News Round-Up: 29/4/16

Pioneer release new DJ controllers, users succeed in petitioning Dave Smith and Roger Linn to upgrade Tempest drum machine, and Kirk Degiorgio explains Detroit techno’s love affair with Prince.

Pioneer Introduce New DJ Controllers. Pioneer expand their range of DJ controllers with the DDJ-RR and DDJ-RB. Both feature two channels, and introduce buttons for new features in the Rekordbox software update, including Sequence Call, which lets you create and save sample sequences and play them back without touching your computer. Watch above.

Techno’s Love Affair With Prince. Writing for The Wire, British techno DJ and producer Kirk Degiorgio talks with Detroit’s finest – including Juan Atkins, Carl Craig and Richie Hawtin – about the Motor City’s love affair with pop legend Prince, going all the back to the very beginning of his career. Read in full here.

Sonic Academy Announce Kick 2. An award-winning drum synthesis plugin that allows you to sculpt, shape, create, manipulate and mangle your way to the perfect kick drum, Sonic Academy’s Kick gets an extensive upgrade for 2016. New features include three fully featured ‘click’ areas, three new distortions, sub-harmonic control and more. Watch the introduction video above and find out more here.

Tonka’s Mastering Tips. Writing for the Hotflush blog,  Before releasing the first track next week on his brand new record label, Bangin’ Trax, titled ‘#Cherryade’, “a minimal hard house diss song about the time I dreamt that Jay Z had cheated on me with another man”, Tonka gives a top tip on dance music mastering DIY via the Hotflush Recordings blog. Find that here.

Petition To Update The Tempest Succeeds. A Change.org petition asking Dave Smith and Roger Linn to resume work on the firmware of their Tempest drum machine has yielded results. Users are requesting fixes and upgrades to address a list of issues and bugs outlined in the petition, which currently has over 600 signautres. SonicState asked Linn to comment on the matter, and he revealed that resources are being allocated. Find out more here.

Elektron Overbridge and Analog Rytm Updates. Swedish hardware company Elektron announces big updates for the hardware/software integration protocol Overbridge and the analogue drum machine Analog Rytm. OS updates have also been made available for the analogue synthesisers Analog Keys and Analog Four. More info and downloads here.