Attack Magazine

Active Systems plays live with no laptop in sight: a Cirklon sequencer at the centre, four Intellijel Atlantix modules on bass duty and a 909 keeping time. After sets at Lost and Houghton and the release of The Red EP, we talk pattern-based performance, backup rigs, forced improvisation and the sorrow of a poorly played flute. Attack: You make 99% of your music on the Cirklon. Was a hardware live set always the plan? What did you use before it, and what makes it right for you?

Beatport has launched indie tech, a standalone genre category with its own Top 100 chart, separating it from indie dance. Beatport has added indie tech to its store as a standalone genre, giving the heavier, club-focused strand of contemporary indie dance its own page and chart. The change separates two sounds that had shared a single Beatport category.

Keleigh Batchelor on why balanced lineups start years before the poster, and why “fewer women DJs” doesn’t hold up. Debates about representation in electronic music tend to get heated fast. Comment threads and panel soundbites distort arguments that deserve more space, whether that’s about lineup balance, studio access, mentorship or safety. At the heart of the series is a simple question: can we close the gender gap? No one is asking for consensus; that’s impossible.

VocAlign 7 is the latest version of the popular and long-running vocal alignment software. It’s as good as you expect, but does version seven bring enough new features to the table to make it worth the upgrade? Since 1995, Synchro Arts have been making vocal alignment a little easier with VocAlign. The industry standard software is now up to version seven with what Synchro Arts is calling the biggest workflow shift since the original debuted more than 30 years ago. The big new feature?

Antares has released AutoTune Advanced, a new flagship real-time pitch correction plugin built around a vibrato-preserving engine called DVA. Antares Audio Technologies has added a new top tier to its AutoTune range. AutoTune Advanced is a real-time vocal tuning plugin built on a rebuilt version of the AutoTune algorithm. It now sits above AutoTune Pro 11 and the standard AutoTune as the company’s flagship automatic correction tool.

Steven Braines on why balanced lineups start years before the poster, and why “fewer women DJs” doesn’t hold up. Debates about representation in electronic music tend to get heated fast. Comment threads and panel soundbites distort arguments that deserve more space, whether that’s about lineup balance, studio access, mentorship or safety. With that in mind, Attack is starting a four-part series that gives people working on these issues the room to discuss the situation in greater depth.

Mike Taylor’s vocals and creative ideas have shaped some of dance music’s biggest records. With “LOVE.”, he puts his own artistry back at the centre. We sat him down for our regular round of questions, some about the music, some not. Mike Taylor made his name behind other artists’ biggest moments, most notably his Gold-certified feature on Unlike Pluto’s “Everything Black”. With “LOVE.”, his first solo single since, he steps forward on his own terms.

Build a sound inpired by the pumping harmonic drone from LCD Soundsystem’s Someone Great with u-he’s Diva, then put it to work across several genres. If you’ve followed some of the recent Synth Secrets you’ll know that we love versatile patches. In other words, sounds that – with just minimal tweaks to the envelope or notes – can be used for a range of different genres or parts in an arrangement. Another great example of this can be found in LCD Soundsystem’s classic, Someone Great.

Not Bad For A Girl founder Martha Bolton on why balanced lineups start years before the poster, and why “fewer women DJs” doesn’t hold up. Debates about representation in electronic music tend to get heated fast. Comment threads and panel soundbites distort arguments that deserve more space, whether that’s about lineup balance, studio access, mentorship or safety.

CRSSD Festival’s afterparty series returns to San Diego from 25 to 27 September with sets across multiple venues. CRSSD Festival has confirmed the return of CRSSD After Dark, its official afterparty series, for three nights in San Diego between 25 and 27 September 2026. The series extends the festival weekend beyond Waterfront Park, moving performances into venues across the city.