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Robert Glasper becomes Rhodes ambassador: watch him playing Donny Hathaway’s Valdez in the Country on the new MK8 electric piano

Fresh from signing up James Blake as its first ambassador, Rhodes has now confirmed genre-crossing jazz-centric keyboard player Robert Glasper as its debut US endorsee.

Robert Glasper is a long-time fan of Rhodes pianos, and is currently playing the new MK8  nightly during his month-long ‘Robtober’ residency at famed New York jazz venue The Blue Note.

The 52-show run will feature performances from the likes of Yasiin Bey, Lalah Hathaway, Terrace Martin, Alex Isley and many more.

In celebration of the new partnership, Rhodes has released exclusive footage of Glasper performing Donny Hathaway’s Valdez in the Country at The Blue Note, with Terrace Martin joining him on saxophone.

Written in the ‘60s, Valdez in the Country was first recorded under the name Patty Cake by King Curtis and the Kingpins, with Hathaway including his own version on seminal 1973 album Extension of a Man.

The track has since been covered numerous times, including by George Benson, for his 1977 album, In Flight.

While at Rhodes HQ, the company’s Chief Electronics Engineer Cyril Lance is hard at work finalising the VCA and Bucket Brigade effects for the MK8-FX piano model.

Cyril Lance is a Moog Music alumni and was instrumental in the development of the classic Moogerfooger series of analogue effect pedals (which, incidentally, Moog has just brought back in plugin form). He also worked on the Little Phatty, Moog One, Sub-37, Grandmother, Matriarch and Sirin.

A demo of the MK8-FX is in the works, and should be shared with the world soon.

iZotope has announced that it is retiring Iris 2, Breaktweaker, and Trash 2.

Since Native Instruments and iZotope were combined into a new company, now known as Soundwide earlier this year and Native Instruments  announcement last month that they were retiring Absynth, and now it transpires that iZotope Iris 2 synthesizer, BreakTweaker drum machine and Trash 2 distortion effect are following it to the great plugin retirement home in the sky.

• iZotope Iris 2 is a sample-based synthesizer that they said combines ‘the power of a sampler, the flexibility of a modular synth, and the fun of spectral filtering’.
• BreakTweaker was created as a collaboration with BT, and was described as ‘futuristic drum sculpting and beat sequencing machine’.
• iZotope released Trash 2 in 2012, an update to its audio mangling and distortion app for Mac & Windows. They called it “the ultimate distortion plug-in for any instrument.”

A statement on iZotope’s website says: “iZotope products Iris 2, Breaktweaker, and Trash 2 are no longer available for purchase from iZotope.com . Support for these products will remain in effect for 12 months from your date of purchase.”

The company adds that: “If you have purchased these products through iZotope.com within the last 12 months, we will continue to provide you with technical support and updates to address critical issues that arise for up to 12 months from your purchase date. The support period for these products will end on October 27, 2023 for all users. We will not actively test compatibility of these products on new operating systems or host application versions after October 27, 2022, and the current system specifications for these products will not change.”

In explaining why the products are being discontinued, iZotope says: “iZotope is continually developing new products, services, and solutions to enable and innovate around audio production journeys. We occasionally need to retire older products in order to focus our resources and development efforts on building new, innovative products and features.”

Neither Iris, BreakTweaker or Trash has been updated for some time, so the three products discontinue does not come as a huge surprise. However, iZotope did recently add some of Trash’s distortion goodness to its Neutron 4 auto-mixing software, and Trash 2 was actually given away for free as part of a Soundwide holiday promotion in 2021.

Earlier this year, it was announced that Plugin Alliance and Brainworx were also joining the Soundwide roster. Whether either of these companies’ products will also fall by the wayside remains to be seen.

Of its reasons for retiring Absynth, NI said last month: “Discontinuing Absynth was not an easy decision to make, but the resource required to keep the product in line with modern standards has become too much of a challenge. Absynth has also long been in need of updates and improvements, and we are unfortunately not able to provide the synth with the attention it needs.”

For more information, see the FAQ on the iZotope website.

Bleep Labs has introduced the Sensory Coupler, a new Eurorack module that lets you convert touch, proximity, light, magnetic fields, motion, and more into CV and gate signals.

Features:

• Built-in touch contact and 1/8? TRS jack sensor interface. Other sensors and devices like expression pedals can be easily added. DIY info coming soon.
• Calibration mode. Sensors produce different readings in different environments, the Sensory Coupler calibrates them to utilize the entire 0-10V CV output range.
• CV output based on calibrated or raw sensor data. 0-10V.
• Two gate outputs. Work based on an adjustable threshold level. When the sensor reading is above or inside the threshold, GATE will output 12V while! GATE will be 0V and vice versa.
• Smoothing modes. Sensor readings can be chaotic when you might not want them to be so there are two smoothing modes. One simply averages readings to create slow rises and falls while the other acts like an envelope follower with adjustable decay.
• Large LED strip display. Visualizes the sensor reading, threshold, smoothing mode and more.
• USB MIDI standalone mode. The Sensory Coupler can work without modular +-12V power, getting power with the built in USB-C connector and sending and receiving MIDI notes and CC. In USB mode gate outputs work at 4V instead of 12V but CV out is disabled.

Sensory Coupler is available to pre-order for $250.