A live album recorded in Tokyo and designed exclusively for the Japanese market is what gave Cheap Trick their breakthrough in America and the wider world.

At Budokan was the making of the band that became known as “the Beatles of hard rock”.

Formed in 1974 in Rockford, Illinois, Cheap Trick looked like two halves of different bands.

Singer Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson were pretty, longhaired, rock’n’roll stars waiting to happen. In contrast, guitarist Rick Nielsen and drummer Bun E. Carlos were prematurely bald; Nielsen a goofball in bow-tie baseball cap, Carlos portly, bespectacled and mustachioed, dressed like an office clerk.

But as a unit, they were tight. And Nielsen, as chief songwriter, was a master in the art of Beatles-inspired power-pop.

For all the brilliant tunes on the band’s first two albums, Cheap Trick and In Color, both released in 1977, they couldn’t buy a hit in America.

But the band was big in Japan – that old cliché – and in April 1978 they experienced something akin to Beatlemania when they played the shows in Tokyo and Osaka that would change their lives.

The venue in Tokyo, the famous Budokan concert hall, was filled to its 9000-capacity for the band’s two performances on 28 and 30 April. And what they got on tape was extraordinary – not only a great band rocking out, but an audience reaction that was off the scale.

As Zander said, “The screaming was deafening.”

In the ten tracks that made the cut for the live album, half were from In Color, including Hello There, the high-energy, tongue-in-cheek opening number.

Surrender, from the newly released third album Heaven Tonight, was an anthem about family dysfunction with a line that plugged directly into teen America – “Got my Kiss records out”.

Need Your Love, a hypnotic, nine-minute heavy-psych trip, would resurface on the band’s fourth studio record Dream Police.

And in I Want You To Want Me – a flop single in America but a hit in Japan – the interaction between band and audience was crystallised, thousands of voices echoing Zander’s in the refrain, “Cryin’! Cryin’! Cryin’!”

At Budokan was released in Japan in October 1978.

It was only after the album started selling strongly on import in the US that a shortened promo version, titled From Tokyo To You, was serviced to America’s rock radio stations.

And with that, it took off like a rocket.

The album was officially released in the US in January 1979, and went on to reach number four on the Billboard chart, selling four million copies, with I Want You To Want Me, in its second life, a top ten smash.

At Budokan was the fluke hit that made the Anglophile “hard rock Beatles” one of America’s biggest bands, and all because they were loved in Japan.

Two words from Rick Nielsen said it all: “Domo arigato.”

Previously, it seems, albums very much took a back seat to the band’s gigs.

“I guess the first few years of our life as a band, we were like, ‘We’re touring musicians who need to make adverts for our live shows’. That’s what the records are,” frontman Marcus Mumford told the newspaper.

He continued: “I remember I said that to Neil Young once, and he was like, ‘You’ve got it all wrong, man. Your live shows aren’t the things that are going to last. They’re moments in time and experiences that are beautiful and great, but your recordings are going to last. So you need to pay attention to how you record music.’”

The band have certainly paid attention and taken care over their new record. Rushmere is their first album for seven years and the first since the departure of Winston Marshall in 2021.

Announcing the new album in a press release earlier this year, Mumford said: “I think we always felt like we knew we were going to release some more music, but we wanted to wait for the right music. We’ve never been in haste, I don’t think. But when this music came around, we had a sense of urgency.”

Mumford also revealed that he and his bandmates deliberated logged off from social media to avoid unwanted distraction during the making of Rushmere. "This is the first time I've put anything out and actually done what artists always say they're going to do, which is not to read anything or look at anything. So I'm off it all. I feel really great.

"I took Twitter off my phone. It's one of the best things I've ever done. I haven't looked up any of it - and I'm like in blissful ignorance. I'll see the feedback at the shows when we start playing. Historically, our band has always judged our success on ticket sales more than anything else, not comments."

The band have recently completed a tour of small venues across Europe, North America and Australia, but if you weren’t able to catch them then they return for arena dates in Britain and Ireland later in the year.

The song is Rock Of Ages, from the band’s multi-million selling 1983 album Pyromania.

While working on the track with producer Mutt Lange at Battery Studios in London, they knew they had something special.

Lange co-wrote the songs with the band, and always put a heavy emphasis on the lead vocal.

As Leppard singer Joe Elliott said of Lange: “Being the brilliant songwriter and arranger that he is, Mutt knew where you should leave space for the vocal.

“He’d tell us, ‘We don’t need frills - these songs will sound a lot more powerful if you leave spaces in them.’”

Elliott explained how Lange directed guitarists Steve Clark and Phil Collen in Rock Of Ages.

“Mutt said, ‘Don’t be just chugging through it. Drop out here and there, so that when the guitars do come in, they’re like explosions.’”

The element of luck to this song came with two happy accidents, the first of which was something close to divine intervention.

“Most times, if you can get a chorus down first, the rest of it's easy,” Elliott said. “With this one, we had the basic track, but I didn’t have any lyrics written - just ‘da da da, doo doo doo’ melodies.

“Then we had a request from the studio guys: ‘Is it okay if this local church choir comes in to record for a day?’”

The band agreed. The choir had their time in the studio. And when the band returned to to work the following day, karma paid off.

“I was sitting on a couch near the mixing desk,” Elliott said, “and there was a hymn book that one of the choir had left behind.

“I don’t remember whether it was open on this exact page, or if I flicked through the book and found it - but I saw the name of this hymn: Rock Of Ages.

“It was a complete fluke. I called out to Mutt and said, ‘How about this?’ I started singing, ‘Rock of ages! Rock of ages!’ - and the look on his face was euphoric.

“So yeah - thank God we let that church choir in!”

The other stroke of luck came with the song’s intro, four Germanic-sounding nonsensical words, delivered in a silly voice by Mutt Lange: “Gunter gleiben glauchen globen!”

As Elliott recalled: “When you’re stuck inside a studio day after day, you get cabin fever. And when that creeps in, funny stuff happens - like that intro.

“It wasn’t manufactured. It started out as a cue for when the guitars come in, because we didn’t have a vocal line.

“Mutt would count in with whatever words came into his head, and there were various versions that ended up on tape.

“One of them was about poppadoms, because Mutt loved Indian food.

“So we thought it would be funny to have one of these things as the count in for the song - and “Gunter gleiben glauchen globen” won the toss!

“I loved the humour in it. We knew people would hear it and go, ‘What the hell is that?’”

Joe Elliott compared it to the Led Zeppelin song The Crunge, a funk-inspired number that ends with singer Robert Plant parodying James Brown with the question: “Where’s that confounded bridge?’”

As Elliott put it: “A lot of rock bands would never do something like that because it wasn’t serious, but so what? It’s a bit of fun.”

As the title suggests, it focuses on Ronson’s formative years as a mover and shaker in NYC.

Announcing the news on his Twitter/X account, Ronson said: “DJing in ‘90s New York City informed everything I ever did after, becoming the foundation for all my future work and creativity. In Night People, I wanted to capture that transformative period of my life and celebrate three of my great loves: the art of DJing, the thrilling energy of New York City after dark, and the wild and wonderful characters who populated our world and became my second family.

“This book is my love letter to a vanished era that shaped not just my career but my identity - a time when finding my craft put me on the path to finding myself.”

Despite being born into fame and wealth – his stepfather was Mick Jones from Foreigner and he counted Sean Lennon among his school friends – there’s no doubt that Ronson put the hard yards into developing his musical career.

It wasn’t just DJing in NY clubs, either. It’s often forgotten that his 2003 debut album Here Comes The Fuzz flopped and he was dropped by Elektra. It was his production work, and ease and fluency with which he moved between the worlds of hip hop, pop and soul, that proved crucial in his rise in the '00s.

Anyway, he seems to have nabbed some decent people to supply cover blurb. Lizzie Goodman, the author of Meet Me In The Bathroom, which covers much the same time period in New York music, says: “Mark Ronson tells his own sweet, intimate and sometimes extremely funny story of what it’s like to be inside an era of pure musical magic before anyone but you and your friends even know it’s happening.”

Meanwhile Griffin Dunne, the author of the acclaimed family memoir The Friday Afternoon Club, has supplied: “Mark Ronson’s transporting memoir is a New York bildungsroman about an uptown kid with a downtown heart that beats to hip-hop while longing for a sound that’s all his own.”

And Dog Paws’ new weighted controller hits all those spots bang on the nose.

Dog Paw is a new company, only just establishing itself a boutique builder of tech gear aimed to fit broad niches, and its self-titled first offering is a first public foray into the crowded world of MIDI controllers. It’s a device that’s currently looking for support via Kickstarter so that the team, based in Oakland, California, can make it a reality.

And don't let appearances be deceptive. This is not just another controller.

At a passing glance the Dog Paw looks like any other set of drum pads. Like the front surface of an Akai MPC, or the pads off stage right on a Roland Fantom. Hit them, trigger a sound, you know the score.

But it’s only when you take a closer look via video that Grid’s special features set it apart.

Instead of each large, square, pad being a simple ‘button’, they’re weighted in much the same way as a weighted piano keyboard giving a much more tactile approach to playing what can broadly be considered a new type of instrument, or, if you want the touch but not the sound, for adding more depth and feel to the inputs in your DAW.

For while this is a new type of controller with 'the feel of a piano with the versatility of a grid controller,' its makers claim it’s also an entire musical instrument all-in-one, with a built-in Raspberry Pi-based computer and audio outputs giving it synth and sample capabilities with no extra gear required.

“Dog Paw bridges the gap between traditional instruments and modern controllers," explains Bill Bartke-Croughan, the creator of Dog Paw.

"Musicians coming from acoustic backgrounds will find an intuitive way into electronic music production, while producers and digital creators can add a new layer of expression to their workflows.”

Not only are the instrument's pads sensitive to the degree of velocity with which its pads are struck, but also they’re also pressure and movement sensitive allowing the player to introduce vibrato and pitch bend just as you would a stringed instrument.

Press and shake for vibrato. Bend the pad left and right… Bend the pitch up and down.

And all on a device that – rather than being stuffy old piano key shaped and requiring a degree of keyboard skill (as per Roli’s multiple takes on similar heightened means of control) – looks and plays like a set of finger-friendly drum pads instead.

“Avoid the confusing finger gymnastics of traditional instruments. With our grid layout, the pattern you learn for one chord or scale will work everywhere,” its makers claim.

And rather than simply being a front end to getting digits into your DAW (it needless to say offers full MIDI and MPE compatibility) it’s audio outputs and audio sound engine mean you can leave the laptop at home too.

Find out more about Dog Paw and help make their dream a reality here.

Guitarist Tony Iommi recalled in an interview with Classic Rock: “We wanted to do a rock album.” And certainly there are songs on Sabotage to rank among the heaviest that Sabbath ever recorded - songs such as Hole In The Sky and Symptom Of The Universe.

But this album also features what is surely the most bizarre track ever to feature on a Black Sabbath album - Supertzar, an ambient piece featuring the English Chamber Choir, and described by drummer Bill Ward as “a demonic chant”. And the weirdness on Sabotage doesn’t end there...

On their previous album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, the band had experimented with synthesisers, played by a guest star, Rick Wakeman of progressive rock pioneers Yes.

On Sabotage, those experiments continued with Am I Going Insane (Radio), which was essentially a pop song, written by singer Ozzy Osbourne on a Moog synthesiser, which he played on the finished track.

“Oz drove us all nuts with that Moog thing,” Ward recalled, “but the song was great. And in hindsight, it was kind of a precursor for his solo career. His personality was blooming on this song.”

Strangest of all, at the very end of the album, after the last notes of the closing track The Writ, there is a 31-second snippet of music that was recorded by producer Mike Butcher without the band’s knowledge - and added during the mixing process.

“Microphones were plugged in all around the studio,” Butcher explained. “So one night, when Ozzy and Bill were messing around on the piano, I pushed the record button.”

What he captured was a joke song they named Blow On The Jug.

“This stupid fucking thing,” Ward said. “A drunken song that Ozzy and me would sing together in a van or on a plane.

“That’s me on piano, and Ozzy blowing on one of those brown cider jugs, playing it like a tuba.”

Make that two, three notches. Because it’s not really just a fuzz, because the Focus Fuzz Deluxe has got a three-way rotary switch to cycle through boost, overdrive and fuzz modes, and what’s that down there? Oh, yes, a second footswitch. That is for applying a transistor-based analogue octave-up.

Okay, we’re sold. Is there anything this little gold metal guitar effects pedal does not do? There’s bound to be something, but at least no one can say Great Eastern has not made full use of the enclosure – and arguably taken the Focus Fuzz paradigm to its logical conclusion.

Once more, it has that classy vintage studio hardware aesthetic that we’ve come to know and love from the English pedal brand. The knobs look like they’ve been sourced from 1962. That textured metal enclosure… it’s all too much.

But let’s think about the original purpose of the Focus Fuzz; it was to convince the guitar player who didn’t get on with fuzz, and there are many out there, that it was a viable pedalboard option, working with single-coil and humbucker-equipped guitars alike.

Much of the persuading was done by the Focus control, and we have that here again, adding gain as you turn it clockwise, but also introducing more midrange definition, more high-end content, all to help your electric guitar find a space in the mix – not unlike a treble booster. Keep it below noon and your sound is warmer, thicker.

That’s for when the pedal is in fuzz mode. In its boost and overdrive modes, think of the Focus dial as a gain and presence dial.

There is also a Fuzz dial, adding saturation and gain, tweaking the transistor bias as it goes. That gain and saturation is supplied by as hybrid silicon-germanium circuit (there is an NOS germanium transistor under the hood here). And there’s a Level control, controlling overall output.

As for the Focus Fuzz Deluxe’s boost mode, this is described as an “almost clean” boost, with the suggestion that this could be an always-on option for mediation the relationship between guitar and guitar amp. The overdrive mode, meanwhile, is for “organic, amp-like overdrive” – dig in and it’ll respond, and so forth.

The Focus Fuzz Deluxe takes 9V DC from a pedalboard power supply, drawing around 10mA. It is available now, and it is priced £299. Not cheap but think of it as three or four pedals in one. See Great Eastern FX for more details.

Wireless audio was once the stuff of magic until the development of Bluetooth. So why is it that it’s not everywhere in music production and DJing? Well, put simply, Bluetooth sucks for anything other than music listening. Try to mix or produce anything using Bluetooth and you’ll quickly discover that the latency is utterly unusable.

