negative place to put it."

"I have really no desire to do less of that bit. Because that bit is kind of where I find myself most clearly, and it's also my meditation, daily compass. Giving the process bit to a machine would be intrinsically contrary to what I love about the whole thing."

"The clumsy dedicated tumbling towards an idea is the thing we are most lucky to get to do," he concludes. "The hours and hours and years and years of endlessly trying to make the thing you wish could exist. There's lot [sic] of things I'm worried about AI threatening, but that will never be one."

Fred Again's comments arrive as growing numbers of artists are speaking out against the use of AI in the creative process. Earlier this month, guitarist Jason Isbell led a group of musicians in filing a class action lawsuit against AI music platform Suno, claiming that the company used their identities without permission to produce music that imitates their styles.

In May, Grammy-winning producer Jack Antonoff shared his thoughts on AI music, echoing Fred Again's argument that the creative process isn't something that needs to be optimized or replaced.

"The idea of optimizing what we do is a complete miss of the entire point of what compels us in the first place," Antonoff wrote in an Instagram post.

"We (myself, the band and everyone I know frankly) have never been looking for this work to become quicker and easier. We were never frustrated by the randomness and magic it takes. We do it for that exact reason - and without the process itself... nothingness."

"So to everyone who is gassed up about the new ways you can fake making art, by all means drive right off that cliff. We're genuinely happy to see you go."

Fred Again recently dropped Sexy Magic, a PinkPantheress collaboration that's set to feature on the official soundtrack for Grand Theft Auto VI. Made up of 34 original tracks written for the long-awaited video game, the GTA VI compilation album also features music from Daft Punk's Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Travis Scott and Rauw Alejandro.

Although it’s taken decades, video games are now not only a widely respected artistic medium, but also more than bring home the bacon financially. The global video game industry makes approximately five to six times more money than the accumulated box office returns of cinema. The geeks it seemed, have inherited the Earth.

This writer certainly counts himself amongst that number, and with the advancement in graphics, storytelling and drama that some of the best modern games exhibit, what the future of gaming holds is a thrilling prospect.

Amongst our personal favourite games of the last few years are those created by Remedy Entertainment. The Finnish team that first found attention with its iconic Max Payne series went on to helm a pair of interconnected gaming franchises that have perfected interactive storytelling like few others.

Key to the absorbing, mind-bending appeal of both Remedy’s Alan Wake and Control franchises is the incredibly effective music and its interplay with the games’ sound design and immersive gameplay.

At times emotion-stirring and at times pulse-pounding, Petri Alanko - the man behind the music of Remedy - crafts carefully considered sonic reflections of the respective series’ reality-twisting narratives.

A triple BAFTA-nominated composer, we’ve previously spoken to Petri when he created the unnerving soundtrack to 2023’s modern horror/drama classic Alan Wake 2. So, when we heard Alanko has just completed a new expansive and quite extraordinary score for the newly released Control Resonant, we were extremely eager to hit him up once again and find out just what he’d been up to.

Before we dug into Petri’s current working approach - and his unique methods of harnessing and processing found sounds - we wanted to know when the new score for this long-awaited sequel to 2019’s action-packed original Control began…

MusicRadar: Hi Petri, how did the composition process for Control Resonant begin - is there a ‘typical’ way you always start creating for these types of projects?

Petri Alanko: “Like other Remedy projects, this one started with one hell of a presentation, actually. When they have an idea of something and they have pulled together some kind of a skeleton, they usually present the brainstormed entity to a selected crowd of individuals, and later on to the whole company, so that transparency is there right from the start.

“I usually take in every single detail, and quite often I start thinking about sounds, feelings, harmonies and melodies as I watch the proof-of-concept or story idea presentation, it just is that natural, really. Sometimes I get some PDF package, maybe video clips even.

“I notice the project has started when a massive amount of Post-its appear all over my studio… don’t get me wrong: I know Control has a playful entity that litters office spaces with Post-its, this is not the same thing. At least I won’t admit a thing…

“After these ideas have appeared, I think of the best possible way to achieve what I hear in my head, and start putting together a template for ‘basic use’: virtual instruments, plugin chains… sometimes dusting off a few synths here and there.

“I went through a massive electronic/electric studio renovation throughout the Control Resonant development, little by little, and while that was being done, I patched in quite a few things I had kept in a storage room. I made about 50-60 patches on them and turned them into Logic Sampler or NI Kontakt instruments. Other esoteric plugins were also used, but it began there.

“A lot of stuff was first rather simple, [I] played in some really simplistic sounding things with an old Rhodes MK1 Stage 3 that’s no longer with me anymore (the guy who renovated it bought it).

“I recorded a lot of stuff with that, usually just very, very lightly pressing down the keys, so that the resulting signal was more or less like ‘puff…hmmmmm’, just a tiny transient followed by something resembling a sine wave. In the beginning, it was almost all just sine waves, but it evolved to this almost uncontrollable monster quite quickly”.

MR: There’s some really sublime stuff on the new soundtrack. I particularly like the variations of Sibling Theme – there’s some eerie, emotive piano in there which works really well. Then there’s more unnerving stuff like Tabula Rasa and the gorgeous Into The Sunshine. The musical universe of Control definitely seems to have evolved whilst keeping that familiar slightly liminal/emotive feeling of the first game. Can you talk us through how you expanded the Control universe sonically with this new soundtrack?

PA: “It all comes down to [main playable character] Dylan’s character - that, and the actor behind the whole thing, Sean Durrie.

“I usually started pulling it all together through a few very early cinematics, where Sean’s facial capture material was placed next to the almost white-boxed scene - not too many textures, no proper lighting, quite simplistic - and envisioned the outcome through those.

“Knowing how disturbed Dylan’s history had been, it gave me a good story arc start; he was, in the beginning, just a white board - almost a factory reset human being. He had to rebuild himself again. He had to learn how to be human, again, so to speak.

“When Jesse, the protagonist of the first Control, entered the [bizarre, ever-expanding government building] Oldest House in the beginning of that game, she was already on a mission. Here, Dylan begins from zero. He has no confidence, he has no purpose, he barely lives, has no strength or… anything. He just is, the bare minimum of survival.

“Seeing Sean’s face whilst going through all that… damn, I really cried with all that emotion, to be honest. There were moments where all that lack of hope and strength just grabbed me and washed over and…well, I had to take a break. This went under my skin quite often, thanks to his acting. He added a lot of range to the whole experience. Emotional and physical range, to be exact, and that gives a composer a vast ballpark to delve into. Of course, the action went over the top, too, when I saw the gameplay captures, but I had expected that.

“In the first Control, Jesse was on a mission. In Control Resonant, Dylan, too, has a mission, but this time it’s baked in with his anxiety and worry for his missing sister - Jesse. What makes Control Resonant tick is how ingeniously the IP scale was extended, not only up, but towards us mere mortals: in the heart was a childhood story of the siblings.

“The Sibling Theme was originally a whole track, which is now heard in the end credits, called The One I Once Knew, sung by Amelia Jones - and what a performance, damn. The Sibling theme is purposely what one might call a ‘subset’ of that track, we’re dealing with delicate matters and childhood feelings, traumas, consequences and the whole outcome.”

MR: I know that you’re always keen to explore new instruments and sounds - and back on the original Control you did a lot of practical sound design - Did you revisit that approach here? And was there anything new that you brought to the table instrument (hardware or software) wise?

