LIVE REVIEW OF MY SLUTTY VALENTINEThe Echo/Echoplex Los Angeles, CAContact: basic.cable.booking@gmail.comWeb: basiccableprogramming.com/my-slutty-valentine-festPlayers: Multiple bands with multiple playersThe My Slutty Valentine festival celebrates Valentine's Day but leaves out the cheesiness and vanilla romance. In its place, we get heaps of sex positivity, feminist and queer joy, and a ton of glorious outfits. Love is in the air, but lust won't be pushed out. Frankly, the event is a riot.Music Connection was at The Echo and Echoplex from the 5 p.m. start on Sunday. That meant 20 bands, conveniently overlapping, on three stages (inside at the two neighboring venues, plus a third on the Echo patio).The Memories have a sound that is somehow lo-fi and upbeat. Somewhere between Weezer and Dinosaur Jr. Bushfire upped the ante somewhat. Incredible tunes, boundless energy, and a frontwoman who looks like she's ready to kick everyone's ass.Mz Neon may well have stolen the night. "Check on your trans friends—we're not ok," she said. "Things are crazy." That is undoubtedly true, and the crowd at the Echoplex was quick to show its support. Naturally, we will too.The alt-rapper was spectacular, with tunes like "Pussy Stick" (we think) whipping up the Slutty crowd. L.A. punk vets The Urinals were playing to a younger crowd than what they might be used to, though they had fiery gems like "Ack Ack Ack" to blast through. They didn't disappoint. Neither did Chimera, who have a vocalist with one of the better hardcore voices we've heard in a while.If Mz Neon stole the night, Poppy Jean Crawford (pictured) ran her close. The alt-pop star-in-the-making recently announced a tour with veteran Brit goths The Mission UK, and on this evidence, she'll go down a treat. Elements of PJ Harvey and Siouxsie Sioux meld beautifully, as she purrs through her stunning set.Then it was time for Mac Sabbath. Yeah, it's all a bit silly. The band's rewriting of Black Sabbath songs to cover fast food subject matter is, frankly, ludicrous. But the yin to that yang is that the musicians inside the costumes are super-talented, the songs sound immense, and the showmanship is glorious.Songs like "Chicken for the Slaves" and "Sweet Beef" reinterpret Sabbath classics in a manner Ozzy could never have imagined. But shit, it's fun. The post LIVE REVIEW OF MY SLUTTY VALENTINE first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Backpack opens claims process for former FTX EU usersCrypto exchange Backpack has initiated the first phase of the claims process for former FTX users in Europe.According to an April 1 announcement, users will need to create an account on the exchange, submit Know Your Customer information, and connect it to their FTX EU claim account.Backpack has not set a deadline for this phase of the claims process and has yet to provide a timeline for when distributions will begin. Users will face a withdrawal fee of €5 ($5.39) for claims under €2,000 ($2,158) and 0.25% for amounts above it.Source: Armani FerranteBackpack acquired FTX EU in January 2025 to offer crypto derivatives, including perpetual futures, throughout Europe. The acquisition marked the end of a lengthy battle to buy the European arm of the bankrupt exchange. Backpack CEO Armani Ferrante said at the time of the acquisition that the company was committed to returning FTX EU funds as fast and as safely as possible.FTX creditor activist Sunil Kavuri told Cointelegraph in January 2025 that the sale of FTX EU to Backpack added “further confusion and nervousness among FTX EU customers and the repayment of their funds.”“Some FTX EU customers signed up to these distributors, and they are confused about who will be distributing their funds back to them — Backpack, Kraken or Bitgo,” Kavuri said at the time.Related: FTX’s 2-year repayment delay is a ‘win,’ claims trader who predicted FTX’s collapseDetails on the first part of the claims processFor distribution amounts, the FAQ page on Backpack’s website states that all positions were closed using market prices at the time the exchange was shut down, and each was settled in euros.Furthermore, users with pending cryptocurrency withdrawals on Nov. 11, 2022, should have filed a claim in FTX’s US bankruptcy proceedings. Such users may be eligible to receive distributions from the FTX Recovery Trust, which Backpack is not involved with.Additionally, EU residents who signed up for FTX before March 7, 2022, are not considered FTX EU customers and should file their claims with FTX International, not Backpack.FTX Estate’s next round of distributions on May 30FTX Digital Markets, separate from FTX EU, distributed its first round of reimbursements on Feb. 18, with exchanges BitGo and Kraken facilitating the distributions. That first round of reimbursements went to “Convenience Class” members, those with claims under $50,000. The next round of reimbursements tied to FTX’s US bankruptcy proceedings is set to go out on May 30 and includes creditors under Class 5 Customer Entitlement Claims and Class 6 General Unsecured Claims. FTX is expected to use $11.4 billion to make the paymentsMagazine: The $2,500 doco about FTX collapse on Amazon Prime… with help from mom

