Currently opening the show for the Megadog Midi Circus, Toby Marks (aka Banco de Gaia) is living proof that one man and a rack full of gear can get an audience to its feet and keep it there. And as Phil Ward discovers, Toby enjoys meeting people, likes to travel and drives a small red van.

Neatly sidestepping the monotonous beats and cliched melodies that typify too many dance acts, this Swiss-American collaboration are making refreshing music. Simon Trask and Heinrich Zwahlen share a technical obsession.

Phil and Paul Hartnoll are Orbital, and their pioneering brand of user-friendly electronic dance music is a lot more fluid than the traffic on the motorway that prompted the name. So Phil Ward avoids the M25 and heads straight for the heart of the P&P music factory

London Calling

MIDI controller data can have many uses such as adding "feel" to music after it's been recorded into a sequencer. Vic "Megalomaniac" Lennard explores this and many other applications.

Steve Jansen & Richard Barbieri

Following a brief diversion in the form of last year's Rain Tree Crow project, Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri are once more pursuing their creative partnership. Paul Ireson reports on the recording of their latest album.

Effects processing is now an integral part of a recording studio - large or small. Aaron Hallas goes back to basics in this introduction to sound treatment.

The story of a CD

Not many people would have the courage to give up a lucrative career in the jingles business in order to record and release their own CD. But that's precisely what Simon Renouf has done, and this is his story...

Michel Huygen/Neuronium

This Spanish synthesist explains the working methods and motivation behind his psychotronic musical landscapes.

Roland P55 Piano Module

Close your eyes and you could be tickling those ivories...

Jon and Helena Marsh in their natural habitat

Boogie Back studios

What the North London jazz/soul studio may lack in technology, it makes up for in good vibes

Multiverb II Multiverb EXT

Dave Lockwood casts his eye over this brace of MIDI controllable multi-effects processors from ART.

Gordon Matthewman's interests in hi-tech and his horn have found him in some of the most unlikely musical settings with his project Blow. Simon Trask blows another man's trumpet.

Every news bulletin tells us more about "the recession" - but how badly is it affecting the music biz? Ian Waugh reports from the front line at the International Music Show.

Multi-fx Processor

Their LXP1 brought luxury reverb within reach of home studios, now Lexicon's LXP5 offers a variety of new effects to the studio on a budget. Robert Rich reads the lexicon of fx.

The drug culture of the rave scene continues to attract the attention of both the pop charts and the tabloid press. Tim Goodyer talks Ecstasy, agony and technology with one of the genre's heroes.

The new Human Rhythm Composer goes where no TR808 has gone before, into previously uncharted territories of feel and nuance.

The Ghost of Japan?

The members of Japan have come together once more, as Rain Tree Crow, after a 9-year hiatus. Nigel Humberstone talks to David Sylvian, Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri about the biggest reunification since Germany.

Die Krupps: hi-tech and heavy

Bob Dormon finds the Royal Academy moving with the times

News of some products to be released at the coming APRS exhibition, Acorn's new low-cost Archimedes computer, Akai's digital multitrack, and more.

Jazzer who likes to mix his rhythms

Meat Beat Manifesto are to music what Andy Warhol was to art - but they've already been famous for longer than 15 minutes. Phil Ward follows them to a Peel session and to their studio in Swindon, and finds that Meat is not, in fact, necessarily murder.

More news, views, and a smidgeon of hot gossip!