PA: “Well, quite a surprising amount of percussion is formed from plastic buckets, with various sizes, from your average 30 litre to 120 litre and maybe even more. But the key is to not hit them with wooden drum sticks, but with a piece of silicone water pipe - that slightly sticky feeling one where the thickness varies. I noticed the most usable one was 30 millimetres in diameter, the pipe material being something like 3 millimetres thick. It stays straight when hitting, but is elastic when needed. It was impossible to play fast rhythms with those but simpler patterns and single hits sounded awesome. It’s a bit like having different taiko drums that are processed with a disperser, almost, but more natural.

“In terms of ‘other strange stuff’, I put together a vast library of my recordings from the original Control and Alan Wake 2 sessions, and honed the massive multiple hour sessions into a more usable form, using Kontakt, Reaktor, Novum, PhasePlant, Alchemy – whatever came to mind.

“It was really nice to have all the wonderful engines in my plugin library, as they rarely do the exact same things. I’m still missing the iZotope Iris2, I’ve sort of given up using it as I think it might cause a few problems, they’ve discontinued it - but it had two very powerful tools I really loved: the spectral selection and the retrigger playback, which could be turned off, so if you held one note, the next one would pick up its starting point from where the first note is playing. [It was] a marvellous sound design device, and they discontinued THAT? Anyone who comes up with a similar feature set… contact me right now.

“So, the found sound library got into a much more coherent and prepared use, and now that I had enough time to sift and sieve through whatever was on my RAID, a certain ruleset begun forming in my head. There has always been a certain ‘sound’ to the Remedy Connected Universe [the Alan Wake and Control series narratively occur in the same fictional universe, Ed]. Only now have we got its instrumentation sorted out, more or less. I’m not planning any commercial use for it, it’s reserved for Remedy projects only, but something similar could possibly be useful for others, too.

“I also resurrected two 4-track cassette portastudios and reused some really bad tapes I found from my garage, in addition to a few unused TDK SA-X cassettes, as well. Sometimes the tape just added some details to the otherwise bland and simplistic sound that felt lifeless without that. Some material got re-recorded from the old Fostex X-18 4-tracker (I have two, one is a spare, the other is working) through a decades-old Sony multimedia speaker set just to have that delusional and demented brittle sound. I know, I know, it’s ‘music for dolphins’ department really, but I love to go deep into it and play with slightly altering playback speed.

“Some might say ‘It’s easier to use plugins’, but if I can go for an extra mile, I’ll f****ng do it, just because I love this job so much. I love every detail, every second.”

MR: And in terms of how you process those sounds, what are you relying on at the moment plugin/software chain-wise to edit and mould your recordings?

PA: “It’s all based on multiple sets of Universal Audio Apollo X8s at the moment, four of them, each with a separate external lightpipe preamp A/D/A converter, which I have quite a few of in my garage. Most of the time I squeeze out everything from the FabFilter and Zynaptiq stuff, some iZotope in there, too.

“What I still love is abusing all possible impulse response plugins with a vengeance. What amazes me is there still isn’t a tempo-syncable IR processor that could use, for example, rhythmic noise pulses as IR - or if there is, I haven’t found it. I’ve gotten some ‘Hey test this’ pitches every now and then, but the results haven’t been exactly what I was after.

“I don’t exactly long for the massive racks around me, I have given up the hardware processors long ago, but that’s my style, my way of production. I suffered from gear lust back in the early days of my career, and when I eventually realised how little use some gear got, I eventually just dumped them. Some preamps and antique compressors I’ve rented out for those who praise their usability, even some synths, too, but I need recall-ability, fast project file load times, fast everything.

“I even sold most of my modular synth ages ago already, and kept my favourite modules, now living in perfect harmony with the rest of the gear. I tested every possible way to recreate something I had done with modulars, but they’re one-timers, really.

“When you have plenty of fun with them, record it right there, right then, because when they or their knobs and components cool down, it rarely comes back identical.

“Having said that, yep, quite a lot of stuff gets dirtied by the small modular, based on a handful of stuff, living inside a Waldorf KB37 and a little external rack. ARP 2600 however, is in heavy use, mine’s a clone actually, a TTSH (Two Thousand Six Hundred, hence the name) with the raw filter in it, and I’m praising its ability to make [physical hybrid instruments] the Mega Marvin or Apprehension Engine literally sing. Or roar, actually.

MR: How involved do the rest of the Remedy creative team get with discussing their wants for the soundtrack from you? Or do they just entirely trust you to deliver your own response?

PA: “I actually get the ideas only, and then free hands to do whatever I dig out of the ideas given. It’s an idyllic state, actually, and they know I’ll go to extremes to find a suitable solution for everything. Surprisingly I rarely get any iteration or redo suggestions - can’t actually remember, really - but for instance with the aforementioned Sibling Theme, all four parts went through many orchestration rounds, and we luckily found the quietest, delicate and fragile minimal thing working best. I did try everything else as well, but it never felt right.

“There’s a psychological thing with an orchestra: if the sections are large, you envision in your head a posse of people in their black suits and dresses on stage, being rather classy and finessed, and the sound sort of lacks the scars and the tears - because they blend in with each other’s scars and tears, so the intimacy is distorted. We really needed that with Jesse and Dylan and their home origins, so… the less perfect it was, the more perfect it became.

“Less was definitely so much more here. So, in a sense, they just give me ‘We want this by July 2026, now do your worst and best, thank you’, of course with milestones, naturally, but I’m willing to think they sort of trust in what I do. I’m not taking it for granted, however, I’m not exhaling with satisfaction. I’ve noticed I perform best when I’m a little on my toes, out of my comfort zone.”

MR: How long was the overall process?

PA: “Control Resonant had already started when I was still doing Alan Wake 2, they weren’t exactly overlapping, but I had used Control Resonant as an escape whenever I needed any from the depths of AW2. They aren’t the lightest games of course, as everyone knows, but they provided enough variety for me to resurface again. The first demos were made in early 2023, around March, maybe even before that, but 2023 definitely.

“When Alan Wake 2 was towards the end of its development, I had already started exploring the musical concept of Control Resonant, and from there it escalated to full production on my side. Adding elements and sounds to the project instrument raw material library continued throughout the development, so there never was actually a ‘composing-only’ period, I kept my thinking clear by exploring whenever that was possible.

“One exploration was particularly worth it all: I was on a vacation in Mexico and found a broken seashell lying amidst a few rocks. I had my trusty field recorder (a Zoom H4n, the old one) in my backpack, so… I think a few American tourists gazed at me, questioning my hobby right there, when I just kept dragging the crumbling shell on the beach rocks. But the resulting sound became one of the main granular pad sounds, heard in the track Tabula Rasa, right from the start. Just drag it into an Omnisphere, switch it to granular mode and… thanks!”

MR: Was the [custom-built, unsettling acoustic instrument] ‘Apprehension Engine’ utilised here - or any other of your regular go-tos?

PA: “It remains my one favourite go-to tools, but since it’s not always handy, I need to rely on the sample material, usually. I’m planning to give it another go with a serious microphone set, now that I know what I want out of it.

“However I’ve used the Mega Marvin (the huge metal cowbell-lookalike) material more often due to its clangorous feeling - mostly because Hedron - the main antagonist so to speak - is circular, a continuously changing form that’s more or less mathematical - and my brain just connects that circularity with metallic overtones, especially when bowed gently.

“Another surprising go-to was my ages-old Yamaha Electone organ, it’s a D85, with three keyboards, and I used its ensemble sections with Eventide Blackhole a little too often, and in Exploring the Dying World, midway through, what sounds like a distant percussive keyboard instrument is actually D85’s very simplistic analogue piano sound through my KB37 and Blackhole. It also did some marvellous stuff with Zynaptiq’s Wormhole - their plugins are my absolute favourites there are, very creative stuff.

