Hi-tech to lo-bit. It’s the 80s! Again

As if to remind you it’s our 80s Special issue this month – and to enforce the fact that everything 80s does seem to be everything 2021 – we have yet more new/ old releases in the form of software emulations of classic gear that was released four decades ago (there or there abouts). It’s like we’ve always said, ‘you wait four decades for a decent 80s software instrument emulation and they all arrive just as our 80s issue comes out’.OK we did say that in a particularly weird dream/hallucination but it still counts…

First up, who else but the mighty Roland, producers of so many machines that gave us synth pop and so many others that, intentionally or not, gave us dance music? The Japanese hardware company were once, what you could only call, staunchly ‘anti software’ but have now not only jumped on the bandwagon, but lassoed the horses pulling it, stripped them of any previous instructions and diverted the coach straight out of Dodge to a new town on the prairie called ‘Roland Cloud’.