But the future is bright. Imperceptible, ultra-low latency wireless audio has long been out of reach for musicians, DJs and producers. Until now…

AlphaTheta has developed a new wireless protocol called SonicLink, which has a greater range than Bluetooth and latency figures 20 times faster at just nine milliseconds.

While an emerging technology, ultra-low latency wireless audio over WiFi isn’t new. However, AlphaTheta’s approach with SonicLink will change the way you mix and produce music within its DJing ecosystem.

AlphaTheta’s current range of SonicLink-equipped products deliver everything you need to go fully wireless, whether that’s in the studio, performing live or just out and about.

HDJ-F10 TX

The HDJ-F10s are AlphaTheta’s flagship do-it-all DJ headphones, complete with Bluetooth and SonicLink connectivity. They are perfectly set up to be just as at home on the commute as they are in the DJ booth.

The closed-back F10s feature 40mm drivers that can deliver a very wide frequency response of 5 Hz – 30 kHz at 32 Ohms. You also get Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency listening modes that will help you tailor your monitoring experience, depending on the noise levels around you. While ANC completely blocks out all external noise, the Transparency mode allows some of the natural ambience of your surroundings in, so at least you’ll still be able to hold a conversation.

The HDJ-F10 TX package includes the F10 headphones but also comes with its own transmitter (HP-TX01), much like the Wave-Eight. However, this transmitter only works with the F10s, which can also be said of the Wave-Eight and its transmitter.

The range is the same as the Wave-Eight at 15 metres, but it benefits from a slightly longer battery life at 9 hours. Bluetooth, however, can last up to anywhere around the 30-hour mark, depending on conditions and that’s even with ANC activated.

Wave-Eight

The Wave-Eight is quite possibly the ultimate portable DJ speaker. A battery life of up to 8 hours, IPX4 waterproof rating, a retractable handle, and wheels are just the half of it. Combined with a wireless all-in-one system such as the Omnis-Duo and you can DJ anywhere.

Not only that, Wave-Eight can be configured with up to three speakers to create a complete sound system. A single unit will provide a basic mono setup, whereas two can create a stereo system, and you can add a third to use as a sub, courtesy of the low-cut and subwoofer options within the onboard EQ control.

This portable party PA also features inputs of two XLR/TRS combo jacks, a 1/4″ TRS jack, a 3.5mm stereo mini jack and a single XLR output

The SonicLink transmitter can be neatly stored and charged in a protective side compartment. The unit has an RCA input to connect your mixer or DJ controller for wireless connectivity with the Wave-Eight speaker system with an unobstructed range of up to 15 metres.

Alpha Theta XDJ-AZ

Finally, in the SonicLink lineup, we have the latest all-in-one club-ready controller, the XDJ-AZ.

As well as inheriting the same layout from the flagship CDJ-3000 and DJM-A9, the XDJ-AZ also features compatibility with rekordbox CloudDirectPlay, StreamingDirectPlay, rekordbox and Serato DJ Pro for Mac/Windows.

This is the first AlphaTheta product that features an integrated SonicLink transmitter, giving you one less thing to worry about. You can directly pair your HDJ-F10 headphones to the AZ, giving you the freedom to roam the booth when playing live.

To find out more about the Wave-Eight, HDJ-F10 TX, XDJ-AZ and SonicLink, head over to the AlphaTheta website.

This fresh take on the classic single-cut electric guitar make so much sense you might ask why this hasn’t been done before. And perhaps, if they’re a big success, we might see a wider release.

Well, time will tell. What we have in the here and now is a classy example of a guitar that was once upon a time the stepping stone between the entry-level Les Paul Junior and the ever-aspirational Les Paul Standard.

Like the Junior, the Special was an all-mahogany build, and this new 2025 exclusive run sticks to that recipe, with solid mahogany bodies, glued-in mahogany necks – complete with a pleasingly clubby ‘50s Vintage profile – and a rich Tobacco Burst finish.

Unlike the Junior, the Special has a bound fingerboard, though it still has the dot inlays on its 12” radius rosewood fingerboard. There’s not that much of an aesthetic upgrade.

The big upgrade is in the sound, traditionally with a pair of P-90 electric guitar pickups, and non-traditionally with the option of a P-90/mini humbucker configuration or with two mini humbuckers accommodating the bridge and neck positions.

Two pickups means expanded controls. The Specials – old and new – share the same control setup as the Les Paul Standards, with individual volume and tone controls for each pickup, and the three-way pickup selector switch mounted on the shoulder. Those controls have been wired up with Orange Drop capacitors

Now, if you have a Les Paul Special at home, you could of course mod it and try this out for size.

A Gibson mini humbucker retails for $129 and it is an easy installation on a Special – or indeed a Junior. It has the same footprint as the P-90, simply swap ‘em out. Note: the Gibson pickup shop’s Alnico II mini humbuckers have cream surrounds, whereas they’re black on these new exclusive models.

As for other specs, you have a 5-ply black pickguard, a wraparound bridge/tailpiece, black ‘Top Hat’ style control knobs, and there is a set of Vintage Deluxe tuners with white buttons for that super-cool budget Gibson retro vibe. These are priced $1,799 and that price includes a hard-shell guitar case.

Check them out over at Gibson or in person at the Gibson Garage London or Nashville. Earlier this week, Gibson unveiled the Les Paul Standard Double Trouble, a limited edition run of the brand’s flagship model featuring a pair of “double white” uncovered humbuckers and a faded nitro finish.

The Rage Against The Machine/Audioslave guitarist was asked to be musical director of the day by Sharon Osbourne and in an interview with The Independent, Morello described how between himself, Ozzy and Sharon, the three have gone about shaping the event.

“The North Star from the first conversation was to make this the greatest day in the history of heavy metal,” he said.

“Black Sabbath invented the genre… it’s a tribute to (them) but unlike other tributes, Black Sabbath’s going to play at the end of the night, and so it’s a chance for artists of all ages and branches of the heavy metal tree to pay respects by playing some of our own music that owes a debt to Black Sabbath, and then also have 14 to 16 of the greatest Black Sabbath cover bands that ever graced the stage.”

As we already know, the line-up that they’ve put together is simply astonishing: Guns N’ Roses, Metallica, Slayer, Tool, Pantera, Alice In Chains, Anthrax, Mastodon and Rival Sons. Then there is the ‘supergroup’ that is likely to include Billy Corgan, Sammy Hagar, Chad Smith and Andrew Watt, as well as Slash and Duff McKagan from Guns N’ Roses.

And there are likely to be more names added, according to Morello: “Some of the biggest artists who are performing have not been announced,” he revealed. “There’ll be some surprises during the day.”

Asked what fans should expect, Morello advised them to “get there early”.

He added: “I think it’ll be very emotional for Black Sabbath fans in the room and around the world on that day, to really give that band their due.”

Meanwhile, Zakk Wylde has been suggesting that 5 July may not be the end of the road for Ozzy after all. Speaking to the Birmingham Mail, the guitarist said: “The game plan is, let’s hope this is what happens, I mean, you always gotta stay on the bright side of life, because Oz was singing at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame thing.

“Ozzy was just sitting on the chair and he was singing Mama, I’m Coming Home, and it sounded great. So hopefully we’ll just do this and then Oz will go ‘let’s fire up the machine again and we’ll do another tour.”

We’ll see. Tickets for 5 July? You’ll be lucky. When the Osbournes donated a pair of tickets to a charity auction in aid of a Birmingham children’s hospice that took place this week, one anonymous bidder pledged £16,700.

The second of those took place last night (27 March). This was ‘Synergy In Motion’, a multi-discipline evening of contemporary dance and music, which saw the Royal Ballet choreographer Joseph Toonga create original choreography to the film scores of Daniel Pemberton, which was then in turn remixed and reshaped by Abbey Road's Artist In Residence, Jordan Rakei.

The studio’s Director of Marketing and Creative, Mark Robertson, seemed pleased: “Last night was a celebration of creativity in all its forms, which is at the heart of Abbey Road,” he said. “For the first time ever, we took boundary-pushing expressive dance into Studio One, by devising a concept that sees the worlds of contemporary dance, film scores and cutting-edge music collide. What appealed about Joseph is that he creates choreography that challenges convention by blending styles from ballet to hip-hop and crunk, which felt appropriate for the fusion of Daniel and Jordan’s music.”

The first Studio One celebration, which took place on 18 March, was an orchestral tribute to all the incredible film music that has been created in the room over the decades: a long list that includes the scores for Return Of The Jedi, The Last Emperor, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and many, many more.

Studio One has been out of action for six months whilst it’s undergone restoration and upgrading. The 20-year-old 72-channel AMS Neve 88RS SP2 recording console has been replaced by a brand-new 84-channel SP3D console. New 7.1.4 monitoring has been put in, and the live room has seen the introduction of 10 rows of wool serge to replace the 21 rows of acoustic treatment ‘washing line’ that had been there since 1970.

It’s the largest of the three main Abbey Road studios. Indeed, it remains the world’s largest purpose-built studio, with enough space to host a 100-piece orchestra and a 100-voice choir. Back in the day it saw classical greats such as Elgar, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Maria Callas pass through its doors. More recently it’s played host to sessions by Noel Gallagher, Little Simz and Harry Styles, as well as ones for the soundtracks to Barbie, Gladiator II and Wonka.

But if the questions is how to follow in Malmsteen’s footsteps, maybe the first thing to do is stop thinking so much about the guitar. Speaking to MusicRadar in advance of his 40th anniversary live album, Tokyo Live, the effervescent guitar maestro had some advice for young players who are trying to develop their own style.

Malmsteen admits that he his share of guitar heroes, players he loves to listen to. But he never thought about any of them when he was workshopping his sound as a young, coltish player – it was classical violin.

And it doesn’t matter whether violin does it for you, or whether saxophone or a horn is more inspiring, the point is thinking like another musician, trying to interpret those ways of phrasing on the guitar, can open up a fresh perspective on the instrument.

Malmsteen argues that if you just listen to guitar players, you’ll end up sounding like a guitar player.

“The thing is, I love Angus Young and Eric Clapton. I love all the guitar players, all the greats,” he says, getting more animated as he reminisces about the epochal moment, that inciting event in his life when he saw Jimi Hendrix torch his Stratocaster at Monterey. “I think they are all brilliant, everyone from Brian May to Van Halen to Blackmore. They are all fucking amazing. But they all seem to have one thing in common, which is not so strange in a way, but it’s that their biggest influences and favourite kinds of musicians growing up were other guitar players.

“Here’s the next part; the guitar players they were listening to were listening to another guitar player, and on and on and on. Very incestuous. And the only thing I see that’s a problem with this is that it’s a very specific box, a guitar mechanical box way of approaching a key – a B, a D, or whatever you want to play a solo in – and that’s the trap that you can fall into.”

Malmsteen avoided this trap by accident or osmosis or a bit of both. The osmosis was his family’s doing. They were all musical. Violin, flute, opera. There was always music in his house.

“I wasn’t new to music,” he says. “My older siblings and uncles and stuff, there was always music around. I heard music theory and scales being practised and shit like that. I grew up with that.”

He didn’t want to play classical guitar. He wanted rock ’n’ roll, admitting that when he started playing guitar, what he wanted to do was “smash the guitar up like Jimi Hendrix”. In Malmsteen’s defence, he was seven years old.

The accident part came when he caught a televised performance of Paganini’s 24 Caprices for solo violin. That’s when the seed for Arpeggios From Hell was planted.

“I was 12 or 13 when I heard Niccolò Paganini being played on solo violin, on TV, and back in those days there were no VCRs, nothing, so I recorded it with a tape recorder from the speaker of the TV,” he says. “That is when I heard those arpeggios, which I’d heard played on keyboards but never on a stringed instrument. That was the sickest thing I ever heard.”

Malmsteen had the electric guitar. He had crossed the Rubicon, discovering distortion and overdrive along the way. He was playing all day, every day. When he started playing, he was listening to Eric Clapton over and over again even though he didn’t know who Clapton was.

“I didn’t even know who my favourite guitar player was,” he says. “My mum had a record called John Mayall [and the] Bluesbreakers. I didn’t know it was Eric Clapton playing guitar. I was seven years old. But I loved it. I loved it! I thought it was so fucking good, and so I listened to that all the time.”

And if you are familiar with the Malmsteen origin story, you’ll know the rest. The Pentatonic framework wasn’t doing it for him. Five notes per octave scale seemed too limiting. He heard Genesis’ Selling England By The Pound and it changed everything.

“For those who don’t know, those early Genesis records with Peter Gabriel were extremely progressive and just fucking amazing work. I heard it. I couldn’t believe it. The sound of the choirs, the Mellotrons, I didn’t know what they were but I loved it. Especially the keyboard player [Tony Banks], who was playing pedal notes.”

That was his eureka moment. His mother’s record collection had been recontextualised in the world of progressive rock.

“I heard that and I realised all that shit’s Bach, who I really loved,” says Malmsteen. “My mum had a million Bach, Vivaldi and Mozart records, and so I started listening to them. I already had a guitar with distortion and that’s how it happened, from a very, very young age.”

MusicRadar’s full interview with Malmsteen is coming soon. Brace yourself for strong opinions about Andy Warhol, virtuosity in art, and some wisdom in the difference between performance and practice, and the dangers in improv.

Tokyo Live is available to preorder and will be released on 25 April via Music Theories Recordings.

Are you looking to finally start learning the keys? You’re in luck! Guitar Center is currently running a fantastic sale on keyboards and beginner digital pianos, offering amazing discounts of up to 30% off on popular brands like Alesis, Casio, Yamaha, and more. This is the perfect chance to take your first musical steps; whether you're searching for an affordable starter keyboard or a high-end piano that'll last you a lifetime, Guitar Center has a wide selection to cater to every musician's needs. 

More into live sound equipment? Well, Sweetwater's live sound month is still in full swing, but be warned, it will end soon. Imagine snagging top-notch gear that makes you sound like a rockstar, even if you're just trying to impress your cat during practice sessions. Whether you want to upgrade your PA system, grab some shiny new microphones, or stock up on cables - which, let’s face it, tend to disappear - Sweetwater has you covered!

If you're in the UK, you're in for a guitar-shaped treat. Andertons is still running a massive electric guitar sale featuring over 200 items. You'll find an incredible selection of electric guitars from top brands like Gibson, PRS, Fender, ESP, and Ibanez, among others. Whether you're a seasoned musician or just starting out, this sale is a fantastic opportunity to snag your dream guitar at a great price - but be quick, it ends Monday. 