“Waldorf Quantum and Iridium mk2 are also very heavily present here and there, their granular engines are just beautiful, and now that Waldorf has extended their feature sets quite dramatically, they’re insanely usable, perfect for this job.”

MR: What was the most challenging aspect of making this soundtrack? And which track (or tracks) in particular were the most difficult to realise?

PA: “I think keeping the polyrhythmical nature in order and in such a fashion that someone could listen to the whole thing and still nod their head to the rhythm, was easily one of the most challenging experiences I’ve ever come across.

“I like polyrhythms a lot, they’re all over the place, even in my pop productions as well - and I always manage to baffle an occasional fellow producer with the rhythm beds, sorry guys… and, there’s a fact tied to the on-screen events: although most of what happens with the picture is in focus, there’s something happening elsewhere, outside your picture, so whenever a little something is added to the music, it’s supposed to be that something else a few blocks away is doing their worst there. The evil is everywhere all the time; there are no 100% safe sectors at all.

“I have very warm memories about Obsessive Compulsive Order, the whole concept and conceiving it. It was actually written very quickly, literally triggered by a screenshot, then fuelled by a motion capture clip - the resonant (primary boss characters) behind that track was one of the first I knew about, and was called The Dancer.

“Clearly, that entity had been a performing arts dancer, and then something had altered it into what is now in the game. I even pictured a history for ‘her’: usually the best dancers used to come from Eastern Europe, so I decided to add some ethnic samples here and there from a library I had purchased eons before - thanks to Strezov Sampling, good job, guys!

“It was meant to be a placeholder, just give Remedy some kinda ‘something like this here’, and they got back to me saying ‘Do not change anything’. I had struggled well enough with the mathematical percussion already, almost lost my sanity trying to make it click and feel the right way, and as a last resort just Melodyne-d the shit out of the samples and added them here and there, turned some bits and pieces to choirs and… “Don’t change this, thank you’.

“They do know when something resonates, that’s clear, and they don’t actually ever back down from their decisions, so as clients, they’re the best one can hope for. I say ‘clients’ as I’m not an employee, I’ve just been on a longer gig for 22+ years now.”

MR: How has the process developed for composing the in-game music (i.e. during action sequences)? and has the underlying technology that you use for incorporating your soundtrack evolved since Control and Alan Wake 2?

PA: “In essence, it’s luckily the same as it has always been, but with a few pleasant tweaks here and there. I’m hoping (video game sound organisation and playback software) WWise would one day be like Ableton Live or Logic, that would be my dream, and I’d love to create music inside the final playback engine, but, maybe one day these worlds will meet.

“As a process, I just did a long concept track consisting of introduction, exploration, preparing, suspense, combat and absolute sheer hell blasting at you. A few good examples are on the soundtrack - the longest tracks are ‘concept tracks’ that have every single detail in them. I like working that way, using the screen capture videos to maintain the vibe. The downside is their long duration, and when dissecting each to stems takes a huge amount of disk space (and time), but it is what it is.

“Then the brilliant in-house music crew do their magic - I do check stuff regularly, but so far I have had no redo comments, never. So, Lucas Pierrot, Clément Duquesne, Koca Kastavarac and my friend Kilian Oser (and many more) - thank you guys! You’re magicians. Mentalists, even.

“It’s lovely when you don’t have to explain what you’re after. Of course, I always bounce the demo play-through clip with the music, so they have a reference there, but it’s as easy as it can be. I don’t like overly complicated processes, they’re usually just badly thought, planned and executed methods that could use a heavy hand of simplifying.

“Sometimes game studios waste time and emotions with too many middle men involving the development, and they don’t really take into account the personality difference; the director may feel subject A is 90%, he wants it to 100%, and explains it in a review where a henchman is listening to the feedback, and the henchman will deliver the message to the next henchman, who contacts the composer.

“But, as the henchmen are of different personality compared to the director and especially the composer, they deliver the message diluted and filtered. This cycle repeats and wastes time and money. The shortest and the clearest path from point zero to the final asset is usually between the director and the composer.

“I emphasise here: the henchmen/director example has nothing to do with Remedy, they like it straight and simple, too. I wouldn’t have spent 22+ years with them if they were clumsy.”

MR: Of course, both the Control and Alan Wake series exist within the shared ‘Remedyverse’. Did you include allusions to your score for Alan Wake 2 within Control Resonant? Are you consciously keeping in mind the wider Remedyverse when composing these days?

PA: “There are common elements, although the games have different DNAs. However, that DNA has originated from the same universe, so certain things are common: if something is evil, it affects reality, and for instance some rhythmic meters or tonal tuning tables may get some beating. Also, non-harmonic interval choices are very common with both. Okay, everything can be turned into a chord when you theorise enough, but… does it matter, really?

“Odd meters are deliciously brain-f**ing, so we use them a lot. A good example in Control Resonant is Obsessive Compulsive Order, with polyrhythms in the beginning and just very un-pop, off-meters towards the action part in the end.

“All Remedyverse events and entities [on a musical level] share also a surprising amount of instrumental raw material of acoustic origin - found sounds even. With synths there’s always an impossible amount of saturation, overdrive and rectified distortion.

“It is a very rare occasion that a synth sound would be ‘clean’ as such, usually they relate to rare specific events on screen. Contrast, on the other hand, is exaggerated, both harmonically and dynamically, and since the threats in Remedyverse are what they are in nature - paranatural, otherworldly - the use of ambience and reverb in general is, well, rather generous, so to speak.

“I think I said in one workshop: ‘With Remedy, if in doubt, add reverb. And if no doubt, add reverb anyway.’ Not too far from truth, as I love the feeling of air moving on your skin when listening to some reverb tails (greetings to ValhallaDSP, you rock.)

“Imagine Manhattan bending all over you when the whooshes happen, when nothing’s the way it used to be, when the rooftops of the other side of the street touch with the opposite side roofs - by bending the world.

“I think the Remedyverse is woven and knitted into the soundtracks subliminally. I don’t think too much think of it, I just step into the world and do some music and it sort of reaches the IP. It doesn’t happen with pop productions or other projects. It’s almost like a costume I wear, with pride. Or scuba gear, and astronaut space suit - at the same time it puts me into a mood, but it also protects me from what I might catch from the depths.

“Some actors have mentioned it’s really hard to get rid of the character after a good day in front of the camera, and I think I use the same methods to escape the blackest events I’ve faced the whole day - but some things follow me into the dreams, too. Luckily, they usually are technical or music related things, slight problems or whatever, but a few years ago a scene from Alan Wake 2 followed me a little too tight, the one where Sam [Lake, Remedy’s creative director and occasional in-game actor] character gets shot in the back alley. It was really hard to grasp and deal with. It landed on my desk quite a few times and I never got used to it.”

MR: You’re also of course an artist in your own right, performing as Lowland. Last time we spoke about your classic ‘trance-lations’ of beloved dance tunes re-interpreted by an orchestra. They have been hugely popular. Are you intending to continue with any more of these types of projects in the near future?

PA: “Well, January 8th 2027 we’ll have a concert in Helsinki Music House (Helsingin Musiikkitalo) where we sort of flip the whole thing around and instead of reimagining the club classics into orchestral arrangements, we’re doing it the other way around: using the DNA of diehard classics and reimagining them in the same way.

“Not turning anything into EDM or trance, no, but instead using the essence of their core, the basic building blocks, the means of their survival as sources for something different. We finished the arrangements and reimaginations and recompositions a while ago and I’m quite sure it’ll be beautiful.

