Ins & outs

EIGHT-OH-GREAT

Electronic musicians had a special reason to celebrate 808 day (8 August) this year, as Vincent Riemer released a spiffing webbased emulation in the form of the iO-808. You can get your beats rolling at io808.com.

GENERATION RENT?

We’ve never been totally convinced by the idea of a subscription model for music software, but Splice’s new rent-tobuy scheme for Xfer Records’ Serum – whereby you pay $9.99 until the full price of the synth is paid off – sounds like a great idea.

WE ZONT ONE

Handheld hardware synths aren’t new, but the intriguing Zont is the first one we’ve seen that enables you to change the soundset by plugging a different cartridge in the top of it, GameBoy-style. We’ll have to wait until next year to find out how it fares.

DECKS ON FILM

We Are Your Friends, the Zac Efronfronted movie about an aspiring DJ, wasn’t great, and based on the trailer, XOXO, Netflix’s new comingof-age drama about a group of 20-somethings heading to an EDM festival, is going to have us clawing out our remaining eye.

TEASED OFF

Product teases are a fact of life, but Behringer’s r’s slow but constant drip feed of information regarding their new DeepMind 12 analogue synth seemed to leave people bemused and frustrated rather than excited. Will it be worth all the hype?

SEASONS CHANGE

Is that really Summer over already? It seems like only a few weeks ago that we started composing our massive sunshine-friendly jam, and now it’s time to get back indoors and turn the heating on. Still, there’s always that novelty Christmas single to work on...