Future Music

Editor-In-Chief Si Truss, simon.truss@futurenet.com Reviews Editor, Music Technology Simon Arblaster, simon.arblaster@futurenet.com Features Editor, Music Technology Matt Mullen, matt.mullen@futurenet.com Managing Editor Kate Puttick, kate.puttick@fu

Considered by many to be the underrated dark horse of the vintage Roland Jupiter polysynth herd, the Jupiter-6 is getting some deserved time in the spotlight thanks to a brand new plugin emulation from Cherry Audio: the Mercury-6. Released in 1983, t

When Korg launched their first ARP Odyssey reboot back in 2015, little did we know that this was just the start of the emulative endeavours. In addition to this scaled-down synth we also got a module, an iOS app, a plugin and a limited-edition full-s

Chase Bliss have announced the sequel to their MOOD multi-effects pedal, a micro-looper and delay with a unique sonic architecture made in collaboration with Drolo FX and Old Blood Noise Endeavors. The original MOOD offered two channels: one is a gra

Yamaha’s product roster isn’t exactly short on stage keyboards – they already offer the CP and YC models – but the new CK range sets itself apart by putting the focus on portability. In a nutshell, the 88-note CK88 and 61-key CK61 promise the sounds

Modalic's first plugin, Beat Scholar, put a new spin on the beatmaking plugin concept, and was notable for its sliceable ‘beat pizzas’. The follow-up, EON-Arp, focuses on the creation of melodic and harmonic patterns, and the great news is that you c

Minimal Audio have announced the release of a new plugin, Cluster Delay, a powerful multi-tap delay capable of producing a rich variety of delay effects. Cluster Delay enables the user to fine-tune delay sequences of up to eight taps, shaping these i

John Dunk, better known under the alias Cameo Blush, is a London-based producer making highly kinetic electronic music: more than anything, his tracks feel like a spring, tightly coiled and loaded with energy, ready to pop at any moment. Though lumin

Adelirious adventure in sound design, Holly Waxwing’s The New Pastoral is one of the best – and weirdest – things we’ve heard in months. Delightfully difficult to categorise, Waxwing’s music could be described as bubblegum IDM: frenzied patchworks of

Looking a little bit like a lot of other products but also different to anything else, Reliq is a new matrix-based “hybrid control surface” that can be used to route and mix audio, sequence your music and control your DAW. The majority of Reliq’s top

In the earliest days of synthesis, instruments were monophonic. They could only create a single sound at once or, in some cases, simple duophonic chords by cleverly detuning oscillators. To create true polyphony, where multiple pitches can be played

As the founder of Birmingham’s House of God club nights, Anthony Child (aka Surgeon) was one of the first DJs to import techno into the UK scene during a golden era for the genre. Always keen to develop his technique and get to grips with new technol

01 > The bass sound is created by layering several instances of Native Instruments Massive: “It’s really about just trying to fill out the whole frequency spectrum.” 02 > To bring out the higher frequencies, Skepsis uses separate top and high-mid ins

Skepsis breaks down his track Know What It Means Why I love my… Skepsis on the track he wished he produced UK producer Skepsis has been rising through the ranks of the bass music circuit since first hitting the scene in 2017. He first made an impa

French company Arturia are one of the longest-running developers of vintage synth emulations, and while they started producing analogue hardware over a decade ago, many still know them for their incredibly popular and wide-ranging V Collection, an as

01 To access the sequencer and arp settings in Pigments, click on the Seq button in the top right corner of the UI. Conveniently, you can also toggle the sequencer/arpeggiator on and off by just clicking the adjacent button, which is a new feature in

Initially a drummer, Sheldon Young studied music at university in Oklahoma before making beats under the mentorship of childhood friend and American rapper Ray Jacobs (aka August 08). Working on material under the alias Channel Tres, Young first arri

CONTACT WEB: apple.com KEY FEATURES REVIEW UNIT: Apple M2 Pro chip: 12-core CPU – 8 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores, 19- core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine, 32GB Unified Memory, 200GB/s memory bandwidth, 1TB SSD storage I/O: Headphone output, 4 US