“The world is full of beautiful music, and what’s astonishing, it never is tired of it. The reimagined tracks are our expressions of love to the original masters - from Beethoven to Sibelius and literally everything in between, and we literally have cried our eyes off with each. It’s insane how the pieces of music have survived through the centuries, but when you have a hit, you’ll have a hit, no matter what the century was. It happens with our time, too. Maybe something from the games we love will live on and will be played in 2126, who knows?”

Control Resonant is available now. For more on Petri Alanko check out his official website.

She admits that she’s not the world’s greatest guitarist, but that doesn’t mean Olivia Rodrigo doesn’t love a striking, highly individual guitar.

Rodrigo kicked off her Unraveled tour on Friday and played several guitars during the show, the most eye-catching of which was the heart-shaped peach-coloured instrument that she used during 2024 song So American.

It transpires that this was built for her by renowned LA luthier and touring guitar technician Luis Muñoz, who operates under the name Modern Guitar Tech and expressed his delight on Instagram.

“I’ve somewhat retired from touring to be home,” he began, “but getting to contribute like this? La neta [honestly], that means everything. I’m sure Olivia has every guitar company in the world in her DMs, and she still trusted a small shop in East LA.”

Muñoz goes on to say that perfecting the shape wasn’t easy: “Five prototypes before I got the body right. It had to look cool, play easy, feel comfortable, and most of all, sound good.”

The guitar looks set to become a fan favourite and it’s safe to assume that there will be demand for it to be released as a signature model, but Muñoz says that it’s “one of one. For now.”

That does sort of suggest that a wider release could be possible at some point, but given that Rodrigo’s original was “built completely by hand” outside of Muñoz’s regular shop working hours, it might be tricky.

That said, Muñoz has one potential customer already: he says that he took the guitar home to show his daughter, who didn’t want to give it back.

On her previous tour, Rodrigo was regularly seen playing a custom purple Music Man St Vincent Goldie signature model, which she later praised for its comfort and playability.

“[St Vincent] made a guitar that's specifically designed for women, because she plays her guitar really high up, and it's cut so that you can have boobs and play guitar, which is so awesome.”

Rodrigo has already received strong notices for the Unraveled show, which also saw her try her hand at a bit of lead guitar playing on Maggots For Brains, a song from her most recent album, 2026’s You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love.

There were some impressive theatrics, too, including a ‘field’ of flowers and a ‘dissolving dress’, which quickly went viral.

Todd Rundgren is a) not afraid to speak his mind and b) not a Taylor Swift fan. We already learned this when, last year, he told MusicRadar "I have yet to be convinced by any song that AI has come up with. Everything sounds like Taylor frickin’ Swift!’”

Now the Bat Out of Hell producer and solo star has risked the wrath of Swift’s army of admirers, telling Vulture that “There’s an argument to be made that Taylor Swift ruined music”, before labelling the world’s most successful songwriter and performer “to me, the apotheosis of mediocrity”.

And Rundgren has a theory about Swift’s apparently baffling success, and it’s all the fault of videogames.

“Back in the ’90s, boys stopped spending money on music and started spending it on videogames, and that left the music market with, ‘Well, where do we go here?’”, said 78-year-old Rundgren.

“And they said, ‘Well, there’s all these young girls and they’ve got their allowances, too. Why don’t we start making music for young girls instead of Pearl Jam or something like that?’”

Not that Rundgren has it in for all female musicians. Just Swift, really. “Lady Gaga, she’s a real musician. She’s a classically trained piano player,” Rundgren allowed.

“Taylor Swift doesn’t do anything particularly great except grow hair. She’s not a great singer. She’s not a great songwriter. She’s not a great dancer.

“She’s a role model for what was a very young generation of women, and now for those women’s daughters as well, because it’s mothers and daughters going to Taylor Swift shows.”

Last night, Taylor Swift collected her 33rd VMA award, to add to her 14 Grammys, 40 AMAs and 49 Billboard Music Awards. Meanwhile, Todd Rundgren is currently on his Damned If I Do tour.

What do you think? Fearless truth-speaking from an artist and producer who knows his stuff, or the misguided ramblings of an ‘experienced’ artist? Let us know below…

Jonny Greenwood has admitted that back in the early days of Radiohead he was “clumsy” and “lazy” as a guitarist.

This somewhat surprising confession came in an interview in the i. Greenwood – who is the youngest member of the band and was the last to join – told the paper that he plays the guitar every day now: something he never used to do.

"It's funny. It's something I kind of never wanted to do,” he said. “I used to distrust any sort of fluidity and think that was somehow part of that thing of technical playing. But now I just feel different about it. And it feels lucky that my fingers do these things. I've got a certain facility with it, so I've decided to accept it, and have realised that I really love playing the guitar."

He admitted: "In the early days of Radiohead, I always felt like a clumsy guitar player and was always lazy, but now, just through repetition, I've got hooked. I've just got addicted and want to play all the time."

Of course, Greenwood has come a long way. These days he’s as well known for his film soundtrack work and his various side projects as he is for being the floppy-haired Radiohead guitarist, though he evidently remains humble.

“I don't feel I've learnt enough” he continued. “I'm always sort of torn between wanting to greedily consume all this stuff and understand it. But also knowing that it's a mistake to just have a kind of jack-of-all-trades approach to it all, because it just means you don't really get a deep understanding of any of it. I just permanently feel like I'm in a kind of panic between the two things."

Greenwood was being interviewed ahead of a gig he’s participating in this weekend. Steve Reich at 90 celebrates the esteemed minimalist composer and features Greenwood and the London Sinfonietta at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

As for Radiohead, they have another series of residencies lined up for next May and June in Australia and Japan. The Australian tickets are now all sold out, but you can still register for the five Japanese dates at Saitama by heading over to radiohead.com.

Recently, we rediscovered a classic Paul McCartney interview from the MusicRadar archive. Originally conducted by Tony Bacon back in our then-sister title Bass Magazine, the chat with Paul took place way back in 1994 as part of Tony's research for the first edition of his well-regarded The Bass Book.

The interview with the Beatles’ legend - which we first republished in full in 2023 - honed in specifically on McCartney’s bass-playing evolution across his time in the Beatles and through to his work with Wings. Macca talked of the specific instruments he used, pivotal playing style influences and how his role as the bass player shifted from being initially something that he resented, to the realisation that being able to direct the low end put him in a powerful position…

“From the word go, once I got over the fact that I was lumbered with the bass [laughs], I did get quite proud to be a bass player, quite proud of the idea. Once you realised the control you had over the band, you were in control. They can’t go anywhere, man. Ha! Power!” Paul told us.

One of the most fascinating - and funny - recollections however, was Paul remembering when the band, then at the height of Beatlemania, met Elvis Presley at his Los Angeles mansion in the summer of 1965.

“I then started to identify with other bass players, to talk bass with the guys in the band. In fact, when we met Elvis, he was trying to learn bass, so I was like, ‘You’re trying to learn bass, are you … son? Sit down, let me show you a few things’. So I was very proud of being the bass player.”

Paul elaborated further on this meeting of musical greats in The Beatles Anthology;

“Suddenly he was a mate. It was a great conversation piece for me: I could actually talk about the bass, and we sat around and just enjoyed ourselves. He was great – talkative and friendly, and a little bit shy. But that was his image: we expected that; we hoped for that.

This historic meeting between music's most revered icons was the result of constant efforts from the Beatles’ inner circle, for the young Liverpool lads to finally meet their hero. Eventually Presley’s ever-shrewd manager, Colonel Tom Parker invited the group round to Elvis’s Bel Air HQ - then being co-shared by 10 road managers and their respective wives…

Although the meet-up was a little bit stilted at first - and John Lennon would later regard it as something of a damp squib - by all accounts McCartney had a thoroughly enjoyable time with Presley, particularly during a spontaneous jam wherein an Elvis/Beatles-supergroup knocked out a rendition of I Feel Fine.