US Editor's picks

UK Editor's picks

Looking for more bargains? Check out more recommended sales below:

• Thomann: Shop hot deals
• Andertons: Here's the very best offers
• Guitar Center: Save big on guitars & more
• Fender Shop: Shop discounted Strats & Teles
• Sweetwater: Latest deals at Sweetwater
• IK Multimedia: Save on iRig and AXE I/O
• Musician's Friend: Save big at MF
• Plugin Boutique: Save big on plugins
• Positive Grid: Smart amp sale
• Reverb: Save big on top brands
• Guitar Tricks: One-year sub just $99

How we choose our deals of the week

Here at MusicRadar, we are experts in our field, with many years of playing, creating and product testing between us. We live and breathe everything music gear-related, and we draw on this knowledge and experience of using products in live, recording and rehearsal scenarios when selecting the products for our deals.

Our mission is simple - to help you make the best buying decision, find the right gear at the right price, to make the best music you can.

For us to recommend a deal it has to be a product we rate that’s been reduced to a genuinely great price or part of a truly fantastic bundle. It’s also important that we only recommend retailers that we trust.

You can see more of our product recommendations in our buyer's guides and reviews.

Why you can trust our choices

Our editors and writers are all experienced musicians and experts in their fields. They have a deep understanding of the categories that they cover, which means that you can trust their choices when it comes to recommending products.

We pride ourselves on the independence, quality and reliability of our testing processes and the reviews it produces. It’s what has made us the world’s leading music-making publishing company. You can find more details on how we test some specific key product categories, but the principles apply across the board, rigorously assessing build quality, functionality, playability and, of course, sonic performance.

We cover a lot of the big sales events throughout the year, including Memorial Day, Black Friday, 4th of July sales and Amazon Prime Day, and we have a good view of which products are likely to receive the biggest discounts and when, the prices they’ve been in the past and which deals are genuinely worth a look.

Where are the best places to shop?

Online shopping is definitely a lot easier and more secure than it used to be, and we like to recommend a small handful of online retailers who have a sterling reputation and offer fantastic benefits like fuss-free returns, great customer service and, in some cases, full checks and setup of guitars before they are dispatched. So, all the deals we’ll recommend on this page are from retailers that tick these boxes.

What sort of deals should I look for?

Great deals come in all shapes and sizes. There are a few key types to look out for:

• Single item - A single product with a great discount
• Site-wide discounts - A single discount percentage on a large range of products across a site
• Discount codes - Load your basket to a certain value and redeem a discount code for money off your basket contents
• Added value deals - These include multi-buy discounts, or additional products or software for free when you buy certain items

Could the UK be about to lose one of its biggest and most colourful music instrument retailers? That’s the situation currently unfolding in Brighton as the GAK brand increasingly disappears from both its physical retail store and any online presence.

Initially announced via a sign in the window of the shuttered store stating "Closed maintenance. We apologise for the inconvenience” on Tuesday 25 March, the closure has been increasingly under scrutiny these past few days with local newspaper, The Argus, leading the investigation into the venerable Brighton-based institution and unearthing increasingly distressing news.

The GAK brand – which stands for Guitar, Amp, Keyboard – grew to prominence under the stewardship of Gary Marshall who started the business in 1992 and built it from a market stall to a full, famous, brightly coloured, bricks-and-mortar store on the city’s North Road.

Soon Marshall was able to build the brand being one of the first retailers in the UK to offer a mail-order service, and then expanding to offer online sales in 2002.

The brand was then acquired in 2021 with the aim of expanding the business and its online presence.

GAK’s apparent troubles became outwardly visible earlier this week when the shop failed to open on Tuesday 25 March with the shop normally open seven days a week.

After failing to open the following day too, fans of the store and those with deposits for music gear currently yet to be delivered, noted that the brand’s website and Reverb store had also closed, with both URLs being taken offline.

"Due to unforeseen circumstances…"

According to The Argus, one customer who ordered a guitar from the online store received an email stating: “Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances the shop is closed and we’re unable to do any trading for the time being.”

Meanwhile, after questioning local traders, the Argus reported that neighbouring shops “expressed confusion” about the store's unannounced closure – a surprising move considering that the brand has been a Brighton staple for over 30 years – and were successful in speaking to staff inside the shop, but who said that they could not comment on what was happening.

Currently, the store is listed as “permanently closed” on Google Maps, although – at the time of writing – its social media channels remain active.

In additional Argus reporting the newspaper has found a listing on Business Sale Report – “the UK’s leading marketplace of small and mid-market businesses for sale” – offering “a musical instrument retailer and supplier in the South East of England, with a turnover of £20,364,000” as being for sale.

The ad reads: “An exciting opportunity to acquire one of the UK's largest and most trusted musical instrument retailers. Offers are invited from serious buyers. Initial offers are to be submitted by 5pm on Friday 28th March 2025, with best and final offers to be submitted by 5pm on Monday 31 March 2025.”

At the time of their acquisition, current owners Max McKellar and Ian Stephens told The Argus: "While GAK and the music industry have encountered and overcome challenges in recent years, we are now perfectly placed to take advantage of both short and long-term opportunities.

“We also have an exceptional workforce and very experienced and talented management team."

As present the future of the store remains uncertain with no official comment from the store’s owners and no promises being made to those with cash currently being held by the brand.

We've reached out to GAK for comment and will update this story with further news as it breaks.

Dua Lipa is celebrating victory in her Levitating copyright case, with a New York judge ruling that the song does not plagiarise two other songs.

The case was brought by in 2022 by songwriters L Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer, who argued that Levitating infringed the copyright of two songs that they own the rights to: Cory Daye’s Wiggle and Giggle All Night, from 1979, and Miguel Bosé’s Don Diablo, which was released in 1980. They were the writers of the former, and won the rights to the latter in a previous copyright case.

Considering the melodic similarities, Judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled that they amounted to nothing more than “five groupings of repeated 16th notes descending on a B minor scale in Levitating but on a D major scale in Don Diablo”.

This along with one additional note, said the court, didn’t amount to the copyrightable “signature melody” that they claimed was theirs. The judge also pointed out that similar melodic figures have been in use for centuries by artists ranging from Mozart to the Bee Gees.

In this respect, Lipa and her team can be thankful to Ed Sheeran, who in 2024 won his case against the heirs of Ed Townshend, co-writer of Marvin Gaye’s Let Get It On. They unsuccessfully argued that Sheeran’s song Thinking Out Loud breached their copyright.

This ruling set a precedent that the “basic musical building blocks like notes, rhythms, and chords are generally not copyrightable,” and Lipa - along with her co-writers and record company - have benefited from that.

The judge also rejected the idea that Levitating takes its overall musical style and ‘function’ from the claimants’ songs.

“A musical style, defined by plaintiffs as ‘pop with a disco feel’, and a musical function, defined by plaintiffs to include ‘entertainment and dancing’, cannot possibly be protectable,” the judge said. “To hold otherwise would be to completely foreclose the further development of music in that genre or for that purpose.”

This is the second time that Levitating has been the subject of a copyright infringement claim. Reggae group Artikal Sound System previously argued that it borrowed too heavily from the chorus of their 2015 song Live Your Life, but this claim was also dismissed.

Lawyers for Brown and Linzer say that they “respectfully disagree” with the decision in the current case and will appeal against it. Dua Lipa and her representatives have yet to comment.

Lipa is currently on tour and also celebrating the fifth anniversary of Future Nostalgia, the smash hit album from which Levitating is taken. A new version of Physical - another single from the album - has just been released with additional vocals from Troye Sivan.

And in a strange twist, it was a studio cut featured on a live album.

Its name: Rocket Ride.

By the time the band’s second double-live album, Alive II, was released in 1977, Ace Frehley had just one lead vocal under his belt in Shock Me, which came off Love Gun, the studio album released earlier in ’77.

Frehley’s lack of confidence in his singing voice while recording Shock Me is well documented. But after touring behind Love Gun and belting out Shock Me in front of audiences across the globe, his confidence had grown.

On vinyl, Alive II had three sides of live material plus a final side featuring five brand new studio tracks.

And without doubt, the pick of the bunch was Frehley’s Rocket Ride - with a slinky, flange-ridden riff meant to simulate take off, and not one but two rip-roarin’ solos.

Although Frehley’s memory fails him to this end, two of his bandmates - rhythm guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley and bassist/vocalist Gene Simmons - were reportedly not involved in the recording of Rocket Ride.

Frehley handled bass and all guitars while his other bandmate Peter Criss played drums.

Looking back on his progression from Shock Me to Rocket Ride, Frehley tells MusicRadar: “Once I had a track under my belt, it gave me confidence. It made me realise that Paul and Gene weren’t the only lead singers in the band.

“I still don’t consider myself a lead singer,” he admits. “But after Shock Me and Rocket Ride, and all my other albums, I lot of other people do!”

“I don’t even remember if Gene and Paul played on this one. How long ago was this, like 50 years ago?

“But Rocket Ride was interesting because I used a flange on the main riff and a wah-wah on the solo, which was unusual for me. I have no idea why I did it, though!

“In those days, I used to bring over whatever I had to the studio, I’d experiment, and stuff would happen.”

“That song, like most of my stuff, was all organic. It wasn’t planned, you know?

“I’d say that 90 per cent of the time, I was just like, ‘Oh, what’s this?’ Or, ‘I love the sound of that - I’ll use that.’

“So with the solo for Rocket Ride, it just kind of happened. I didn’t plan it out.

“But you know what? There were times when I was younger when I’d try and plan stuff out and walk into a practice or a session with the solo completed, and then the producer would say, ‘I don’t like it.’ And I’d be like, ‘Ah shit, I spent an hour working on that solo!’

“So, by the time I did Rocket Ride, I was to the point in my career where I just said, ‘Hit the record button, and I’ll let it rip!’

“I’d do maybe half a dozen takes, and through that, I’d get a great solo.

“But the one that’s on Rocket Ride from the record, if I remember right, there are no edits. It’s one take… of a bunch.”

In a new interview with Tom Power on Canada’s CBC Radio One, Lifeson gave an insight into the two men’s relationship: “Geddy’s my best friend. We do so much stuff together. We play tennis together. Often we drink a little too much wine together," he confirmed.

"So I'll go over to his place, and we'll just hang around. Invariably we'll go downstairs into his studio and we'll play and for fun we play some Rush songs - just the two of us, just jamming, really. We've been writing music together for 50 years.

“Honestly, he's my best friend. Why wouldn't I wanna hang around with him? So that's our relationship. And the rumours fly and all of that stuff - of anything, a new album and whatever. But we just really, really enjoy each other's company. I talk to him almost every day and have forever."

Rush effectively ground to a halt in 2015 when drummer Neil Peart quit after their R40 Live Tour. Five years later he died, bringing an end to any remaining possibility the band could reconvene.

Lifeson reflected on how it all ended: “Neil was adamant that he was done. There was a time where he was thinking that maybe we could stretch it a bit, but then he had a problem with his feet and he was done. Ged and I were disappointed. We felt like we had a lot of gas in the tank still.

“We wanted to go to Europe desperately. We had a lot of fans there and we never got there - in the UK especially. So I think Ged and I were very disappointed. I'd say we were, to be honest with you, maybe a little bitter that it ended that way. But what could we do? Neil did it for 40 years. He absolutely had the toughest job in the band. And he felt like if he couldn't play a hundred percent, then he was done."

Since then, Lee and Lifeson haven’t recorded any new music under the Rush name, although both have confirmed that several drummers reached out to them after Peart’s death in the hope they would be carrying on. Instead Lifeson has embarked on a new project, Envy Of None, who recently released their second album, Stygian Wavz.

His latest video, in a now familiar series shot in intimate close-up, features only his performance, being designed to delight and inform drum fans everywhere and, this time, show off his mastery of Gematria (The Killing Name), a track previously being deemed as ‘unplayable live’ by fans.

The new video is from the band’s 8 March 8, 2025 gig at Centennial Park at Centennial Park in Sydney, Australia. Previously we’ve enjoyed his performances of Liberate and Eyeless, both from the band’s gig at the O2 in London back in December last year, and Get This, live from Zurich’s Hallenstadion in November among others.

And the latest star of the Casagrande show – Gematria (The Killing Name) – was one of the original songs that the band used to test his ‘mettle’ back at his audition in 2023. Following his success Casagrande moved on from Sepultura after an incredible 13 years, into one of the most hotly contested, and potentially troublesome seats in rock.

"Everything happened at the end of 2023 when I got a call from Slipknot’s manager asking me if I was interested in doing an audition. That year, Sepultura decided to stop playing, so it was a very natural decision for me to keep playing with someone else instead of just retiring.

“I took my drums to a studio in São Paulo and did a proper sound and video recording," Casagrande told Modern Drummer. "I played six songs, and I sent it to the guys. Then they asked me to play three specific songs. They were Eyeless, Purity and Gematria. My flight was booked to go to the audition, so at the end of January [2024], I flew to Palm Springs, California, and spent ten days with them there.

“The first five days, the whole band was rehearsing like it was a live show. Every day, the guys came with a different setlist, and we just played those songs."

Switching seats

However, Casagrande’s move wasn’t without its controversies as he took up the Slipknot drum stool following the unexpected departure of Jay Weinberg from the position.

“​​No one can ever replace Joey Jordison's original sound, style or energy, but Jay honored Joey's parts and contributed to the last three albums and we, the band, and the fans appreciate it. But as ever, Slipknot is intent on evolving. The band has decided to part ways with Jay. We wish Jay all the best and are very excited for what the future holds,” the band wrote at the time.

In reply Weinberg commented: “I was heartbroken and blindsided to receive the phone call… This is not the ending to the journey I’d dreamt of, and committed myself to seeing through – not by a long shot.”

Also, Casagrande left Sepultura prior to their final, 40th anniversary tour, leading to some friction between the various members and the hasty appointment of ex-Suicidal Tendencies Grayson Nekrutman to fill the gap.

However, the drummers themselves soon struck up a rapport and have been sharing praise and tips ever since.

And Casagrande’s latest video would appear to show how well the band’s plan has come together.

But given that so-called interactive entertainment now outgrosses both the music and movie industries put together, that’s the state of play in 2025. And the latest music celeb who seems set to ‘cross the streams’ is Sabrina Carpenter who, it’s predicted, will be taking over as the resident (entirely virtual) Festival act when the entirely virtual pop star Hatsune Miku’s residency ends on 8 April.

Hey, at least Sabrina Carpenter ‘exists’, eh?

