Take a brief look at the contents of this month's steaming saucy scandal sheet. Feeling a little schizoid? You'd be quite right if you were, both if you, because this month we've covered a wider area than the Ordnance Survey.

In deference to the current confused state of the music scene our cover feature on super-samplers The Art of Noise nestles cheek by Fairlight with an erudite exposition on the art of the saxophone. Killing Joke and King propound putting out energy on stage; Matt Bianco prefer putting on the Ritz in the studio.

One of the main points of argument between the high-tech and the high-energy camps is the ethics and politics of resynthesis; the 'borrowing' of bits from other people and re-using them in your own context. And it's sure to become one of the big issues of the business soon as cheap sampling becomes more and more widespread and viable. Certain products must be waiting with bated breath, whether sinned against or sinning.

But you'll find in our Art of Noise piece a simple summing up of resynthesizing sensibly from sampling ace JJ: "If people insist on sampling other people's music and resythesizing sound we'll end up with no music of any worth. There has to be an investment in the future. Everything can't be derivative."

So as you cringe under the flood of identikit idiots taking other people's hard-won sounds in vain, remember, when the public gets bored with the sampling boom it'll be only the bands who use it as a creative tool rather than a gimmick who survive.

Don't just watch this space — sample it.