“It was one of the great meetings of my life. I think he liked us,” Paul said in The Beatles Anthology. “I think at that time he may have felt a little bit threatened, but he didn’t say anything. We certainly didn’t feel any antagonism.

“I only met him that once, and then I think the success of our career started to push him out a little; which we were very sad about, because we wanted to co-exist with him. He was our greatest idol, but the styles were changing in favour of us. He was a pretty powerful image to British people.”

Read the 1994 interview with Paul McCartney, republished in full, here.

On the long, winding road that transformed Arctic Monkeys from gnarly, spiky-haired noughties Sheffield indie clubbers to the alluringly smooth hotel lounge crooners of 2022 album The Car, the 2013 single Do I Wanna Know? was a seismic turning point.

With 2012 single R U Mine?, the band had dabbled with a slick, heavy rock sound that reflected their new lives in the sun-drenched valleys and vast concrete highways of California.

It showed promise; but their follow-up single fully defined their onward direction.

“We had this idea for a record where you take the compositional perspective of an R&B producer and apply that to a four-piece rock ’n’ roll band,” frontman Alex Turner told Q magazine. Influenced hip-hop’s huge presence in California, they started “manipulating our instruments to make building blocks for the song in a way I’d imagine Timbaland constructs music”.

Do I Wanna Know? started with a four-track recorder. For drummer Matt Helders, moving to this piece of equipment necessitated a plainer, more simplified beat, but one that “knocks the way the drums knock on a 50 Cent song”.

Across AM – the album that Do I Wanna Know? opened – grooves came first. But what seriously elevated the track was its bulky, daringly spacious 12-second guitar riff, brooding and full of pauses that accentuated its massive anthemic quality.

The melody was first laid down during a two-week session at Josh Homme’s famed Californian desert studio, Joshua Tree, where the band recorded their gorgeously moody, dust-caked 2009 departure record Humbug. “Perhaps there’s a bit of the desert in that husky drum sound,” Turner later reflected.

According to Helders, Do I Wanna Know? was “probably the only song that survived from that session – although not in the form it is now”. He added: “It was really bassy, and it didn't have that big chorus – it was basically just the drum loop. But it set the path for the rest of the album. After we recorded it, we knew we were really on to something.”

Turner developed that iconic guitar riff on a 12-string Vox Star Stream, an instrument he “bought as a bit of a joke [which] turned into an inspirational instrument” according to esteemed producer and long-time Arctic Monkeys collaborator James Ford.

At several points since, Turner has floated the wonderfully romantic notion that certain old instruments already have powerful songs and ideas stored inside them, and his job is simply to coax them out. “I feel like that song was a ghost within the walls of this old guitar that I bought,” he told GRAMMYS in 2014.

The track’s impact was huge. Sonically, it laid the groundwork for what came next: the tough, impactful, simplified rhythm sections, Turner’s more studied, intentional guitar style, and crucially, a far more innovative, complex approach to vocals.

Initially, the falsetto call-and-response vocals that drive the track forward were to be delivered by indie rockers HAIM, but their studio commitments prevented them from taking part (Este Haim later called this moment “maybe the worst day of my life”).

Instead, Helders and bassist Nick O'Malley took to the mic, adopting the role of Turner's “space choirboys” as he put it after. Their pitched-up lines collided enticingly with his lead vocals, and this concoction ultimately inspired the group to lean heavily into more complex harmonies and melodic arrangements on subsequent albums AM, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino and The Car: a significant change in direction.

Today, Do I Wanna Know? is unquestionably the band's biggest-ever single, with over 3 billion Spotify streams and almost 2 billion YouTube views on the music video, a beautiful piece of fluid, shapeshifting artwork created by animators Blinkink under the direction of David Wilson.

Inspired by the work of risqué cartoonist Vince Collins, the irony of the video is that were it released today, it would smack of generative AI. In 2013, though, it was a visual treat that played a huge role in the single’s global explosion.

And that explosion was profound. The sonic and stylistic shift marked by Do I Wanna Know? – ands solidified later that year with the release of AM and other billion-stream-plus tracks like I Wanna Be Yours, Why’d You Only Call Me When You're High, and No. 1 Party Anthem – gave Arctic Monkeys unprecedented worldwide reach.

As well as becoming the first-ever group to score five consecutive independently released UK No 1 albums, they finally cracked America, debuting at No 6 on the US Billboard (their first Top 10), and amassing a mainstream US audience for the first time.

Do I Wanna Know? was the turning point, a seismic moment that facilitated the band's fascinating subsequent evolution. Over a decade on, fans still can't stop crawlin’ back to it.

Todd Edwards' intricate sample-led house music laid the groundwork for UK garage and served as inspiration for Daft Punk, Burial and Disclosure, but three decades in, he's still introducing himself.

34 years into a storied career, the New Jersey-bred artist still sees himself as a producer first, with DJing a means of showcasing his distinctive sound. In fact, it would be 11 years after his first 1992 release before Edwards first performed at a club, due to crippling stage fright and poor management.

In East London on New Year's Day 2003 at garage luminary DJ EZ's 4by4 party, he finally got to experience the enthusiastic British response to his seminal recordings. "Everyone was so happy to see me. I could have done anything wrong, and they would have been fine with it. That made me feel great. I mean, you could see my expression," the producer tells us, calling in from his compact blue-and-white-lit California home studio. "[They were] very supportive. Every track I was dropping, they would cheer."

Thankfully, the legendary set was recorded, and shaky video clips regularly make the rounds on social media, keeping Edwards' historical relevance (and iconic "Jesus Loves UK garage" tee) fresh in the public consciousness. You can see both excitement and terror on his face as the crowd cheers on his every selection.

Yet even with the current resurgence of UKG and Todd the God's many wins since that night—including a Grammy for his work with Daft Punk in 2014—he still feels the need to gig regularly to self-promote and make a living in the streaming era. Despite his outsized impact, Edwards doesn't have quite the name recognition of a Todd Terry or Louie Vega, both of whom inspired him to make house music. Though this doesn’t seem to faze him, he regrets not fully capitalizing on some of the most pivotal moments in his career.

After spending 13 years in Los Angeles, Edwards now lives in Cathedral City, California ("old man’s paradise" as he puts it, just outside of Palm Springs) with his partner of 11 years, Michael, who makes music as Mystic Aytch, and their bunny Q-Tip. Edwards is open and enthusiastic, eager to discuss everything from the "genius" of Thomas Bangalter and unoriginality in contemporary dance music to his once-crippling fear of live performance.

"I had stage fright beyond belief. If I was not such a fearful stage fright kid, I could have cleaned up in the '90s when my sound first hit. Mike Weiss from Nervous would be like, 'There's a thing called Sunday Jam [in the UK] based on your stuff on Nervous Records. You could go and tour,' and I was like, 'I ain't gonna do that.' I needed therapy at the time. Success hit me a little too soon. When people say 'Youth is wasted on the young,' it just comes down to the older you get, the less you give a shit, and the more you can handle life," Edwards recalls.

Among the gigs he kicks himself for missing is a Parisian party with St Germain and Daft Punk in their pre-helmet era. The beloved French duo had reached out to him for a collaboration prior to the release of their 1997 debut album Homework, but didn't follow up after their initial meeting. Edwards was delighted when he heard his name roll-called among underground legends on Teachers. "I presumptuously listened to Teachers to see if I was mentioned. They still liked me!" he recalls. Luckily, his opportunities to work with Daft Punk didn't end there.

