Second instalment: the bender gets acne.

Software for the Atari ST

Tired of using pencil and paper to write out your music? Fancy a hi-tech fix for your next composition? Ian Waugh scores a line (or five) with a new graphics-based music notation package from French company SARO.

West 3 Studios

Rebuilding a studio control room is not a task for the feint of heart, as Dave Buckley of West 3 Studios in West London reveals in this amusing case study...

An investigation of this revolutionary 'new' audio metering device.

Wilf Smarties gives a new batch of CDs a spin.

A European music co-operative explained by Henry Cow/Art Bears percussionist Chris Cutler.

IN THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN

From indie rock to sampled success - this band have used technology to change their sound and get themselves into the charts. David Bradwell talks technology, samples and football to Beloved people.

Scanner I And II Radio Mic Systems

first news from the American gear show computer mailed from Chicago

...Including the A-Z of Analogue

Mixed media pioneers Matt Black and Rob Pepperell talk about their plans for the future of entertainment and art, as part of the Hex project

Do you live in peace with your cassette recorder? Or is your life full of mangled tape misery and longings for lost high frequencies? Confirmed reel-to-reelie David Mellor explains the problems that bedevil the cassette format, and offers some advice to make the medium work for you rather than against you.

After an apprenticeship under the wing of the Frankies' Trevor Horn, Simon Darlow spreads his own; he talks to Paul Tingen about the hazards of writing, playing and producing your own album.

Dave Simmons, the man behind the name on the hexagonal pad, holds forth on the past, present and future of electronic percussion. Paul White listens.

Newcastle CAT School of Music

A personal view of the School of Music at the Newcastle College of Arts and Technology, by one of its students, Paul Evans.

We meet the trio of men behind the Frank Chickens.

Cassette magazine

A potted history of this popular electronic music cassette magazine, by its co-founder Dennis Emsley

From being early Fairlight programmers, Simon Climie and Rob Fisher have pursued their songwriting career into the pop charts. Nicholas Rowland conducts the occasional interview.

The final disc in the Zero-G Datafile series joins Coldcut's Kleptomania in the growing library of sample CDs - Tim Goodyer checks them out, while Andy Neve loads The Sound Foundation's programming efforts into his Roland MKS70 in this month's Patchwork.

GuitarCheck

Dave Burrluck is pleasantly surprised by yet another pair of Japanese clones

The Mellotron

Once considered an instrument no keyboard player should be without, more recently regarded as a mechanical monstrosity, the Mellotron was definitely an early sampler, but was it the first? Dave "Crumbly" Crombie reminisces.