66% of Serato just got bought: but not by AlphaThetaIt’s a hard day for news – who would trust anything published on April 1st? But, no fooling, New Zealand-based Serato has announced a deal whereby Canadian investment tech company Tiny will purchase a 66% stake of Serato. The deal is noted to still require approval from New Zealand’s Overseas Investment Office. This is not […]
The post 66% of Serato just got bought: but not by AlphaTheta appeared first on DJ TechTools.

66% of Serato just got bought: but not by AlphaThetaIt’s a hard day for news – who would trust anything published on April 1st? But, no fooling, New Zealand-based Serato has announced a deal whereby Canadian investment tech company Tiny will purchase a 66% stake of Serato. The deal is noted to still require approval from New Zealand’s Overseas Investment Office. This is not […]
The post 66% of Serato just got bought: but not by AlphaTheta appeared first on DJ TechTools.

KVASS LAB Slap House & Brazilian Bass For SerumSlap House & Brazilian Bass For Serum is an essential collection of presets for one of the most popular genres of EDM right now, which combines Deep House and Future House. You'll find 90 top-quality presets for Serum synthesizer, including deep, and punchy basses, detuned and metallic leads and spacious plucks. This soundset will help you create hit tracks like top artists (Dynoro, R3hab, Imanbek, Dubdogz, VIZE, Lucky Luke and more). Each preset in this soundbank has 4 Macro Controls assigned. As a BONUS you will receive 15 unique kick samples ready to use in your newest productions. All sounds in this pack are Royalty Free. Contains | 90 Slap House Serum Presets: 41 Basses. 11 Plucks. 11 Leads. 13 FX. 6 Brass. 4 Synth. 2 Pads. 2 Ambience. Read More

Researchers suggest OpenAI trained AI models on paywalled O’Reilly booksOpenAI has been accused by many parties of training its AI on copyrighted content sans permission. Now a new paper by an AI watchdog organization makes the serious accusation that the company increasingly relied on nonpublic books it didn’t license to train more sophisticated AI models. AI models are essentially complex prediction engines. Trained on […]

Malfunctional Timekeeping With The Vetinari ClockLord Vetinari from the Discworld series is known for many things, but perhaps most of all a clock that doesn’t quite keep continuous time. Instead, it ticks away at random increments to infuriate those that perceive it, whilst keeping regular time over the long term. [iracigt] decided to whip up a real world version of this hilarious fictional timepiece.
The clock itself is an off-the-shelf timepiece purchased from Target for the princely sum of $5. However, it’s been deviously modified with an RP2040 microcontroller hidden away inside. The RP2040 is programmed to tick the clock at an average of once per second. But each tick itself is not so exact. Instead, there’s an erraticness to its beat – some ticks are longer, some shorter, in the classic Vetinari style. [iracigt] explains the nitty gritty of how it all works, from creating chaos with Markov chains to interfacing the RP2040 electronically with the cheap quartz clock movement.
If you’ve ever wanted to build one of these amusements yourself, [iracigt’s] writeup is a great place to start. Even better, it was inspired by an earlier post on these very pages! We love to see the community riff on a theme, and we’d love to see yours, too – so keep the tips coming, yeah? Video after the break.

Latin Music’s US revenues hit $1.42 billion in 2024, up 5.8% YoYLatin Music revenues accounted for 8.1% of total recorded music revenue in the US last year
Source

Universal Audio: UA Guitar Month & new Woodrow plug-in Launched to celebrate the upcoming release of their new UAD Woodrow 55 plug-in, UA Guitar Month will see discounts and offers applied to a selection of UAD plug-ins and UAFX pedals. 