Edwards was a self-proclaimed late adopter of the internet, so it took a while for news of his music-making waves in the UK and beyond to come back to him, as well his work on Daft Punk's 2001 epic Discovery. "I didn't realize how big Face to Face was", he tells us.

"The timing of my success has always been off. In 2014 after the Daft Punk tour, I was going through relationship growing pains. It was my first major relationship, and I didn't come to terms with who I was. Instead of wanting to be in the studio, I was with Michael a lot. I didn't maximize the Grammy.”

From the outside, it's easy to look at his many accolades and assume the producer has maintained a steady and rewarding career in dance music. But Edwards' story is one of many stops and starts, missed opportunities and acute personal struggle.

Born in musically-rich New Jersey in 1972, Edwards was first exposed to house music at local teen clubs, unwittingly dancing to Todd Terry's music. Soon after, his friend Rich Criso educated him on the emergent genre. Edwards started DJing while still in high school, but decided to focus on production not long afterwards. He began religiously studying Tony Humphries' KISS FM mixes, taping them to listen on repeat on his Walkman at school. Rather serendipitously, the New York legend was the first DJ to recognise Edwards’ talents.

"It's funny. Tony Humphries was the first person to ever play any of my music. The first release I ever made was on 111 East Records, a track called Get Carried Away. I was listening [to his show] on a Friday night, and I heard it come on, I'm like, 'Holy shit!' It's crazy to have had that experience before I developed my style or even established myself as an artist," Edwards says.

Despite laying the groundwork for garage, inspiring and collaborating with Daft Punk twice and gaining early support from Humphries, Edwards' journey to success (and out of his parents' basement) was a long and frustrating one. Get Carried Away—a classic vocal house tune—never took off, and he was forced to move back in with his parents not long after his celebratory 2003 London gig, as garage went back underground and his work fizzled out.

"There are no real overnight successes. There's usually a 10-year story. I can't even say that for myself, it was a couple years. It's very rare that your first track is gonna blow up, and it's probably better that it doesn't. You're not established with a style, and then you're screwed because you have to have the pressure of trying to follow it up," he says.

In 2007, Edwards quit music completely and worked in customer service for two years. Stepping away reaffirmed his love of making music more deeply than before.

"I was making good money at Verizon but dying inside each day. I hated the work. They were strict about being late and the hours were all over the place, unstable. I was running late on the highway one Saturday and something snapped inside. I couldn't go in, I called in sick. I was done," Edwards reflects.

"I had a vision soon after; I pictured myself at the end of my life in a coffin. What would be a more regrettable choice: Giving up music to be able to have a wife and children, or giving up the family to follow the music, even if it meant being poor? I chose music. At the height of the American recession, I quit Verizon. Up to that point, I had a love-hate relationship with music because of the instability. After I left Verizon, it was nothing but gratitude. I also came out of my shell as a DJ. I started to become more animated, not the head-down DJ [anymore]."

Face to Face, Again and Again

Edwards was one of 43 artists—including Lil Louis, Jeff Mills, DJ Sneak, Brian Wilson and Dr. Dre—Daft Punk paid homage to on 1997's Teachers. Beleaguered by low self-confidence, being named on the song "made me feel safe," he says. While Thomas Bangalter is just two years younger than Edwards, he exuded a worldly maturity and self-assurance that stayed with the Jersey producer. "That amount of confidence at age 20 was so impressive," Edwards notes.

After name-checking the sample master, Daft Punk tapped him to work on their highly anticipated sophomore album, resulting in the triumphant penultimate track Face to Face. On it, both Edwards’ singing voice and precise, technical sampling style—lovingly co-opted by Bangalter—take center stage.

"I wrote the lyrics on the plane to Paris. I wanted to make sure they fit three situations: a person dissolving a conflict with someone else, a person speaking to themselves, and a person speaking to God," he explains.

"When I got to Paris, I sang the song for them to show what the lyrics sounded like. They liked my voice. I was singing kind of nasally, and Thomas asked me if I could sing it a little raspier, like the band Foreigner. I only sang it twice; those are the two takes you hear on the final cut, no AutoTune, just sidechain."

The trio created much of the track in Edwards’ humble studio in his parents' basement, the same one where he first developed his signature, wildly influential style. To finish it, Daft Punk flew him out twice to Paris via business class to work: "They treated me like a king." As he hadn't taken up any offers to DJ in the UK or Europe yet, these trips were some of his first outside of the country.

"We produced 90 percent of the track at my studio in my parents' house. I put 70 samples together and they put 70 samples together, though people don't usually credit me when they speak about the samples. Most of them are from my sample banks. I was hesitant in the studio because I was always self-conscious when I was younger. Thomas did most of the playing actually, in my style," he adds.

Working with Daft Punk lifted his spirits and remains a defining career moment, yet Edwards surprisingly didn't see an uptick in work or recognition in its immediate aftermath. In fact, many people didn't realize he sang it—while he's credited on the album, his name wasn't included alongside the track on the CD, nor is it currently on Spotify.

Over a decade later, the French robots reached out to him to collaborate once again on their Grammy-winning final project Random Access Memories.

"Fragments Of Time brought things back full circle. I was the only collaborator from Discovery [on RAM]. I was honored to be asked back. Daft came in at crucial times in my life. I was in a low place and Face to Face brought me up. Working on Fragments inspired me to pack a U-Haul and move to L.A., where I became my true self," Edwards reflects. "I am forever grateful for the way they touched my life."

Throughout their two weeks together in Los Angeles working on Fragments, Edwards kept lamenting that he didn't want the experience to end, so Bangalter encouraged him to write lyrics about it. The song became a time capsule of RAM’s creation, a dreamy meta-narrative of the creative process and of memory-making itself: "Keep building these random memories / Turning our days into melodies / But since I can't stay / I'll just keep playing back / These fragments of time."

This time around, Edwards employed his famed vocal cuts on the track, per Bangalter’s request, earning him a production credit. (On the tenth anniversary edition of RAM, you can hear this process in action, as well as get a sense of Edwards' jubilant, playful energy.)

"The audience was enamored by their process, and I was enamored by the process," he says of his enviable place in the studio with Daft Punk. "Thomas is a friend, but he’s the musical Jesus. It’s like when they describe the apostles hanging out with Jesus."

Rewind the Track!

These days, Edwards maintains an active DJ gig schedule, traversing North America and Europe, with London, New York, L.A. and Ibiza being his most frequented cities.

He's been on a festival run this summer, including a stop at Northern Nights x Dirtybird Campout in Northern California shortly before our first chat. Wherever you catch him playing, you’ll be getting a signature Todd Edwards experience, as he approaches club and festival sets the same—although he always enjoys the opportunity to play for longer.

"I want to be into what I'm playing. I'm not gonna play a festival set that just caters to the festival crowd and download the Top 50 Beatport tracks or whatever. I go into both the same way. And being an artist, I'm still promoting myself. As much as I still have a following, my following is still [built] on a producer-slash-DJ respect thing more than most. I'm still trying to spread my music so people get it. I will try to get away with playing as much of my own stuff as possible, to be quite honest," he explains.

"Obviously, with festivals and even with clubs, you can feel empathetically the way the crowd's responding, in subtle changes in movement or non-movement. I don't just sit there stubbornly like, ‘Fuck it, I'm gonna just play my own shit and not change it up.’ I make edits with other people's music and put a little touch of myself in there, so it feels like it's still part of me and what I represent, whether it's in the tech house field or something a little darker than what you'd normally hear in a pure Todd set."