So far the announcement of the next in-game music act is still under wraps but given that it’s already started to include Carpenter-themed in-game items and furniture (yes, even in the virtual world the roadies need to get the stage ready before the act shows up) keen Fortnite watchers are already certain that Carpenter will be next.

Certainly, the arrival of a Sennheiser MD445 microphone capsule, adapted with a Sennheiser HHA-SSH adapter, fitted to a Shure GLXD transmitter (and featuring Carpenter’s famous sparkle finish and lipstick kiss logo) has rather given the game away.

Virtual gigs. Real money

Looks like the real big bucks in music now come from lucrative deals with platforms such as Roblox, The Sandbox and – biggest of all – first-person-shooter-turned-platform Fortnite.

The game – available for free across multiple formats including mobile phones – regularly features new seasons, unlocking new playable characters, in-game items and – most intriguingly for music and media watchers – an appearance by a new music act who appears within the game, performing unlockable songs (requiring the completion of in-game achievements) while selling in-game wares such as outfits and dance moves.

Yes, that’s real money, being exchanged for things that only exist in a video game. Get used to it.

And while the game itself is free, it's that player penchant for the purchase of in-game costumes, weapons and dance-based ‘emotes’ that’s driving this multi-million dollar industry forward to the degree that its makers fell out with platform giants Apple due to the eye-watering hundreds of millions in 30% fees they were having to part with to remain on their devices.

This is the entertainment business on a whole new scale.

Money for nothing

And Epic Games, Fortnite’s makers and owners, are now no strangers to making music deals with their in-game appearances a tried and tested formula which tempts in fans who’ve yet to dip a tentative toe into their purchase-packed virtual world.

Previously the game has hosted Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande and Eminem (who appeared alongside Snoop Dogg, Ice Spice, and the late Juice WRLD)… Yes, anything is possible in Fortnite.

And it’s not just straight up pop that features. The game has also seen gigs from EDM’s Marshmello, reggaeton star Karol G and even Metallica who not only performed a gig but became fightable characters on the game’s Battle Stage.

Biggest of all however was the gig by Travis Scott which was watched by 12.3 million fans – that’s almost nine times as many as the total number set to enjoy Oasis across their 17 record-breaking summer gigs.

And, given that Scott merely had to provide permission to use his likeness (before spending the rest of the day working out where to spend his earnings) one has to wonder why any band bothers getting in a bus at all these days.

If the fans are right, Sabrina Carpenter’s Fortnite Festival will kick off in-game 8 April.

Meet you by the lost property.

Indeed, it’s hard to believe that these will be priced $699 street and yet, here we are – ‘That Great Gretsch Sound’ for less.

The new models include the semi-hollow G2622TG Center Block Double-Cut with Bigsby, finished in Midnight Sapphire, and its smaller-bodied sibling the G2655TG Center Block Jr, which similarly has the double-cut body shape and arrives in Riviera Blue, and finally the single-cut G2420TG Hollow Body in the ever-classy Cadillac Green.

The two Center Block models are closely related, one with a full 16” arched maple body, the other scaled down (Grestch doesn’t list its proportions on the site but 13.5” rings a bell – the difference is considerable when you play them).

Both take their name from a chambered block of maple at the heart of the body design which is in place to kill feedback and squeal at high volume. You will be especially grateful of this if you have an overdrive or a fuzz pedal in the mix.

The G2420TG is fully hollow, and gain, comprised of laminated maple on top, bottom and sides. And while care has to be taken when playing a hollowbody like this through a cranked guitar amp there is something magical about playing an electric in which so much air is present inside the body, working up a breeze through those f-holes.

This would make a neat first jazz guitar, too. But of course, stick it through an old tube-driven Fender amp, give it some spring reverb, a slapback delay and you’ll be riding the mystery train, so to speak.

All three of these Gretsch guitars come fitted with a pair of Broad'Tron BT-3S humbuckers, which are hooked up to individual volume and tone controls, plus master volume and tone controls and a three-way pickup selector. Also, there’s a coil-splitter so you can get some single-coil action on all three guitars.

The neck profiles are particularly welcoming for younger players, with ‘Soft C’ Nato necks as standard, and those necks are glued to the body.

Gretsch has not spared the aesthetic details. Besides the gold hardware, the aged white binding with black-and-white purfling on the top finishes the bodies nicely. There are the pearloid ‘Big Block’ inlays. You’ve got all that old-world rock ’n’ roll style with those G-Arrow knobs and the Bigsby? Well, the Bisgby will seal the deal for many of us, especially at this price.

Other specs include 12” laurel fingerboards (now, that price does exclude rosewood sadly), 24.75” scale lengths and bone nuts as standard, and we have an Adjusto-Matic bridge with laurel base across the board.

Priced $699, the limited edition Streamliners are available now. See Gretsch for more pics and details.

The pair previewed material from their upcoming collab album Who Believes In Angels?, which is out next week. Tracks included LGTBQ anthem Swing For The Fences, You Without Me and an intriguing new song inspired by one of the biggest influences on Elton’s career: Little Richard.

“This is about how Little Richard was gay, and then he felt bad about being gay,” Elton is reported to have said, before launching into a new song called Little Richard’s Bible and giving his Yamaha grand piano some punishment in honour of the song's subject.

There were a couple of covers - Patsy Cline’s Crazy and He’ll Have To Go, a 1959 hit for Jim Reeves - as well as the Elton classics he’s obliged to play on these such occasions: I’m Still Standing, Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me, Tiny Dancer, Your Song… you know the drill.

Carlile also related how she first crossed paths with Elton - she wrote a letter to him years ago - and Elton revealed he owns “somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 sunglasses.” The 77-year-old star also related that he hadn’t played a gig at the Palladium since a Royal Variety Show in the 1970s, and how he'd been gobsmacked at Liberace’s costume, which was “made out of lightbulbs.”

Elton’s band featured Red Hot Chili Pepper Chad Smith on drums, with super-producer Andrew Watt acting as Musical Director for the night. As is the way with these made-for-TV specials, there was also a smattering of famous fans in the audience, including Ronnie Wood, the actress Lily James, Sam Fender, Sacha Baron Cohen and comedians Matt Lucas and David Walliams.

An Evening With Elton John and Brandi Carlile will go on CBS in the States on 6 April. In the UK it'll land a couple of weeks later on ITV1 on 19 April. It’s also due to be aired on Paramount+, though no date for that has been confirmed yet.

One of the standout tracks from the record, of course, was smash hit not-a-single Birds Of A Feather, and in a new multipart video series for Mix with the Masters, Castelli and Forbes have been explaining how they made its component parts gel together.

Step one, it turns out, was making sure that they were hearing exactly what Billie and Finneas had created. “The most sensitive part was getting the audio files from Logic to come into Pro Tools sounding exactly the same, because there’s so much inherently baked-in to Finneas’s arrangement and rough mix,” says Castelli.

This involved a bit of gain staging, but it was crucial preparation for the task ahead, because it meant that, if Finneas was ever unhappy with part of a mix, they could get back to the sound of his original.

With this done, it was time to dive into arguably the most crucial part of the mix: the vocals.

“This whole album, Billie went so deep on vocals,” says Forbes, adding that it was his and Castelli’s job to make sure the character of these vocals remained intact. “If you alter it, it starts to become, you’re like, ‘well, that's not the person I know,’” he says.

This meant that the compressor choice was crucial, and in the case of Birds Of A Feather, they chose a Brainworx plugin emulation of a Solid State Logic classic.

“I assume we have the [SSL 4000] G on this one for her,” says Forbes, with Castelli adding: “that’s what’s holding her forward, with a little bit of top-end boost and low-end body on the 200.”

Finding the right tool for the job, though, sometimes required a bit of trial and error.

“We would just A/B different boxes, like, SSL G channel versus J channel; Ozone Tape versus maybe like a Kramer tape - just these like emulation boxes that give tonal shifts and character to things without necessarily changing it.”

It turns out that it isn’t her vocals that Eilish herself likes most about Birds Of A Feather, though: “Billie’s favorite part is when that bass comes in,” confirms Forbes. “John gassed it in the best way.”

“I was like, ‘man - this is the energy,’” says Castelli of that bassline, and it certainly jumps out of the final mix. There was a balance to be struck, though, and Forbes says that they had to ask themselves “between the top end of the bass, how loud can it be without competing with her?”

Elsewhere in the series, Castelli talks about the value of having a co-mixer on a project like this, where neither the artist or producer is there with him.

“Historically you would have the producer in the room, the artist in the room,” he says. “You'd have four hands on the console - six hands on the console. We don't have that anymore.”

Of Forbes - who is also Eilish's musical director - Castelli goes on to say that he really appreciated “having him on the sofa and trading places with me at the desk,” and his co-mixer was happy to take this step back. Sitting on that sofa, Forbes says: “I instantly fell in love with this seat because the low-end made sense to me.”

It was the meeting of minds and perspectives that ultimately made the magic happen though: “there's things you can hear up there I can't hear back here and vice versa,” says Forbes.

Subscribers can watch the full video series on the Mix with the Masters website.

And his overall cross-platform earnings are even more – an amazing $8.5 million…

But all is not as it may seem.

In a new video Estepario has helpfully broken down the numbers across his three main socials, to reveal a rather grimmer state of play for himself with some sage advice for creators seeking similar ‘success’.

“I’m not a drummer"

Estepario is one of a new breed of drummers who, aware of the high-impact spectacle of his profession, turned to creating ‘drum-based content’ rather than pursuing a conventional career as ‘a drummer’. And it’s a strategy that – at least on paper – had seemed to be paying off.

“I just wanted to play on my own and I didn’t see the point in performing with a band,” he told Modern Drummer in an interview last year. “I never wanted to become a full-time drummer. It’s a terrifying idea and a very hard life, I think it would be an awful choice for me. I didn’t want to be a rock star!

“What people need to understand is that my job is to get views. I’m not a drummer, I don’t consider myself to be a drummer. I think the most accurate term to describe what I do is ‘content creator.’ That’s what I am.”

Now, in light of social media treatment and perception elsewhere, Estepario has laid bear his earnings, serving both as a wake-up call both to anyone who was thinking of putting in a similar amount of time and effort and to call out a music industry that – once again – simply isn’t paying its dues.

Watch out

Estepario took to his own YouTube channel (of course) to spell out his status – complete with maths and screenshots – and the unfortunate predicament in which creators making music content are uniquely placed.

“If I was a fitness influencer I would have two f______ Lambos… If I was talking about stocks or crypto I would have three f______ Lambos… Because companies would pay me to use their s___, whatever,” he explains.

“But when we’re talking about music it’s basically impossible to find brands that are going to pay you to create content. And that’s where we have a huge problem because we are providing a value that we are not getting.”

Instead, “you are creating billions of views and getting… a pedal.”

Not your song? Not your money

The problem comes with the issue of copyright and social media’s established system of paying the owners of the music’s copyright rather than the creator who’s bringing in a crowd by improvising alongside it, or giving it a whole new twist. Plus these creators then don’t see a penny from the plays, views and earnings those bands then obtain thanks to the promo, not to mention the unmeasurable boost they provide for new material, tours and more.

Estepario makes his money via his social media accounts on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube and – as per their rules – pays out many thousands to the music copyright holders of the music that he features.

So much so that TikTok’s hard and fast rules on paying rights holders means that despite 50 million likes and half-a-billion views on the platform, Estepario claims that his earnings there are: “Zero – I haven’t made a single cent for all my work on TikTok. And there is nothing to argue about that – it just cannot be done.”

“They get all your views, they place the ads on your content, they pay whoever they have to pay – if they pay them, because I have no idea if they do – but if you are a music content creator you cannot make any money on TikTok.”

And it’s a disappointingly similar scenario that Estepario ‘enjoys’ on Instagram: “[It’s] the platform where I have the most followers with 5.8 million and 800 million views over the lifetime of my account… Can I monetise my Instagram videos if I’m in Spain and I use copyrighted material? No… It’s basically the same answer that we had with TikTok.”

“So the total that I’ve earned with Instagram during the whole lifetime of my channel, hundreds of millions of views later, equals… Zero. Nice…”

But all is not lost…

YouTube saves the day. Kinda

“That takes us to social media platform number three - YouTube. And – oh boy – am I strong on YouTube!” he rightfully boasts before revealing total views of – gulp – 1,141,848,602 views… Aka over 1 billion, 140 million…

But turning that into cash all depends on your RPM – the Revenue Per Mille, being the amount that’s earned per 1000 views and a number which varies according to country, language and too many factors for content creators to fully comprehend or argue with… Nevertheless, Estepario helpfully reveals that his RPM is $3.72…

So that’s $3.72 per thousand… on 1,141,848,602 views… which [wholly appropriate drum roll] equals… that magic number from earlier: “$4,270,513. Not bad for a school dropout with OCD!” Estepario exclaims.

But, once again, there’s bad news…

“But that number is a lie, because the content has copyright. So no. Of course I don’t have over $4 million in my bank account.

“Only 1% of my videos are free for me to monetise them… And I happen to live in Spain, and we are known worldwide for massive f______ taxes… I have to pay 45% tax on my earnings… So this is the final number: $29,400 a year… $2,450 a month…”

And that’s before paying for gear, camera crew and expenses each time he wants to shoot.

“The truth is that right now I have the workload of one of the biggest music channels in the world, but I’m not getting paid like I’m one of the biggest music channels in the world.”

“I’m not doing this video to complain. I’m doing this video so that people can understand that the amount of work that you put in doesn’t equal the amount of money that you are going to get… And your life is going to be a living hell, because all the things that you see cost money and the content that you see doesn’t produce it.”

Fortunately Estepario has a solution.

“Solutions come in the form of bands and brands,” he explains, highlighting the amount of money that he is generating for the bands that create the music: “[I've made] more or less $100k for every single one of those bands. They deserve it. It’s their music.”

Now he feels like it’s time they gave something back…

“Let me interview you. Let me review your new album. Let me work on something that’s going to help you promote your music while I make a living. Because the truth is, this is not sustainable

“A lot of people are going to be mad at me, but it’s the truth. It is not fair.”

“So if you are one of those people who asks me ‘How can I be a better music content creator’… Just don’t. As long as you are expecting to make money from it, brother, don’t.”

What’s the plan?

“I’m trying (a little bit) to step away from the drums. I have four million people subscribed to my channel, and I’m not making nearly as much money as I should be making,” he told Modern Drummer. “If I was not playing copyrighted music, I would have been a millionaire a long time ago, but that hasn’t happened because the music that I play has a copyright. So all that money has gone to whomever."