Introducing the Audio Branding Academy The Audio Branding Academy brings together a network of experts from the fields of musicology, psychology, psychoacoustics, branding and marketing, offering a variety of services for audio branding, sound design and music-related projects.

Get free LFO path presets for Serum 2 (designed by certified artists)
Add unique rhythms to your sounds by using our free LFO path presets for Serum 2, each meticulously designed by certified artists.

Music Industry reacts to Executive Order on Ticket ScalpingThe music industry is reacting to President Trump's Executive Order on ticket scalping "Combating Unfair Practices In The Live Entertainment Market."
The post Music Industry reacts to Executive Order on Ticket Scalping appeared first on Hypebot.

“I love the guitar, but it belongs to the 20th century”: How Steven Wilson is embracing plugins and modern production to reinvent the guitarWith the abundance of amp sims and plugins available in today’s market, is the age of the traditional guitar-and-amp rig over? Porcupine Tree guitarist Steven Wilson certainly seems to think so.
Speaking in the latest issue of Guitarist magazine, Wilson explains how “there’s never been more ways to process, twist and mutate sound”, adding, “It’s a gift for someone like me, who thinks of himself primarily as a producer.

READ MORE: The best free and paid-for plugins you need to know about this week

The cornucopia of new technology allows Wilson to mix “the two worlds of the vintage and the modern”, he explains. On his latest solo record, The Overview, listeners can hear him flavouring more vintage-style guitar tones with fresher sounds courtesy of newer plugins and processing.
“I’m not a purist,” he insists. “I’m not interested in getting vintage tones for the sake of it. I like vintage tones, of course I do, and there are some on this record. But I’m a massive fan of what you can do in the digital realm.”
Wilson even goes on to label the guitar as “old-fashioned”, explaining that modern processing could unlock a new lease of life for the instrument. “I love the guitar, but it’s an instrument that belongs to the 20th century in many ways,” he admits. “So it’s a question of, what can you do to reinvent [the guitar’s] vocabulary to make it seem relevant?”

He praises the work of his longtime collaborator Randy McStine, noting that he encourages Wilson to embrace new production and mixing techniques on his solo record. “Randy, being the young whippersnapper that he is, understands that,” he says.
“It was really fascinating to go down that road with him. We tried to create something in the tradition of the epic guitar solo but in a way that perhaps was fresher to people who’ve heard that before.”
Steven Wilson’s new album The Overview is out now.

The post “I love the guitar, but it belongs to the 20th century”: How Steven Wilson is embracing plugins and modern production to reinvent the guitar appeared first on MusicTech.

The music industry’s weakest link: Getting artists from A to BThe music industry is so focused on getting artists from point B to C that they are skipping the step of getting artists from A to B. Without an effort to build a solid foundation, the next generation of musicians may never make it past this critical starting point, writes Tatiana Cirisano of MIDiA.
The post The music industry’s weakest link: Getting artists from A to B appeared first on Hypebot.

Here’s why Softube Echoes is almost a great delay plugin€149/$149, softube.com
We all have access to several different delay plugins, whether it be the tools that come with your DAW, modules that are built into multi-effects or guitar effects suites, or via additional plugin purchases. The humble delay can, however have multiple flavours based on various techniques and hardware tech. Whilst some plugins will focus on a single style, Softube’s new Echoes delay aims to be a workhorse that covers a number of these bases.

READ MORE: Money well spent? SSL 18 brings more channel power to Solid State Logic’s growing interface range

Echoes is a multi-tap stereo delay plugin with six delay types, a wide sonic palette and a comprehensive preset selection. Although it’s versatile and sounds excellent, a lofty price and restrictive design decisions stop it from reaching its true potential.
Softube has a broad catalogue of plugins, with a blend of classic emulations that favour hardware-like designs and contemporary effects with crisp, modern user interfaces. Echoes falls into the latter camp, with easy-to-read text and a large grid showing individual delay taps as nodes. You can choose to work with a single delay line, or you can click to add up to 10 taps to spread across the stereo field. Each tap can be positioned as a percentage of the main delay time, although this is fiddly to fine-tune, as there’s no obvious snap feature. You can, however, select multiple nodes and move them around at the same time. Once you start digging into the amplitude, time and pan modulation, you also get useful visual feedback as each node changes in size and position.
The bottom half of the plugin presents the main controls where you can tweak delay time (with DAW sync), dry/wet amount and feedback. There’s an FB. Limit button that engages a limiter in the feedback loop set at -6dB. This is an excellent safety feature that stops the delay tails from getting dangerously loud at high feedback settings.