While Edwards is warm, funny and enthusiastic, there are plenty of things in dance music that piss him off. Among them are the reliance on the drum-roll-and-drop among the current wave of young garage producers, the prevalence of overpolished drums, and DJ worship. For Edwards, the best DJs are ones that have a distinctive sound in their sets.

"I would go to Sound Factory Bar to listen to Little Louie [Vega] spin; I loved his style. He played a lot of Masters at Work stuff. When you go to listen to a DJ, if you're going to listen to Derrick Carter or Tony Humphries, you're going because they have a style of DJing. I don't know if you can say that about the huge DJs anymore—I'm not saying all of them," he posits.

"I look at someone like Oppidan, she's amazing at what she does. I've done back-to-backs with her. I played with Conducta, and he's got a style. But the ones that play big crowds, they're playing mainstream shit. I don't think people are going [to see them] for a style, I think they're going for the experience."

Garage Ain't Dead

While Edwards was late to the '90s garage party as a DJ, he's now been an active participant through multiple waves of it. He admires Disclosure's fresh reimaging of garage, and sees the current wave of young producers with their polished, sidechained sound more as predecessors of the British brothers than of the first wave.

"I've been through multiple cycles of [garage]... It was in the pop charts and then it went underground for a while. After my hiatus from music, there were dubstep producers out there that were giving me props for inspiration. That was a telltale sign that I did the right thing by getting back into music,” Edwards notes.

"To me, Disclosure brought on the next wave. They have their own sound and brought their own vibe to it, which is what you should do as an artist. Now you have this generation 10 years later, the Sammy Virgis and the Oppidans and all that. I think there is a lot of Disclosure inspiration in their tracks, because garage right now is a lot more polished than in the '90s."

At the end of the day, Edwards hopes that producers will step outside of nostalgia traps and try something new to make dance music fresh and exciting again. "There needs to be a new genre called rehashed house because everyone is just taking old ideas, of course they're going to get responses. No one is taking any risk to try to do something new. It's all edits," Edwards laments.

"There are some great edits out there; MPH does amazing edits. But Jesus, who's contributing to the new music out there? No one wants to take chances, and that's part of the social media thing, that everyone's fucking afraid to fail. You have to take risks to move forward, to have longevity. You have to be willing to put something out there that might not be successful. That's my grumpy old producer's last note on that shit!"

Looking Back, Moving Forward

Edwards first connected with house powerhouse Defected to play their Croatia festival in 2018, and recently helped close out the final one. He'd been sitting on his back catalogue for years after buying the masters back and needed a home to reissue them. He signed with Defected in 2020, who acquired his catalog.

The timing was ideal; the advance helped him get through the gig-less lockdown, and a new era of ravers were introduced to his music online. Edwards appreciates how the partnership has introduced him to a younger audience—he "instantaneously noticed the age bracket of [his shows] go down."

He was honored when Defected put out the House Masters – Todd Edwards compilation album in 2024, celebrating his legacy with a treasure trove of remixes of his house classics from the likes of Skepta, Soul Clap, Harry Romero, A-Trak, LP Giobbi and many more. The double album also includes 27 originals from his catalog, many of which were released digitally for the first time. "Being a house master gives you a certain reverence," he states.

At the end of the day, it takes time for artists to grow and for music to become classic—even Daft Punk’s sonic adventures weren’t universally loved upon release. "People have talked shit about every Daft Punk album after Homework. Give it a little time and they’re all put on a pedestal," Edwards says.

"So many popular DJs were talking smack about RAM when it came out. Either you're doing it just to troll so you can get some attention, or you're just not open to the journey of the artist, because not every artist is doing everything just for the fans. You have to be willing to go along the journey with the artist as well… Artists evolve and change, and that's part of the process."

Today, the many evolutions of Todd Edwards are audible across his extensive and celebrated catalogue, a colorful sonic quilt woven from thousands of samples and many hours of exploration in the studio, one that changed the sound of house and has gone on to inspire multiple generations of producers.

His advice is to release your art out into the world, as you can never predict who it might touch, or where it will end up. Who would've suspected music by a closeted gay Italian-American kid from Jersey—who had barely even left the Tri-State area—would make British ravers go mad?

"I didn't learn this until I worked on RAM, but it was that Saint Germain remix that put me on [Daft Punk's] radar,” Edwards recalls. "It's the tapestry of what you do in life—put the music out, put the art out. If it affects one person, 100 or 1000, you're planting a seed. If the music, the art, is genuine, it finds its audience."

It’s a song that evokes the Summer Of Love and the heady vibes of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury scene. It is also a composition that encapsulates the dreamy, sun-drenched allure of America’s West Coast, a promise fuelled by themes of yearning and freedom.

The release of California Dreamin’ by The Mamas & The Papas in December 1965 actually preceded the Summer Of Love by 18 months. But with its lush harmonies and haunting flute solo it became an anthem for the ’60s counterculture and the nascent hippy movement.

For all its sun-soaked connotations, California Dreamin’ was actually written in a freezing cold New York apartment in 1963 by newly-married couple John Phillips and Michelle Phillips.

John Phillips had risen to prominence in the early ’60s as a member of The New Journeymen, a trio formed out of the Greenwich Village folk scene.

Michelle Phillips was a singer and former model who would go on to be described by Time magazine as “the purest soprano in pop music”. She was born in Long Beach, California and had moved to New York in late 1962, in one of the worst winters in living memory.

“We were staying at the Albert Hotel, near Washington Square,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2008. “It was a fleabag. I had never seen snow before, I had never been to the East Coast. I was miserable.”

One night in early 1963 John began working on a song inspired by Michelle’s homesickness and her yearning for the sunshine and warmth of her native state. Enthused by what he had created, John woke Michelle in the middle of the night to play it to her.

“I wanted to go back to sleep, but he said I would thank him someday if I got up and worked on it with him,” Michelle told the Los Angeles Times in 2008.

The first two lines of his first verse evoked the drabness and despair that Michelle was experiencing. “All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown)/And the sky is grey (and the sky is grey).”

Michelle then provided the second verse. A few days earlier, they had been strolling past the neo-gothic marble spires of St Patrick’s Cathedral on 5th Avenue.

“I wanted to go in just to see what it looked like, but John wouldn’t go with me,” Michelle told the Los Angeles Times. “So I went in alone.”

This event inspired the second verse, which began: “Stopped into a church/I passed along the way”.

John reportedly hated what Michelle had written.

"Poor John had been sent off to Catholic military school when he was just seven years old, so he didn't like the religiosity of it,” Michelle told online music magazine Spinner in 2012.

In an interview with Jason Barnard of rock music podcast website The Strange Brew in March 2026, Michelle recalled that once the song was complete, “We threw it in the drawer and kind of forgot about it.”

And that’s where it stayed. Until 18 months later, by which time, the entire musical landscape had been transformed beyond all recognition.

In 1965, John and Michelle Phillips formed The Mamas & the Papas with two pivotal figures from the Greenwich Village counterculture, Canadian singer-songwriter and musician Denny Doherty and singer-songwriter and actress Cass Elliot.

By then, The Beatles had inspired a number of folk purists from the first half of the ’60s to turn electric and hone a new folk-rock sound.

John Phillips was deeply reluctant to move from acoustic folk to electric folk-rock. It was Denny Doherty and Cass Eliott who convinced him otherwise.

In her interview with Jason Barnard of The Strange Brew, Michelle Phillips recalled an evening when all four members were listening to The Beatles.

“That was the first time that we had actually really sat down and listened to The Beatles,” recalled Phillips. “Denny kept saying, ‘That’s what we have to do. They’re the kind of songs you have to write, John’... Denny was the one who really changed the direction of our sound.”