Possibly the most revered producer in hip-hop’s five-decade history, James Dewitt Yancey – aka J Dilla or Jay Dee – was one of those rare musical talents who forever altered the direction of not only his chosen genre, but popular music as a whole. Th

CONTACT WEB: sequential.com KEY FEATURES 6-voice analogue poly synth with analogue distortion and digital effects; 61-note semiweighted keyboard with velocity and aftertouch; 3 VCOs with 3/4 selectable shapes; Drive/Feedback and Vintage controls; swi

CONTACT WEB: audient.com KEY FEATURES ANALOGUE INS: 2 mic/line/instrument, 6 mic/ line – EVO mic pre, JFET instrument ANALOGUE OUTS: 8 Balanced Line Outputs DIGITAL: 2 ADAT Inputs, 2 ADAT Outputs SAMPLE RATE: 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96kHz CLOCKING: Internal,

KEY FEATURES CONTROL: 25-key velocity-sensitive keyboard with aftertouch, backlit pads, faders, scroll wheel and touch strips I/O: USB-C, 3.5mm MIDI out WEIGHT: 680g DIMENSIONS: 337 x 183 x 26mm Those on the hunt for a portable, affordable MIDI keybo

CONTACT WHO: Elektron WEB: elektron.se KEY FEATURES Version 1.5 firmware update. Adds four sample Machines, controller over sample rate, Loopcloud integration, BMP-based sampling and various other refinements and bug fixes. Firmware is free to curren

CONTACT WHO: Torso Electronics WEB: torsoelectronics.com KEY FEATURES Euclidean rhythm generator with seven musical scales, harmonic pitch control and random modulation on all parameters, 16 tracks per pattern, 16 MIDI channels, polyphony on all trac

KEY FEATURES FREQ RESPONSE (@ -3DB) FULL-RANGE MODE: 40Hz-40kHz FREQ RESPONSE FOCUS MODE: 110Hz-10kHz MAX SPL: 112dB INPUT: Balanced XLR 10 kΩ BASS AMP STAGE: 2 x 70W RMS; Treble amp stage: 50W RMS USER CONTROLS: Sensitivity, stand-by, Left/Right, HP

Spitfire Audio’s bread-andbutter has always been in the areas of film and TV music scoring, and they now have a huge number of products to satisfy the need of composers in those areas. At the core of their range for many years have been the Albion li

Coldcut are true scientists of sound. Whether splicing seminal dance tracks out of the kookiest samples in the ’80s or developing their own revolutionary video mash-up software and cuttingedge DJ-style apps in the decades that followed, they’ve alway

Full Review: FM395 The DMK-25 Pro stuffs loads into a lightweight, compact, and visually appealing package. Ideal for on-the-go use. Full Review: FM392 A great value keyboard with an updated feature set that makes this one of the best mini controller

Full Review: FM388 A bold and characterful debut and very much worth your attention, although its vintage ethos occasionally limits its versatility. Full Review: FM393 Softpop is an instrument that offers vast tonal options and great sequencing, con

An auxiliary or return channel is an empty channel that can be called up in your DAW’s mixer, much like a bus or group track. However, instead of routing individual channel outputs directly into this, you instead use a channel’s send fader to route i

The title of Lucinda Chua’s debut album, YIAN translates to ‘swallow’ in Mandarin. Not only a reference to Chua’s Chinese name, Siew Yian, the title signifies the migratory bird that flies vast distances each year, venturing thousands of miles in the

As DJ Sprinkles, Terre Thaemlitz’s musical productions hold a mirrorball up to house music, bouncing back a reflection of those within it. And, from the off, 2009’s iconic Midtown 120 Blues is an album that doesn’t like what it sees. The intro, knowi

01 > The Sample Engine was added to Pigments in V2 and immediately greatly increased the timbral possibilities inherent to Pigments. Unlike most sample playback synth engines, Pigments also allows users to play back samples granularly. For this Walkt

Roland continue to update their SP-404 MKII sampler, itself an evolution of the original SP-404 hardware. The company have now dropped the version 3 firmware, which promises improved performance and various new features. Most notably, improved stabil