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Gear

ENKI announces the launch of its newest model, the ENKI X case.

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Steve Albini in the control room at his Electrical Audio studio in Chicago.

Photo by Kevin Tiongson

Words of wisdom from the legendary engineer, proprietor of Chicago’s Electrical Audio, World Series of Poker champion, and, in the band Shellac, the compass for brutal guitar aesthetics.

“All day every day, we’re grinding it out,” says engineer Steve Albini of his team at Electrical Audio, the Chicago studio he built and has run since 1997. “We’re constantly in session, constantly under fire.”

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A broad range of voices and a clever morph control unlock uncommon ambient reverb sounds that break the same-old-cathedral-verb mold.

Many unusual tonalities that defy affordable ambient reverb convention. High-quality controls. Morph control covers a lot of tones shifting without an expression pedal.

Setting up morph control can feel less than intuitive.

$219

Pigtronix Cosmosis
pigtronix.com

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4.5
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Pigtronix boss Dave Koltai is an energetic guy—particularly when you get him chatting about music. He loves the musical potential of the guitar. And while he seems to have an affection for every kind of guitar expression, from the rootsiest to the most experimental, his heart often seems to be very invested in the latter camp. Pigtronix pedals have always hinted at that affection for out-there modes of guitar thought, and the new Cosmosis stereo reverb definitely exists, in part, to serve those urges. Billed as an ambient reverb, the Cosmosis spans big-picture reverb profiles and more modest ones. And while it doesn’t necessarily achieve anything revolutionary, it features many unique sounds and a cool, practical morph control, which enables users to shift between very divergent settings using a footswitch instead of a space-hogging expression pedal. Together with the many spacious voices on tap, it helps make Cosmosis a varied and versatile time-warping device.

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For their new record, Judas Priest turned back the clock to time warp some of their ’70s prog-metal spirit into 2024.

Photo by Simon Reed

On their new album, Judas Priest brandish an Invincible Shield of righteous heavy metal.

When people talk about Judas Priest, the band’s biggest hits easily spring to mind, and rightfully so. “Breaking the Law,” “Living After Midnight,” “Heading Out to the Highway,” and “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” were the songs that made the iconic British metal band a household name in the ’80s. But long before such MTV-friendly anthems catapulted them into superstardom, and more recently, earned them a nod from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Musical Excellence category, Judas Priest cut a more progressive rug.

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These devices can help you create studio-quality tracks on the fly—anywhere.

They’re small, but create WAV-file, studio-quality sounds. I’m talking about portable field recorders—a valuable and affordable tool for location recordings, live music, podcasts, and videographers and filmmakers. They come in a wide range of prices and offer a variety of functions, like interchangeable microphone capsules, multi-tracking, and USB interface capability. Plus, the noise issues associated with earlier iterations of these recorders is nonexistent. Here’s five, in the $199 to $499 price range, worth investigating. And note that Sony, Tascam, and Zoom have more models at lower and higher pricing.

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