Another event that galvanised them into action was when Mr. Tambourine Man by The Byrds came on the radio one morning while they were sitting in a bar.

“They weren’t a really sophisticated group the last time we had heard them,” Michelle told Jason Barnard of The Strange Brew. “Now we hear them singing Mr. Tambourine Man... and it’s shooting up the charts, it’s gonna go to number one! We said, ‘Oh my God! That is The Byrds’. Then Cass said, ‘We got to get to LA fast because if The Byrds can have a hit, anybody could have it.’”

John Phillips poured all his prodigious talents and energy into honing a new electric style and sound. From spring to mid-summer 1965 he arranged for the band to go to the Virgin Islands to rehearse. This was the moment they really recognised the unique sound and power that their four voices could create.

“We started singing with Cass and Denny, and my God, that was a complete revelation for us, when the four of us were singing John’s arrangements,” recalled Michelle Phillips in her interview with Jason Barnard of The Strange Brew.

“He was a brilliant vocal arranger. We would sit on the beach in St. John and just light a great big bonfire and pass around a bottle of whiskey and… singing and singing and singing.”

After returning to New York the band travelled to Los Angeles where singer-songwriter Barry McGuire – a friend of the band’s who is best known for his 1965 hit Eve Of Destruction – had arranged for them to audition for record producer Lou Adler, who was co-owner of Dunhill Records.

McGuire decided to record California Dreamin’ as a track on his album Precious Time, with The Mamas & The Papas singing backing vocals.

The song was recorded at United Western studio in Hollywood, with members of the famed session band The Wrecking Crew. Hal Blaine played drums and tambourine, Joe Osborn was on bass, Larry Knechtel played piano, while PF Sloan played acoustic guitar on the intro. Lou Adler was the producer and Dayton ‘Bones’ Howe engineered the session.

“We were working in Studio 3, which was so small that we always did basic tracks first and vocals afterward because you couldn’t fit that many people in there at once,” Howe told Dan Daley of Mix magazine in 2004.

“So Barry comes in with these four scruffy-looking characters. Lou said, ‘Let’s listen to them, but first let’s get a few other things taken care of.’ Then we took a break and Barry asked us again to listen to them sing.”

McGuire’s persistence paid off. Adler was deeply impressed by The Mamas & The Papas and quickly arranged for them to record their own version of California Dreamin’, with Denny Doherty singing the lead vocal part and using the same backing track they had just recorded with the Wrecking Crew.

“So we asked if another studio was open and Studio 2 was, so we went in there and John picked up an acoustic guitar and they sang four songs, including California Dreamin’ and Go Where You Wanna Go. Basically, they sang what would become their first four hits. Lou turns to me and says, ‘What do you think?’ I said to Lou, ‘If you don’t take them, I will.’ That did it.”

One defining feature of California Dreamin’ is the haunting alto flute solo. This was the result of a chance encounter with alto saxophonist and flautist Bud Shank at the Universal Western studio, as radio producer Doug Thompson recalled on the Songfacts website.

“Denny Doherty once told me that when they were recording that song, they wanted a solo, but didn't want the usual guitar solo,” said Thompson. “John Phillips walked out into the hall of the Hollywood recording studio they were at and Bud Shank was in that hallway as well. John grabbed him and brought him into the studio. Shank listened to the hole he was supposed to fill and nailed it on the first take.”

Listening to California Dreamin’ over 60 years since it was released, there is a beautiful warmth and vastness to the four harmonies that really shines through. There is also an all-pervading sense of longing, the desire to be somewhere else other than the oppressive grey and cold of New York in the depths of winter.

It’s the contradiction between this austere greyness and the heavenly quality of the song that really works.

The melody is strong and stirring but woven within the allure of warmth and solace there is an aching melancholy. The voices have a floating feel while the flute solo instils a dreamlike quality to the song.

California Dreamin’ was released in December 1965 and reached No 4 in the US and No 3 in Canada. It fared less well in the UK, where it peaked at No 23 although when the song was re-released in 1997, following its use in a TV advertisement for Carling lager, it reached No 9.

A number of artists would cover the song. In the summer of 1968 Jose Feliciano released a version, which reached No 43 on the Billboard Hot 100. In the spring of 1979, the band America reached No 56 on the Billboard Hot 100 with their version of California Dreamin’, and in 1986 The Beach Boys recorded a version for their greatest hits album Made In The USA.

In 1990, English folk-rock quartet River City People released a version of the song, which reached No 13 in the UK singles chart, while in 2016 German DJ/remixer Freischwimmer reached No 1 on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart with his version.

California Dreamin’ launched The Mamas & The Papas and became an enduring anthem for the counterculture. But the strength and sophistication of John and Michelle Phillip’s song also gave it global appeal, as writer Jim Evans noted on the Rock And Roll Globe website.

“In that liminal space between American pop/rock’s initial maturation and its aesthetic elevation, a quartet turned up to blend harmony pop, folk rock and sophisticated songwriting into something singular enough to mark them as innovators but universal enough to make them stars.”

In some ways, the Rolling Stones’ 2026 single In The Stars sounds like it could have been made at any time in the past 50 years, but producer Andrew Watt has been explaining that, as well as making something in the band’s tradition, he also wanted to ensure that they still sounded relevant.

Speaking to Mix with the Masters about his work on In The Stars and its parent album, Foreign Tongues, Watt explains that capturing the essence of the Stones starts with understanding the importance of the way they interact when they’re playing in the room together.

“You just record ‘em,” he says. “You don’t want to ‘grid’ the Rolling Stones, so the entirety of this album was made with no click tracks. They set up very close together in the live room. They can see and feel each other at all times and they’re really just playing off of each other.”

That means recording the sound of the room, with bleed between microphones, but Watt says that keeping this is important.

“You just leave that shit in. You don't try and fuckin’ take it out. That's part of the energy of the song.”

Expanding on his point about how crucial it is to maintain the Stones’ live energy in the studio, Watt says: “This is not loop-based music. It is performance-based music. You can hear in Mick’s vocal – he's changing the phrasing constantly. He's expressing. He's ad-libbing. He has an unbelievable ability to kind of bring his throat into it to kind of make it grind.”

Watt also praises the control that Jagger has over his vocals, which he recorded on a Sony C800G microphone. “He sounds so good on it. It can cut through anything,” he notes.

And then, of course, there are the guitars, played by Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood. “Every song, Keith's on the left and Ronnie's on the right,” says Watt, referring to their positions in the mix.

Turning specifically to In The Stars, he adds: “They both play the riff slightly differently, but when they play it together, it's got that kind of weaving thing that the Rolling Stones are known for in the way that they interact. They're listening and feeling each other.”

Watt is also full of praise for the way that Mick Jagger interacted with Steve Jordan, who took over drumming duties in the Stones following the death of long-time sticksman Charlie Watts.

“One of Mick’s many talents is working with a drummer,” he claims. “He really gets right up against the drummer and really works to make sure the groove is making him wanna dance and feels, as he would say, ‘like a groove’. If it feels like that for him then he’s in.”

What of those attempts to modernise the Stones’ sound, though? Watt admits that he has to carefully “toe the line” of “keeping it classic but wanting it to sound like ‘now,’” and points to one specific production choice that comes as a genuine surprise.

“One of the things that we do on some of the songs, and we’re doing on [In The Stars], is the use of a sub-bass – we use Serum.”

Yep, the Stones use sub-bass: we’ll admit that learning that Xfer Records’ synth plugin is now part of the band’s sonic armoury wasn’t on our bingo card for today, but there you go.

Subscribers can check out Andrew Watt's full In The Stars track breakdown on the Mix with the Masters website.