Indeed, Estepario plugs an endless variety of merch on his videos and it would appear that it’s proven a vital source of income that fortunately makes up for his copyright content dues.

“Truth is I make a living selling hats and shirts.

“Now I’m trying to focus on building a different business model and I’m starting to shoot interviews. I’m doing interviews with people that I respect and admire. That will be content that I can monetize, that’s important.”

And his closing advice?

“Only do this job if you want to create a space in your community where you can share the things you love. And if you do, make sure that you express to all the companies that you are working with, how much you need money, because you will not get any out of the content that you produce.”

“I do it. But I’m an a__hole. What do I know about life?…”

The three-day event at Virgin Hotels Las Vegas is billed as KISS Army Storms Vegas - named after the band’s long-running fan club. The event runs from 14 November to 16 November.

Stanley and Simmons will be performing “unmasked” - without the iconic make-up and costumes worn in the band’s early days and again from 1996 to 2023. No other details about the performance are confirmed at present.

An official statement from Kiss reveals that the performance will feature "special guests” - but there is no mention of guitarist Tommy Thayer and drummer Eric Singer, both of whom were in the band for many years up to and including the End Of The Road tour.

Also scheduled to perform at the event - but not necessarily with Stanley and Simmons - is Bruce Kulick, who was lead guitarist in Kiss from 1984 to 1996, during the period when they performed without makeup.

Three-day tickets for the KISS Army Storms Vegas event are reportedly priced at $999.

For full details head to kissarmystormsvegas.com

That’s right, overdrive, distortion, reverb and delay are all available via the turn of a dial here, and it also has a 3.5mm headphone jack that allows you to plug in directly and practise your playing without needing a guitar amp. Or, you can do it the old-fashioned way and plug in and turn it up.

There are five core sounds: clean, clean with reverb, overdrive, distortion, and distortion with delay. No need for pedals here, and yet you have a lot of sounds to work with. Also, with that HSS electric guitar pickup configuration, there’s a lot of tone for budding players to acquaint themselves with.

These also look kind of high-end. There’s a whiff of the Hentor Sportscaster about them, with that Sparkle Candy Apple Red model in particular the sort of thing a young Alex Lifeson fan might want to pick up.

As you would expect from a Harley Benton guitar, the price tag on these is ridiculously accessible. Expect to pay £109/$140. They are available now direct from Thomann.

You will also need some batteries. Those effects need power. That’s why, around the back of the instrument, there is a cavity that takes a trio of AAA batteries. You should get approximately 10 hours of playing time from fully charged batteries, and there is an LED display to alert you to their health.

There is an on/off switch for the active electronics, a five-way pickup selector switch, master tone and master volume controls, and another dial for selecting the aforementioned five core tones. Easy.

Elsewhere, well, it’s electric guitar business as usual. We have a poplar body, a bolt-on maple neck, shaped into a Modern C. The fingerboard is roseacer, which looks a little like rosewood but is actually thermally treated maple, and it has a 12” radius, seating 22 frets.

Other key details include the 25.5” scale length, the 42mm nut width, and there’s a synchronised tremolo system too.

Harley Benton is offering the ST-JAMster in Sparkling Candy Apple Red and Metallic Deep Silver, both of which ship with black hardware and black pickguard. For more pics and details, head over to Harley Benton. You can grab one from Thomann.

It’s directed by Susan Lacy, who’s also helmed HBO docs Jane Fonda in Five Acts and Spielberg. Billy Joel: And So It Goes is a full career retrospective job that includes never-before-seen performances, home movies, personal photographs and one-to-one interviews.

Joel has been the subject of documentaries before, but 2010’s The Last Play At Shea was, as the title suggests, centred around his 2008 concert at Shea, the final one before the iconic baseball stadium was demolished. There was also A Matter Of Trust: The Bridge To Russia, which looked at his late-'80s trip to the Soviet Union.

He’s certainly an interesting subject for a documentary. Joel was one of the generation of American musicians whose lives were changed forever by seeing The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show in February 1964. Aged 16, he reputedly played on The Shangri-Las’ Leader Of The Pack, but it wasn’t until the rise of adult-orientated rock in the mid-1970s and albums like Turnstiles (1976) and The Stranger (1977) that his solo career began to catch fire.

He’s always been an artist to follow his own nose, unafraid to do whatever he wants, whether that means writing a belligerent response to punk (It’s Still Rock N’ Roll To Me) or a homage to the Four Seasons and pre-Beatles pop (the 1983 album, An Innocent Man). Or indeed stopping recording pop albums entirely after 1993’s River Of Dreams - his only new album in the last thirty years has been a collection of classical piano pieces, Fantasies and Delusions, though he did release a new single, Turn The Lights Back On, in 2024.

Susan Lacy said, “For those who think they know Joel’s story, as well as those who are not as familiar, I believe this two-part film is both a revelation and a surprise. I was drawn to his story as someone who knew little at the outset, and was astounded at how autobiographical his songs are and how complex his story is. We are gratified that Bill trusted us with his story, which we have told as honestly as possible, diving into territory which has not been explored before.”

As the theme song to the 1980 sci-fi adventure movie Flash Gordon, it came in two versions.

In the album version, titled Flash’s Theme, the dialogue is all lifted from the movie’s opening scene. The single version, titled simply Flash, features dialogue from different parts of the story - most famously, the exclamation “Gordon is alive!” from Brian Blessed’s character Prince Vultan. And it's this version that is known and loved around the world.

Flash reached No.10 on the UK chart and was a hit in various other countries.

“I'm very proud of the song,” May said in a 2024 interview with Total Guitar.

But as the guitarist went on to explain, there was a moment when he believed the song would be rejected by the movie’s producer Dino De Laurentiis.

May told Total Guitar: “I was so immersed in the Flash Gordon project. I always loved that kind of ’50s science fiction stuff anyway, and I was very aware that the way that the film was evolving was very comic book.

“It was very tongue in cheek. Very retro. Mike Hodges, the director, handled it that way in a very clever approach, I think.

“But strangely enough, Mike didn't see eye to eye with the producer of the film, Dino De Laurentiis, who was the the guiding force behind the whole thing.

“Dino saw it more as a serious epic, but it was Mike who said, ‘No, you can't do that. It's got to have this element of fun and slightly taking the mickey out of itself.’

"So in the end Mike won, and some of what I was trying to do with this track is to do a comic book in sound. That's exactly what it is.

“So it's slightly exaggerated. It's a little over-heroic, if you like. But it's fun. It's colourful.

“And there is also a little undercurrent of something deeper in the lyrics: ‘Just a man/With a man's courage.’

“That, to me, is what gives it its heart and soul, because there is something rather rather lovable about the character of Flash Gordon. He’s so innocent. And there's this love affair going through the film as well, and I think you really warm to him as a character, even though he's unreal, he's a comic book character.

“So that's what I tried to put in the song.

“And,” he continues, “I wanted to make it something that people would just grab ahold of very easily.

“I could hear ‘Flash!’ very quickly in my head. So it was just a question of realising it in the studio. I had a lot of fun with it.”

May, however, was in for a surprise when Queen’s music for the soundtrack was first presented to producer Dino De Laurentiis.

As the guitarist recalled: “When we'd made all the tracks in demo form, having seen the rushes of the film, we had a session with Dino and Mike Hodges, all of us in Trident studios playing back what we done for the film.

“And Dino sat there with a face like iron. Like, ‘I'm not sure if I like this?’

“The last thing we played was Flash and Dino went, ‘Yes, it's very good, but it's not for my film.’

“That was a mortal blow for me. I thought, I didn't encapsulate what the film needed.

"But Mike took me aside and said, ‘Don't worry, I'll sort him out. He will love it!’

“And the conclusion of the story is when we had the premiere of the film. Dino came over to me and said, ‘Thank you for what you did for my film. It's beautiful!’ So that was that was nice.”

Summing up this extraordinary track, May said: “It is very fluffy, but I'm proud of it - because within my brief within the genre, I think it does fit perfectly.”

And this thing is quite unassuming as guitar effects pedals go. It won’t take up too much real estate on the pedalboard. The enclosure is so compact that there’s barely enough room to stamp the front with the name of the pedal.

It has a single level control, a footswitch, and a colour-coded LED display for loop status and a three-way toggle switch on the side of the enclosure.

TC Electronic offers two ways of using this compact looper. The toggle switch offers the choice between a User-defined mode and the Ditto setting, with the latter user profile giving you the exact same functionality as the original Ditto.

You know the drill – heck, everyone knows the drill by now given just how many TC Electronic sold of these, particularly during the years 2020 to ’21 when everyone needed someone, something to play along with.

Press once to record. Press again to play. Press again to overdub. Double tap that footswitch to pause the loop and then hold it down and it’ll clear the loop to start all over again. Easy, which was a big part of the Ditto’s charm.

Now, where things get interesting – or different – is when you are in User mode. This, says, TC Electronic, making looping “even smoother and more intuitive”. Here you have the Ditto 2’s new features at your disposal. Firstly, there’s LoopSnap.

LoopSnap is a smart tech solution for detecting and more to the point correct timing mistakes. If you’re just a little bit off the beat, the LoopSnap feature automatically keeps your loops perfectly in-sync leaving you to concentrate on the playing.

In the User mode, you also have SingleTap looping, which reduces this looper to its most fundamental state with the footswitch functions just record, play and clear – which is handy if you just want to get something down quick.

Finally, you can customise that User mode by pairing the Ditto 2 with your smartphone and opening up the accompanying app. You can turn LoopSnap on and off, and configure how you want those looping functions on the footswitch to behave.

The Ditto 2 has a fully analogue signal path. Hook it up to the app and you can toggle between buffered and true bypass. There is also a USB-C connection should Bluetooth be unavailable.

Ditto 2 is available now, priced £99/$119 street. See TC Electronic for more details.

Who was there? Well, Bruce Springsteen for starters. Alongside Flea and Rolling Stones’ tour drummer Steve Jordan, the Boss performed a version of Because The Night (originally a Springsteen song, of course, but a hit for Smith).

Matt Berninger of The National had opened the evening by performing Piss Factory. Kim Gordon and Michael Stipe both made appearances, whilst Scarlett Johansson, Jim Jarmusch and Sean Penn all stepped up to read selections of Smith’s poetry. Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs fronted a stomping cover of Gloria.

Meanwhile another A-lister, Johnny Depp, turned up unannounced and played guitar on a version of Dancing Barefoot, with Flea on bass and The Kills’ Alison Mosshart on vocals.

And, of course, the first lady of punk was there too. The evening ended with Smith herself performing a none-more-poignant version of People Have The Power, which ended with just about every guest on stage and 78 year old singer instructing the audience to ‘use your fucking voice’.

Being the subject of a tribute night when you’re still alive might suggest that Smith’s power is on the wane, but as you can see in the footage above ,that’s very much not the case. She’s on the road later this year to celebrate the 50th anniversary of her groundbreaking debut album, Horses. There are just two UK dates though – at the London Palladium on October 12 and 13. Tickets are now sold out, it seems.

It is a tough choice. The Floyd Rose 1500 Series vibrato is a lot of fun – and it can do subtle flutter, if that's more your whammy-bar style. But then there is something tidy and uncomplicated about a six-saddle Hipshot hardtail, particularly if you are changing up your tuning on a regular basis.

Either way, you’re getting a guitar that’s built for “speed, tone and reliability,” as Jon Romanowski, vice president of product at Jackson, would have it. You could call it the archetypical metal guitar, or at least the archetypical S-style electric guitar for players whose appetite for gain cannot be sated.

Romanowski says the Soloist SL2 DX is a sign that’s its fully committed to the American Series, having brought the brand home in 2022.

“With features like a neck-through-body design, stainless steel frets, Seymour Duncan pickups, and premium hardware, this guitar is built for speed, tone, and reliability – everything a serious shredder demands,” says Romanowski. “For fans of fast, aggressive playing, this is a game-changer.”

Now, while you muse on whether the hardtail or the Floyd Rose model would suit your playing needs better, let’s run through some of the other key features on this tricked out S-style.

As Romanowski says, the big ticket items include a pair of Seymour Duncan electric guitar pickups, and it’s a classic pairing of the redoubtable JB humbucker at the bridge and the ’59 humbucker at the neck. These are selected by a five-way blade-style selector switch plus knurled-dome knobs for volume and tone.

As you’d expect from a Jackson Soloist, this has a neck through build, with its three-piece maple neck super-quick and super-stable, too, thanks to those graphite reinforcement rods.

That neck is sandwiched by an alder body and topped with an ebony fingerboard, rolled edges because this is a bougie high-end build, with a 12” to 16” compound radius presenting players with a state-of-the-art platform for shred. Those inverse shark-fin inlays look neat too, and there are Luminlay glow-in-the-dark side markers for the frets for ease of fretboard navigation under stage lights.

The 24 stainless steel frets are fat and slinky. These guitars are built to feel effortless. Anyone who has spent any time with the American Series Soloist SL3 will know how that neck and fingerboard combo feels. It’s kind of dangerous; in the sense that there is a big temptation to overplay.

It’s fun, sure, but it's practical, too, with the heel-mounted truss rod adjustment wheel making for easy setup tweaks, and Dunlop dual-locking buttons for your guitar strap as standard. There is set of Gotoh MG-T locking tuners on that classic Jackson-profile six-in-line headstock but that might not be the first thing you notice with all the colour-matching going on. It looks good, especially on that Lemon Ice model.

Other key features? Well, these are turbo-charged S-styles, built out of Jackson’s parent company, Fender’s, facility in Corona, California. They all have the Fender-esque 25.5” scale length. They also ship inside a Jackson Foam-Core guitar case.

Jackson is offering the Soloist SL2 DX with the Hipshot hardtail in Satin Black or Satin Porsche Gray, and the Floyd Rose 1500 Series models in Lemon Ice, Snow White and Satin Black – the latter looking like you could literally walk into Megadeth’s Countdown To Extinction sessions and not look out of place.

These are available now, priced £2,149/$2,399 for the hardtails, £2,249/$2,499 for the Floyds. For more details, head over to Jackson. You can watch UK crossover champs Pest Control put these through their paces in the demo video above.

Now, in an interview with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, Sheeran has been explaining how he discovered loopers and demonstrating how he uses his current rig to perform his 2017 number one hit, Shape Of You.