Aside from the intuitive visualisation of the taps and their placement, the main thing that makes Echoes stand out is its six delay modes; Filter, Reverb, BBD, Tape, Pan and LoFi. Each one has mode-specific controls for basic editing, although it’s not always immediately obvious exactly what each is doing, as some controls affect more than one parameter. Filter mode lets you choose from a low-pass or high-pass filter to help shape the tails, alongside three options that alternate filter types across each tap. This gives the tail more variation and can help to separate each tap in the stereo field.
The next mode is Reverb, which can create an FDN (feedback delay network) algorithmic reverb effect. You can increase the Diffusion amount to smear the sound and make it more reverb-like, while the Tone control shapes the overall tonal balance. There are also Modulation and Mod Balance controls that add movement to the pitch and amplitude of each tail. These introduce a more organic and chorus-like feel, but given the limited controls, it’s difficult to edit speed and pitch with precision.
BBD mode emulates the warm-sounding bucket brigade stomp boxes of the 70s, along with their crunchy aliasing artefacts. The mode includes an LFO with five shapes that can modulate the delay time for crazy-sounding effects, plus a low-pass filter, should you wish to tame the aliasing noise.
Modes. Image: Press
Next is Tape, with controls for Drive, Dirt and Wobble. And then Pan, which lets you use an LFO to modulate the stereo position of each tap. This is useful for widening mono sources or adding movement to static sounds. Finally, there’s a LoFi mode that delivers crunchy degradation alongside a modelled four-pole filter with envelope follower.
Softube has a history of coming up with quality-sounding plugins, and Echoes is no exception. It’s clean when it needs to be, but can sound deep and rich when pushed. The BBD, Reverb and Tape modes are definite highlights when it comes to adding character; each mode gives a different flavour of delay to play with, and it’s useful to have them all in one plugin.
However, the controls are limited and you can only choose one mode at a time. Although this makes sense in terms of certain algorithms being used, it’s annoying that there’s not more flexibility that would allow you to combine the features of different modes. So, if you want to apply filtering, drive and the excellent pan modulation of Reverb mode, you’re out of luck. It boils down to a fundamental design limitation where each of these modes is separate, whereas it would be more useful to have several character modes, followed by the filter, pan and lo-fi sections as additional effects in the chain.
Taps. Image: Press
Thankfully, there are a few useful extras that help redeem Echoes and increase its usability. The output has a built-in Ducking section complete with Threshold and Release controls, and an optional sidechain input. You also get filters to help tame the wet signal, plus a Width control (from 0 to 300%) with a mono maker to keep low frequencies in the centre. Echoes also has Softube’s ‘Extended Parameters’, which can be shown or hidden from the plugin window. This adds in-depth input and output metering, multiple plugin states, gain matching, latency-free bypass, as well as Headroom, High Pass and Phase Invert controls. It’s also worth noting the excellent preset browser that includes useful tags and a search feature, and a decent collection of presets that cover a lot of bases.
Echoes is a good plugin, it’s just not a great plugin. At €149, you expect a bit more. Concise editing controls for each mode make it fairly quick to dial in, but the lack of flexibility when it comes to modulating the parameters and the fact that certain features are tied to single modes, it’s far more limited than it should be.
Issues aside, there’s no denying that Echoes sounds awesome and covers a lot of sonic ground. And with useful additional features like ducking, a feedback limiter, width control and gain matching, it still stands up as a potential workhorse delay. Softube often has sales, so picking it up at a lower price would also sweeten the deal.
Extras. Image: Press
Key features

Stereo multi-tap delay plugin (VST, VST3, AU, AAX – requires iLok)
10 available taps
6 modes (Filter, Reverb, BBD, Tape, Pan, LoFi)
X/Y grid visualisation of taps
Feedback limiter
Onboard ducker
Output filter and width control with mono maker
Wide range of presets with search and tagging
Resizable interface

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