Describing his first exposure to live looping, Sheeran says: “I went to go and see a band that I loved when I was about 14, and the guy who was opening up for them, a guy called Gary Dunne, he was sort of hitting his guitar and recording and it sounded like a drum. And I remember watching it being like, ‘That looks really cool, and also, he doesn't need a band.’ And at the time, I wasn't, like, the coolest kid, and people didn't want to be in a band with me.”

Seizing the moment, Sheeran says that he reached out to Dunne via social media.

“I messaged him on MySpace, and he taught me how to use one, and he's still my mate now,” he explains. “So, that was like the first time - when I was like 14 - I started using one. And then, as my career has progressed and it's gone from, you know, small bars to stadiums, the pedal has sort of grown with us.”

Dunne told his side of the story to the BBC back in 2017, just after Sheeran had headlined Glastonbury and TV viewers were left wondering how he managed to perform the entire set on his own.

"I was playing a gig at Shepherd's Bush Empire and I played solo, with a loop station. At the time I was a struggling musician, so I made a lot of my living through doing concerts in fans' houses,” he said.

As he remembers it, the contact came via an email from Sheeran’s father, who asked if Dunne would be willing to play at Ed’s 15th birthday party.

"Ed and his Dad picked me up from the train station and I did a gig to Ed and his teenage buddies,” he recalled. "Then we stayed up late looking at live looping and the basics of how to use it - and that was the beginning of our friendship. Little did I know he'd become the biggest star in the world."

Such is his synonymity with looper pedals, of course, that Sheeran now has his own range of them, though it looked like own custom model that he used to show Fallon the live cyclical recording ropes. He even got him to sing at one point.

In another part of the interview, Sheeran confirmed that not only Shape Of You but also Love Yourself - a song that eventually went to Justin Bieber - were written with Rihanna in mind.

“Rihanna has the best taste out of anyone,” he says. “She always picks just really, really great songs. So, as songwriters, you know, within the songwriting community, you're always writing songs to pitch to Rihanna. Like, every single album that I've ever done, I've always gone ‘right, on the side, let's try and write a song that we can pitch to Rihanna.’”

Sheeran believes he’s not alone in this, either, and that having the Barbadian star in mind has probably helped others to raise their games, too.

“I promise you, there'll be so many songwriters out there that their best song came from trying to write a Rihanna song,” he says.

Sheeran also confirmed that his new album will be called Play. He was recently spotted debuting what’s believed to be the first single from it, a song called Azizam, as he busked his way around New Orleans.

Following the sale of the building to in 2023 for an estimated £10.5 million, a public consultation took place last year that invited local partners to offer feedback on the proposed development.

That consultation has now ended, and a planning application has been submitted by Mavis Partnership LLC, a group led by Zimmer that includes business partner Steve Kofsky and British film producers Eric Fellner and Tim Bevan. Westminster City Council will review the application on April 1.

The application details plans to build two separate wings for music and film. The "Audio wing" will feature four "world-class" music studios alongside several additional composer suites and 30 music practice rooms, while the "Visual wing" will contain "high-tech facilities" for film post-production, including sound stages, foley studios, screening rooms and editing suites.

Originally constructed in 1909 as an ice rink, the Grade II-listed Maida Vale Studios has played host to artists such as The Beatles, David Bowie, Amy Winehouse and Beyoncé, and was the home of the BBC Symphony Orchestra since 1934. The historic BBC Radiophonic Workshop was based at Maida Vale until its closure in 1998.

In 2018, the BBC announced plans to move its live music hub to a new facility in East London, a decision opposed by a number of artists, including Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich and Geoff Barrow of Portishead.

“The proposed studio will be one of the only such facilities in the world and the first in the UK, creating a venue of national importance to UK creative industries," reads a statement on the group's website.

"These proposed upgrades will set new benchmarks for excellence in British film and music post-production, fostering the creation of new jobs, driving innovation, and promoting industry investment."

And the validity of streaming’s balancing act has just been affirmed by Deezer’s latest financials as the French streaming service, established just one year after globe conquering Spotify, just followed suit once again, with 2025 being the year that it finally got the balance right and started making money.

In February this year, Spotify reported its first ever year of profit, marking something of a watershed moment for music streaming and cementing its business case going forward. And it seems that – as ever – Deezer is only a step behind. From here on in both services get to rest easy in the knowledge that 20+ years after they started out, they’re finally generating more than they’re spending.

Deezer’s new FY24 report shows a 12% revenue increase netting them €542 million – a figure that represents double-digit growth (at +12%) which exceeded their own 10% growth target.

Let’s be clear, this is the first time the company has positive free cash flow (of €7 million) and – provided it doesn’t put a foot wrong – after years of work, Deezer’s endless money tap is now officially open.

The company achieved adjusted EBITDA break-even in the second half of the year, improving from a €28.8 million loss in 2023 to a €4 million positive in 2024. Most remarkably it did so despite a slight decline in total subscribers, representing a maturing market and the smart use of their cash.

The company did grow in its home country of France however, with revenues up 9.7% and subscriber growth of 4.3%. Meanwhile, it was also able to strike better deals in its partnerships segment, up an impressive 24% year on year.

A sharp increase in adjusted gross profit of +21.2% to €134M represented a 24.7% margin which the company attributed to strict management of fixed costs while making smarter investments in the brand.

Whatever they’re doing, it’s working

And Deezer has, of course, made a big play of what it calls its Artist Centric Payment System, being committed to what it calls “fairer streaming payments” aiming to ensure that more money reaches the artists whose music is on the platform and an attempt to position themselves as a fairer option than their streaming rivals.

Similarly the platform has been at the forefront of preventing AI generated music from crowding out human artists, both measures that will please music lovers and makers alike.

In its official statement, Alexis Lanternier, CEO of Deezer, said: “2024 was a landmark year for Deezer, marked by progress, innovation, and growth.”

Their report outlines their belief that “the young generation seeks greater control, personalization, social connections, and creative expression” and that “superfans represent a largely untapped market opportunity.

“The one-size-fits-all streaming model has flattened spending among music fans and currently does not serve those seeking deeper connections with artists. Meanwhile, artists are searching for more effective ways to monetize their most engaged audiences.

Thus Deezer now aims to deliver more personalized music experiences and social connections to fans while providing artists with the tools they need to deliver them.

“This marks an exciting new chapter for Deezer… I am confident that we will deliver significant value for fans, artists, partners, and shareholders in the years to come,” promises Lanternier.

Well, much like the band’s own seemingly limitless and groaning archives, it appears there are still a few jaw-dropping Beatles recordings to be found out in the wild.

The latest discovery comes courtesy of Canadian record shop owner Rob Frith who had owned a reel-to-reel tape labeled ‘Beatles 60s demos’ for a number of years as part of the shop’s stock.

The enthusiastic collector had presumed that it was simply an early compilation of Beatles tunes that someone had ran to tape for speed and ease.

However, with the prospect of being able to finally listen to the tape at a friend’s suitably equipped studio, Frith brought along the tape only to be stunned by its contents. And now, via an Instagram post, the word is definitely out.

“I picked up this tape years ago that said Beatles Demos on it,” writes Frith. “I just figured it was a tape off a bootleg record. After hearing it last night for the first time, it sounds like a master tape. The quality is unreal. How is this even possible to have, what sounds like a Beatles 15-song Decca tapes master?”

It’s a question that many are now asking and the glory of a brand new, pristine original Beatles recording has got all of their following in a flutter.

Frith believes that the tape is a rare copy of a famous audition recording from the band's early days. Prior to being signed to Parlophone Records, The Beatles and manager Brian Epstein had, of course, produced a demo tape with which to tout their wares – the tape was famously recorded at Decca Studios in London, 1 January, 1962.

Decca would, of course, equally famously, go on to pass on signing (what would soon be) the (biggest) band (in the world) – claiming at the time that "guitar groups are on the way out" – and that audition tape would eventually appear as a much-bootlegged album in its own right throughout the 70s.

Thus a tape of that ‘album’ wouldn’t be remarkable, however Frith’s tape goes far beyond mere bootleg.

Larry Hennessey, owner of the studio in which Frith played the tape, noted that each song on the tape is separated by white, unrecordable, ‘leader’ tape, meaning that rather than simply being a copy of another tape, is the original songs spliced together to form a single, playable master.

As such – potentially the original master tape of The Beatles first ever recording – Frith’s find is therefore something special, both in terms of pure rarity and the undiluted pure quality of the original, non-transferred recording that it carries on board.

"The way that's wound on the tape, you can see that it separates the tracks. It's not a fast copy or a bootleg," Hennessey explained. Indeed, listening to it, "It seemed like the Beatles were in the room," Frith told CBC Canada.

The best version yet?

It’s therefore potentially an even better quality version of the recording which most recently appeared as part of 1995’s Beatles Anthology Volume 1 project, which bore just five of the 15 tracks apparently on Frith’s new master.

In 2012 a version of the 'master tape' sold to a Japanese collector for £35,000. However, the authenticity of this tape has been debated by experts as it only contains 10 songs. However Frith's new tape would appear to contain the full 15 songs from the session.

And thanks to his post and its rapid take-up among Beatles fans, it hasn’t taken long for more corroborating evidence and the tape’s backstory to come out of the woodwork.

Step up one Jack Herschorn. Herschorn was a Canadian record company executive who bought Mushroom Studios in 1971 and, now having left the music business, now lives in Mexico. While on a work trip in London a producer had given Herschorn the tape with the suggestion that he could release it in America and make some money from the up and coming band.

"I took it back and I thought about it quite a bit … I didn't want to put it out because I felt – I didn't think it was a totally moral thing to do," Hershorn said.

"These guys, they're famous and they deserve to have the right royalties on it … It deserves to come out properly,” he added. And, while wishing that by then world-famous musicians had signed to his label held onto the tape before forgetting all about it.

"I should have took it, but it didn't work out that way. You know, I had other things going on. I wasn't thinking about it,” he explained.

As to what will happen with the recording now, Frith has a number of options.

Claiming that he’s in no rush to sell it, Frith has suggested that if Decca wanted to use it to produce a new, definitive clean copy of the recording that he’d gladly give them access to it. Alternatively Frith has proposed that if Paul McCartney were to come to Neptoon Records in person, he’d happily hand it over.

"People say it could be really valuable. I don't know. I'm glad it's preserved," he said.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Townshend is asked about a comment he makes in the liner notes for a new box set of his solo material, where he states: “I handed the stadium stage to Queen and U2, and of course to Bruce Springsteen…

He tells Rolling Stone: “The Who invented Stadium Rock.” But he adds: “We gave it away.”

On July 13, 1985, both The Who and Queen performed at the Live Aid show at London’s Wembley Stadium.

But as Townshend says now: “Our timing was terrible. When we did Live Aid, we could barely fuckin’ play. Queen were in the middle of a tour, walked out there, took the whole thing, and turned it into an advert for themselves.”

He continues: “I never really appreciated what Queen was about, to be honest. I liked ABBA, but I didn’t really connect with the lighthearted pop diversity of Queen’s catalog.

“I’m a huge fan of Bruce [Springsteen], of course, and a big fan of U2, and very happy to see the way that they took the stadium mantle.

“But with songs like Won’t Get Fooled Again and Baba O’Riley, I fuckin’ nailed it. There’s no question. And I gave that instrument away.

Townshend concludes: “It would be wrong to say that I regret it, because I don’t. I have to look back and say, ‘Well, what is, is.’”

The Cars, a five-piece group from Boston, recorded their self-titled debut in London with English producer Roy Thomas Baker, best known for his work with Queen.

The Cars' album would go on to sell six million copies, powered by the hit singles Just What I Need (number 27 in the US, number 17 in the UK) and My Best Friend’s Girl (number 35 in the US, number three in the UK).

Amazingly, the album would also stay on the US Billboard 200 chart for 139 weeks.

But as the band’s lead guitarist Elliot Easton now tells MusicRadar: “We didn’t know what was going to happen.

“It was our first record. It was all brand new.

“We didn’t know if the record was going to be a hit or not. And I don’t think any of us thought in those terms.”

My Best Friend’s Girl, the second single off the album, was a perfect example of The Cars’ talent for new-wave-meets-pop mastery.

Like most of the band’s songs, it was written by Ric Ocasek, lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist.

But Easton’s twangy guitar playing was a key part of the song’s appeal - inspired, perhaps subliminally, by a deep cut off The Beatles’ White Album.

“I remember Ric bringing in a demo and presenting it to the band,” Easton says. “It didn’t have any parts yet, so I made a cassette out of our rehearsal and started thinking of parts.

“Nothing about it suggested rockabilly or Chet Atkins, but for some reason that’s what I heard.

“When I came up with the main hook of the song I realised that it was reminiscent of The Beatles' song I Will.

“But what I did wasn’t that static,” he explains. “The chords are going E, A, B, and I’m playing through E, C, F-sharp minor, and B-sharp minor, so it gives it a little melodic sense, and contour.

“So I was really happy with the chords, and next was the solo.

“I don’t know why, but for some reason, I heard it as a Telecaster song. I was playing it, came up with that little lick, and I knew it needed a solo.

“I’m very influenced by the West Coast [sound] and Bakersfield country [music], and I wanted to do that kind of solo. So, I just composed it bit by bit.”

He describes this process.

“I was like, ‘Okay, how am I going to start the solo?’ Then, I’d get to the next chord of the solo and just play something over that chord.

“I was moving between the chords, and basically the solo goes between A and B, and I’m playing it that way by walking between those two chords, playing different things.”

He remembers the band’s reaction to his input.

“When I had it all ready, at our next rehearsal, I came in, we played that song, and I played my new part, and all the guys had big smiles on their faces!

"They couldn’t believe what I’d done. It was so unexpected. They were really supportive and seemed to like it.”

Ultimately, My Best Friend’s Girl would become one of The Cars’ signature songs.

“We didn’t know if people would like it or not,” Easton says. “If people knew what a hit was going to be, they’d write a hit every time!

“That’s kind of the magic and the mystery of it all, like, ‘What’s a hit? What’s going to capture people’s imaginations?’

“It’s not always easy, and it’s not the sort of thing you can really predict. We just tried to do good work.”

And while the service itself may have slipped from ubiquity to illegality to obscurity since its turn-of-the-century high, it appears that that revolutionary, giant-killing brand is still, in some eyes, worth a small fortune.

Yes, once again, Napster ‘lives’ and is now the property of tech company Infinite Reality, "the home of digital experiences", in exchange for $207 million.

Napster’s new owners say they intend to turn the brand into a social-first music platform, aimed at letting fans engage with artists and their music more directly.

History repeating

Back in the day Napster quickly became the globally notorious method by which users of the early internet could lay bare their music collection and allow randoms from anywhere on the planet to pick it clean.

Peer-to-peer sharing, as it became known, went from something that was ‘technically possible’ on the nascent internet to ‘the number one reason to own a computer’ practically overnight.

Able to type in the name of a track or artist and have Napster search the entire planet before bringing in the results as MP3 downloads was something of a boon for music fans who, at that time, were enduring the misery of a draconian record business making billions from a small, carefully corralled group of artists by charging $20 for a CD just to get the one song that you wanted.

The arrival of Napster on the scene therefore triggered chaos: tens of millions of delighted music fans enjoying limitless, free (though totally illegal) music for a time and a record industry entirely caught on the hop, playing legal catch-up and licking its wounds close behind.

To say that Napster was something of a landmark upheaval therefore (one which changed the world of music completely, moving the business to the legal digital purchasing of services such as iTunes before emerging as today’s subscription-based streaming model) is something of an understatement.

Meanwhile, Napster, the cause of all the trouble, slid from a highly dubious college project to becoming a saleable ‘renegade’ brand for any company aiming to upset an apple cart.

MP3 service Rhapsody bought the brand in 2011, before floundering to make cash and realising that the only thing they owned that was worth anything was the Napster brand. Thus they changed their name to Napster back in 2016.

Virtual reality company MelodyVR then purchased Napster in 2020 for $70 million with the intention of using such a famous name to reinvent its VR live-streaming platform… before, in 2022, cryptocurrency companies Hivemind and Algorand bought Napster as a front for their Web3 and blockchain-based experiments.

Now, Infinite Reality – “an innovation company powering the next generation of digital media and e-commerce through extended reality (XR), artificial intelligence (AI), and other immersive technologies” – is Napster’s new owner.

So, by now, it’s safe to say that Napster has successfully been the front end of every up-and-coming, failure-to-launch, next-big-thing-that-never-happened, that you can imagine.

And with Infinite Reality having interests in such fields as the Drone Racing League and being the owner of esports teams playing League of Legends and Call of Duty (with metaverse and AI-powered customer services lurking in the background) it looks like Napster has, once again, found its perfect home.

"The ultimate music platform"

“I firmly believe that the artist-fan relationship is evolving, with fans craving hyper-personalized, intimate access to their favorite artists, while artists are searching for innovative ways to deepen connections with fans, and access new streams of revenue,” explained John Acunto, Co-Founder and CEO of Infinite Reality. “We’re creating the ultimate music platform where artists can thrive in the next wave of digital disruption.”

Joining Acunto will be Jon Vlassopulos, who joined Napster as CEO in 2022. Prior to heading up Napster, Vlassopulos was the head of music for the video game Roblox, where he helped pioneer their virtual concerts for artists such as Lil Nas X and Twenty One Pilots.

“Napster revolutionized digital music in the nineties, and now, with Infinite Reality, we’re ready to do it again,” Vassopulos said.

“Imagine stepping into a virtual venue to watch an exclusive show with friends, chat with your favorite artist in their own virtual hangout as they drop their new single, and be able to directly buy their exclusive digital and physical merch.

“With Infinite Reality’s expertise in immersive 3D technology, we will transform Napster into a next-generation platform where fans don’t just listen on their own – they experience music in entirely new ways.”

Simmons tells the New York Post: “When I was a kid and went to see shows, I was always curious, ‘What’s it like when they’re in a hotel? What’s it like when the stage is set up? What’s it like being onstage when they’re performing and seeing the audience from the stage?’”

He continues: “I decided, ‘You know what, nobody’s ever done it. Why not open the idea to be my personal roadie for the day?’”

The 'Ultimate Gene Simmons Experience' is the opportunity for a fan to join the God of Thunder’s road crew for one date on his solo tour.

The fan will perform basic roadie duties, share a meal with Simmons and sing a song with him on stage. Also included in this deal is a signed bass guitar used by Simmons during Kiss band rehearsals.

In his interview with the New York Post, Simmons says of this package: “You meet at the hotel where you have breakfast together or, you know, whatever floats your boat.

“You ride with me to the gig. You can set up amplifiers and drums to your heart’s content.

“You’re onstage, right offstage to my right. You can video the crowds, whatever.

“And I pull you onstage to sing a song with me.”

Following the cancellation of more than half of the Gene Simmons Band tour dates in the US, tickets are being refunded and any of the roadie experience tickets sold for the affected shows can either be refunded or switched to any of the remaining available dates.

Asked by the Sunday Times if either she or her teenage kids were onboard the Brat bandwagon, Murphy said: “Not really, no”. Explaining her reasoning, she added: “It’s too pop, y’know? When things are very processed, it’s like… processed cheese.”

Charli XCX is, of course, one of the most famous exponents of hyperpop, which tends to push the dial in a consciously exaggerated way in terms of both sound and production. As such, Murphy’s criticisms do make a certain amount of sense… though it’s all a matter of taste, of course.

Murphy has more time for the likes of Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey, it seems, but can’t see the similarities between their career paths and her own.

“They’re all really great - but straight out of club culture? I don’t know. In terms of real characters, there are not that many, no.”

This isn’t to say that she’s not willing to step out of her club-focused comfort zone in the future, though: “More voiceless instrumentation, maybe, working with different forms - why not?” she says as she considers her future direction. “As I get older, I don’t wanna fight so much with genre and clutter in the music.”

This week, Sennheiser has announced Dear Reality will be closing up shop as it consolidates its "immersive audio initiatives", and it's making 11 of the company's plugins available as a free download until July 31.

Dear Reality's catalogue covers a range of applications within immersive audio: among the titles up for grabs are dearVR Pro 2, a spatialization plugin equipped with 46 virtual acoustic presets, dearVR Mix, a monitoring tool that emulates a stereo mix room in headphones using spatial audio, and Exoverb, a reverb that promises to add "three-dimensional depth and width perception" to stereo productions.

Also available are dearVR Spatial Connect, a VR controller for spatial audio productions, Miya, an experimental re-synthesizer with adjustable harmonics, and a number of slimmed-down 'Micro' versions of Dear Reality plugins. We've copied a full list below.

If you're someone that works in immersive audio, or you're simply curious about experimenting with it, the Dear Reality catalogue is worth downloading: all you'll need to do is subscribe to Sennheiser's newsletter here.

Sennheiser has stated that Dear Reality products will no longer be developed or maintained, and their licenses will be deactivated on July 31.

Dear Reality plugins

• dearVR Pro 2: A state-of-the-art spatializer plugin whether mixing in stereo, multi-channel up to 9.1.6, binaural, or Ambisonics.
• Exoverb: Stereo reverb plugin offering 50 true-to-life sounding acoustic scenes with unheard three-dimensional depth and width. 
• Exoverb Micro: Compact reverb plugin powered by the same proprietary reverb engine as its bigger brother, EXOVERB. 
• dearVR Ambi Micro: Mix, monitor, and render Ambisonics tracks up to 3rd order right out of the box.
• dearVR Micro: Easy-to-use spatializer plugin. Fully immerse your listener with mind-blowing binaural tracks.
• dearVR Mix: Monitoring plugin to turn any studio headphones into a world-class stereo mix room. 
• dearVR Mix-SE: Ultimate mixing environment for your HD 490 PRO reference studio headphones.
• dearVR Spatial Connect: A revolutionary and intuitive VR controller for spatial audio productions.
• Miya: Creative re-synthesizer plugin using adjustable harmonics. 
• dearVR Music: Turn your DAW into a 3D audio powerhouse. Start creating stunningly realistic 3D music productions and go beyond the limitations of stereo sound.
• dearVR Unity: Create ultra-realistic acoustic environments in Unity with a true perception of direction, distance, reflections, and reverb.

And one person she can rely on, it seems, is Heart’s Nancy Wilson, who recently confirmed that she spent time with Roan and the three members of Boygenius (Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker) backstage at a Heart gig in LA.

"We hung out with those guys and really hit it off," Wilson told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, adding that she told the assembled company that she would be "your rock and roll auntie if you ever need any advice."

"Zeppelin was kind of our influence, and the Beatles and Elton John," adds Wilson. "There were not so many female artists. These girls have us and Sheryl Crow and others who influence them and encourage them."

Roan has already confirmed that she’s a Heart fan. Performing at last year’s Austin City Limits festival, she covered the band’s 1977 hit Barracuda, calling it “my favourite song”.

On the subject of Barracuda, Wilson says that it was written about "a real sleazeball with a satin jacket" who "wanted to make more money out of the sexy chicks in Heart". And sadly, rather than being from a different time, she believes that it’s "even more relevant in the salacious billionaire culture with the grab-them-by-the-pussy mentality."

She does have hope for the future, though: "I think for women in the culture the pendulum will come back again, and there'll be another renaissance in the arts to push back against the oppression of the cranky old rich white guys. I hope I am alive to see that next revolution."

Heart are currently in the midst of a US tour following lead singer Ann Wilson’s recovery from cancer.

Now, before I worked at MusicRadar, writing about music gear for a living, I used to sell pianos and keyboards in a busy music store. So, I’ve used my background in music retail to come up with my pick of the very best keyboard and piano deals from across this mammoth sale. 

Below, you’ll find my expert choices from a wide range of price categories and styles. Whether you’re a newbie looking for your first beginner keyboard or an experienced player seeking a new digital piano, you'll find it in this epic sale.  

On occasion, they have even shared these influences with MusicRadar, as drummer Rufus Taylor did in 2023 – “the Lemon Song blew my mind” – and frontman/guitarist Justin Hawkins did when he shared 10 albums that changed his life in 2015.

Back then, Hawkins told us, “To be in a band, one should be an informed student of music,” and in his recent appearance on BBC Radio 2’s Tracks Of My Years, Hawkins gave us an idea of what he means. Talking influences with host Vernon Kay, he revealed how reggae-soul icon Johnny Nash was responsible for expanding his musical vocabulary and ultimately piquing his interest in music theory.

“When I was a kid, all I wanted to do was play solos and I didn’t think about the theory side of it,” said Hawkins. “Because I think the best way to learn is to listen to the records that you love and then play along to them.”

But you know how it goes; sometimes you listen to a record and what’s coming through the speaker doesn’t make any sense to what’s on the fretboard.

For Hawkins, that moment came when he heard the late reggae-soul legend Johnny Nash’s There Are More Questions Than Answers. This was a guy who was doing something different in an era when – just as now – there was a way of doing things in popular music, well-worn chord progressions.

“In Nashville, for example, in a hit factories in Nashville, they’d make two or three albums a day, it’d be the same musicians on all of them,” explained Hawkins. “You’d go in and you’d give them the chord charts, they’d play it through. If anything was, like, minor, if it was a minor chord or a minor 7th chord, or had anything fancy in it, like a nine or something, they would look at you like, ‘This is unnecessarily sophisticated. Who does this person think he is? We’ll play C, A minor, and we’ll do the usual kind of one three, four, one, five…’ Whatever the chord sequence was.

“And anything that strayed from that was sneered upon by the musicians who had to play all those albums in such a short time.”

Nash was wired differently. There Are More Questions Than Answers, the final track and single taken from the Texan artist’s 1972 album, I Can See Clearly Now, was case in point, and it introduced Hawkins to chord voicings he had never heard before, Nah using them to stitch together more sophisticated – more interesting – melodies.

“There’s standardised kinds of progressions that you hear on nearly everything,” said Hawkins. “Most of the time, if you’re in C, for example, it’ll go to the relative A minor, then it’ll go to an F and you’ll go to a G, and a hell of a lot of music is like that still today. It’s just standard.

“I think Johnny Nash ignored all that stuff and made really unique records that involved diminished chords, and it was probably the first time I’d ever sort of listened to one and gone, ‘What is that? I want to learn how to do that!’ For me, Johnny Nash is one of the all time greats, and I just love that particular song, because he’s doing diminished chords nearly all the way through.”

That’s not to say that you can’t get any mileage out of the raw materials that every guitar player has to have in their toolkit. Talking theory, Hawkins says he once took lessons from a blues guitar player so he could add the minor pentatonic scale to his vocabulary. He has never looked back.

“If you have that scale, and that’s the only scale my brother [Dan, the Darkness lead guitarist] knows, because I taught him that as well, you can play along to just about anything as long as you know when to transpose down,” he says. “That was all I knew, and I was able to play along with things like Led Zeppelin and Guns N’ Roses, the Eagles, and all that stuff.

“With that one kind of set of notes, I was able to play along with anything – and that is enough for most guitar players. But what I love about music is the more time you spend immersed in it, the more that stuff goes in, and the more you understand the vocabulary of it.”

You can listen to the whole episode over at BBC Sounds. The Darkness' new album, Dreams On Toast, is available to pre-order, and is out on Friday 28 March through Cooking Vinyl.

But this isn’t regarding the controversial practice of ‘dynamic’ pricing, which led to some fans forking out several times the amount the tickets were nominally being sold for.

Instead, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has suggested Ticketmaster could have broken consumer protection law by selling ‘platinum’ tickets that retailed for two and a half times the standard price but which came with no additional benefits.

"This risked giving consumers the misleading impression that platinum tickets were better,” the CMA said, updating its investigation into Ticketmaster. The CMA has stated that it is looking for changes to the way the platform provides information to punters, advice which Ticketmaster has said it “welcomes.”

"At Ticketmaster, we strive to provide the best ticketing platform through a simple, transparent and consumer-friendly experience," a spokesperson told the BBC. “We welcome the CMA's input in helping make the industry even better for fans."

And whilst there’s no news yet regarding the issue of dynamic pricing, the CMA did criticise Ticketmaster, saying it was difficult for Oasis fans to make "informed choices". One example it gives is that punters were not aware there were "two categories of standing tickets at different prices, with all of the cheaper standing tickets sold first.”

This meant "many fans waiting in a lengthy queue without understanding what they would be paying and then having to decide whether to pay a higher price than they expected," the CMA continued.

Since last year, Ticketmaster has made some changes to its platform, but the CMA is not satisfied with these: "the CMA does not currently consider these changes are sufficient to address its concerns," it says.

"We now expect Ticketmaster to work with us to address these concerns so, in future, fans can make well-informed decisions when buying tickets," said Hayley Fletcher, Interim Senior Director of Consumer Protection. "All ticketing websites should check they are complying with the law and treating their customers fairly. When businesses get it right, consumers benefit – and that’s the best outcome for everyone."

So Ticketmaster very much isn't off the hook yet. The CMA investigation is not yet complete, and this story will doubtless develop further, possibly before Oasis play their first gig for 16 years on Cardiff on 4 July.

But not a boyband, it seems. “It was not a boyband,” he insisted in an interview with Alexis Petridis of the Guardian. “It was the cast of a television show, like when the cast of Glee made albums.”

The drummer always seemed the Monkee most at ease with their peculiar situation, a ‘band’ of four actors who were pretending to be a band. Less so his colleague Mike Nesmith, who from quite early on chafed against his puppet masters.

“I knew what he was going through,” remembers Dolenz. “He was frustrated because he was misled. He was not an actor, he was a singer-songwriter, and they told him he was going to write and record his own music. And basically, he was not allowed to do that.

“In the very early days of the show, he went to the producers with his guitar and played them a song he’d written that he wanted the Monkees to record. According to him, they said, ‘Thank you, but no thank you - it’s not a Monkees song.’ He said, ‘Wait a minute, I am one of the fucking Monkees. What are you talking about?’ But they blew him off.”

That song was Different Drum, which Nesmith gave to the Stone Poneys (which featured a young Linda Ronstadt) and who promptly took it into the US Top 20.

Eventually, The Monkees were granted their wish, and from their 1967 Headquarters album onwards, played on their own records and recorded their own songs. And Dolenz himself supplied one of their biggest UK hits, the brilliantly-inventive Randy Scouse Git (or ‘Alternate Title’), which reached Number 2 in the UK in July that year.

And Dolenz was also an early synth adopter. Indeed, he bought the third one that was sold commercially (the first two were owned by Wendy Carlos and, rather more incongruously, country singer Buck Owens). You can hear the Moog Modular III on some tracks on the band’s late 1967 album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd, in particular, Star Collector and Mike Nesmith’s Daily Nightly.

You can even make a claim for the Monkees’ use of the Moog as being an influence on the Beatles. In an interview with the LA Times in 2009, Dolenz revealed that “I threw a party for John Lennon one night, and he sat there at the Moog for four hours making flying saucer sounds.” Two years later came Abbey Road and tracks like I Want You (She’s So Heavy) and Because, both of which use the Moog.

Not that Dolenz is ever the sort to boast about such things. Indeed, as he mentions in the interview, it was his ability to maintain a distance from his onscreen persona that helped him maintain his sanity.

“I think because of my upbringing in the business, I always attempted to separate the person from the persona," he says. "I wasn’t always successful, but that’s incredibly important if you want to survive. To some degree, I’ve always known that Micky the wacky drummer on television was who the girls were in love with - not me, Micky Dolenz.”

Today, Output unveils a new plugin that's designed to speed up that process, which the company describes as "one of the biggest challenges in music production". Billed as "the fastest way to find samples that fit your music", Co-Producer is an AI-powered plugin that sits on your master bus and listens to your project, analyzing its rhythm and harmony before suggesting royalty-free samples from Output's library to augment the track.

Open up Co-Producer and you'll be given the option to play either four or eight bars of audio into the plugin to be analyzed. Before searching for appropriate samples, you're asked to provide Co-Producer with your track's key signature, and given the option to add a text prompt that tells the plugin what instrument, genre or vibe you're looking for.

Once you've hit the search button, Co-Producer will return a list of samples that should match up harmonically and rhythmically with your project. You're able to preview the sounds from within the plugin, with sounds synced to the appropriate key and tempo, before dragging and dropping to your timeline. Samples can also be dropped into Output's sampler plugin Arcade to be transformed into playable instruments.

Co-Producer is a subscription-based plugin that gives users access to a regularly updated library of "premium, musician-made" samples. Output gives all subscribers unlimited access to its entire sample library, rather than operating a credit-based system like sample platforms such as Splice.

"We built Co-Producer to address the real frustrations of music makers. After talking with thousands of writers and producers, it was clear that endlessly scrolling for samples held back creativity," says Output CEO Gregg Lehrman.

"Artists want sounds that fit their track from the start, with the ability to preview them in context and drag-and-drop directly from within their DAW. They also don’t like the credits system that many companies have."

"We're not using AI to generate audio—we're using it to improve how music makers work," adds Spencer Salazar, Output’s Head of R&D. "By combining language models, audio analysis, and a scalable engine, we deliver high-quality, musician-made results that are 100% free and clear to use."

Output Co-Producer is available now for $9.99/month and a 7-day free trial is available.

Find out more on Output's website.

The Jazzmaster Silencer is available as a Vintage pairing, which presents you which a period-correct range of tones, surf rock, indie, the whole nine yards. But if you want to hit the front-end of your guitar amp a little harder, there is the Hot Jazzmaster Silence, which packs a bit more punch.

Both are “drop-in” options that will fit any standard Jazzmaster, and they are available individually or as a set, with parchment covers as standard but Seymour Duncan also offering a range of Jazzmaster covers for $5.99 each (choose from Black, Cream and White) if you wanted to switch things up.

The Jazzmaster Silencer pickups were designed by Kevin Beller, vice president of engineering, Seymour Duncan, and while they give you that big single-coil voicing of a Jazzmaster pickup they are technically a triple-coil design, in which one inner coil handles the tone, while another two get to work in nixing hum.

Both sets have an Alnico V magnet design. You can see the pole pieces poking through the plastic housing just like a regular Jazzmaster pickup – there is a good chance that no one will be aware that you have modded your guitar, but they might be wondering where all that 60-cycle hum has gone.

Jazzmasters, like any single-coil guitar, are vulnerable to unwanted noise and hum, especially when played through a well-stocked pedalboard, at high volume, and with a fuzz pedal or some drive in the mix.

All that noise adds up and gets in the way. And let’s face it, that’s pretty much the Jazzmaster’s target audience – the offset guitar crowd are pedal stackers, the indie-rock soundscaper. It’s not hard to see the appeal here. Can they do for the Jazzmaster what the P-90 Silencer did for the Les Paul Junior?

The Vintage Jazzmaster Silencers are described as “perfect for surf-inspired riffs, shimmering indie textures, modern pedal-driven explorations” with their hotter siblings doing much the same with a bit more oomph for “gritty surf riffs, glimmering melodies, grungy fuzzed-out rock, reverb-drenched shoegaze, and beyond”.

You’ll find a DCR reading of 11.39k at the neck, 9.30k at the bridge on the Hot Jazzmaster Silencer set, while Seymour Duncan lists the Vintage set at 9.19k for the neck pickup, 10k for the bridge.

The Jazzmaster Silencer is available now, priced $278. See Seymour Duncan for more details.

And as he tells MusicRadar, he was surprised how the recording session with Jackson went down.

At the time of the session, around 1986, Stevens had made his reputation as the Hamer-wielding sidekick for singer Billy Idol, playing on such classic ’80s anthems as White Wedding and Rebel Yell.

Jackson was working with producer Quincy Jones on the album Bad. And the track in question was Dirty Diana.

Stevens recalls: “I was kind of nervous because I wasn’t a ‘session guitar player.’ I hadn’t really done stuff outside of Billy Idol.”

He says he expected to see something resembling a circus at the recording studio - including Jackson’s pet chimp Bubbles.

“When I got the call to go out to Los Angeles to record with Michael, I was thinking, ‘Oh, there’s going to be an entourage, and the monkey’s going to be jumping around…’ I thought it was going to be all this crazy shit!

“But when I got to the studio and opened the door, it was exactly like a Billy Idol session. It was just Michael, Quincy and the engineer.

“I thought, ‘Great, okay.’ And Quincy was just one of the great record producers. He really put my mind at ease.”

He continues: “They had kind of a guitar guide - playing the main melody, and then Michael came to me and said, ‘Okay, let’s capture this.’

“Once we had achieved all the stuff that they wanted, they said, ‘Now, come here, and do whatever the fuck you want to do!’

“So, me doing that ended up being the solo.

“And the original version that I played was something like seven or eight minutes. They edited it, but yeah, it was a great experience."

“Michael and Quincy were total pros. Being in the same company as Ed [Van Halen] is pretty good company, too!"

Stevens adds: “It’s funny, I remember that I saw Ed soon after I did the session with Michael, and I said, ‘Hey, I was in the studio with Michael…’ Ed said, ‘Did he say to you that he likes the high notes?’ We kind of laughed over that because when I came into the studio, Michael actually did go, ‘Oh, I like the high notes!’”

That’s not to say that streaming isn’t a thing in the DJ realm – the likes of Beatport, Beatsource and Soundcloud each offer streaming subscriptions aimed specifically at DJs, and AlphaTheta’s recent emphasis on Cloud services means that Rekordbox users can access their library of tracks remotely. But for the most part there’s been no way for users of streaming giants Spotify or Apple Music to make use of their subscriptions for DJing.

That’s set to change with the launch of DJ with Apple Music, a new functionality for the streaming service aimed at making the platform’s library available to DJs.

This manifests in a few ways. Firstly, as a new section within Apple Music’s own interface that hosts a variety of curated DJ-focused playlists. This has playlists built around genres, as well as those curated by DJs and DJ gear brands.

More significantly, it also means that Apple Music will now be integrated into a variety of different DJing platforms including Serato, AlphaTheta’s Rekordbox, and inMusic’s Engine DJ, Denon DJ, Numark, and RANE DJ.

While functionality is a little different across different platforms, this means that Apple Music subscribers can mix with tracks from the service’s library within their chosen DJ platform, as well as apply tags, set cue points and build playlists.

On the AlphaTheta front, Apple Music arrives in the desktop version of Rekordbox (v7.1), along with rekordbox for iOS, and will also be implemented into two of the brand’s all-in-one DJ systems, the XDJ-AZ and Omnis-Duo.

The company also tells us that integration should roll out for the CDJ-3000s and Opus-Quad in the near future, and will be present in all future product releases.

With Serato, users can access Apple Music tracks from the downloads pages of both Serato DJ Lite and Serato DJ Pro.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t the first time Apple Music has been integrated into a DJ platform – users of Algoriddim Djay can already stream tracks from Apple Music. Rival streaming platform Tidal is already integrated into several DJ platforms too. However, today’s announcement is certainly the most high-profile crossover we've seen between a streaming platform and the DJ realm.

A notably absent name from the list of integrated applications is Native Instruments’ Traktor, which is a shame, as the latest iteration – Traktor Pro 4 – impressed us when it finally arrived last year.

“Apple Music is committed to supporting DJs,” says Stephen Campbell, Global Head of Dance, Electronic & DJ Mixes at Apple Music. “With this latest integration, we’re taking that commitment even further – seamlessly connecting Apple Music with the industry’s leading DJ software and hardware. This innovation brings the full power of Apple Music into the creative workflow, making it easier than ever for DJs to access, play, and discover music in real time.”

It’s worth noting a couple of major caveats that mean this functionality is likely to appeal primarily to beginner and hobbyist DJs, at least for the time being.

Firstly, there’s no offline functionality for DJing with Apple Music tracks. This means you can’t download and save tracks added to your DJ platform of choice, and won’t be able to access them without a stable internet connection – something we’d be wary of when it comes to playing any high-profile sets.

Secondly, Apple Music’s terms of service state that music can only be used for noncommercial purposes, which means that using streamed tracks for any paid DJ gigs – including weddings, club gigs, parties, etc – would be a violation of said terms.

To point out the obvious too, making use of Apple Music within any DJ platform will require both a subscription to Apple Music and subscription to/license for your DJ software of choice.

On the positive side, closing the gap between the streaming services we use for listening to music and DJ software libraries is a massive step forward for beginner and at-home DJs. In the past, when DJing relied on physical media like vinyl or CDs, or even in more recent times when a library of purchased tracks or dedicated subscription was required, getting started as a DJ could be a prohibitively expensive process.

Integration like this will certainly make it cheaper for beginners to try their hand at DJing, as well as explore new styles and genres.

Speaking as somebody that no longer DJs in public regularly, but has been roped out of retirement to play at a few friends' weddings in recent years, this functionality would have saved me hours of prep time if it had been available a few years ago. (It's not a violation of the terms of service if you're getting paid in free drinks, right? – I'll have our lawyers look into this).

The launch of DJ with Apple Music follows the platform’s introduction of DJ Mixes back in 2021, which integrated streamable mixed sets into the library.

Explore Apple Music’s new DJ playlists at the DJ with Apple Music homepage.

Find out more about specific platform integration with Serato, Rekordbox, Engine DJ and Djay.

Actually, forget pedalboard-friendly for a second, because this goes way beyond that. How about simply an oil can delay sound that’s practical for 21st-century guitar players. There’s a lot of functionality here that would have blown Ray Lubow’s mind if you were to show him it back in 1959 when he filed the patent application for his oil can delay. And it expands upon the original mono versions of the Black Fountain that OBNE has released over the years.

At its core, the oil can sound has a certain character to the repeats that sets it apart from its tape, analogue or digital counterparts. It has the warmth of an analogue delay but there’s some inherent modulation with it, and a little grit, too, that works so well with an electric guitar signal. Black Fountain presents players with a lot of ways to shape their repeats.

There are a lot of dials. That is the OBNE way. Little wonder OBNE gets designer Dan Pechacek to “explain it all” in a video whenever they drop a new design.

But here are the essentials. You have two separate controls for the left and right channel delays, Time L and Time R, plus the choice of six rhythmic subdivisions when you hold down the tap tempo footswitch (yes, there’s tap tempo).

Tone dials in the warmth of the repeats. Grit dials in the amount of grit there in the repeats. Rate and Depth are there for adjusting the modulation. Between these you will find some sweet spots for sure.

There’s also a Feedback control, for setting the number of repeats, Dry and Wet controls to adjust how much unprocessed and processed signal is in your sound, and there is also a Space control that might be one of the three mini-dials but seems integral to how this will sound, allowing you to set the Black Fountain up for mono operation, to adjust the stereo width, and to add diffusion once you turn it past noon.

There are two soft-relay footswitches. One turns the pedal on and off and the other is a tap tempo/aux footswitch that, if you hold it down, gives you infinite feedback. A cool feature.

It also operates as a preset switcher. That’s right, we have presets here. We also have full MIDI connectivity, and you can assign any one of these knobs to an external expression pedal.

Black Fountain is not so much a straight-up oil can delay simulator, it’s a full-on workstation. And it comes in three different colourways: Terracotta, Cream and Slate. Feed it 9V DC and a minimum of 350mA from a pedalboard power supply and you’re good to go.

Priced $299, it is available now. See Old Blood Noise Endeavors for more details.