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How records get made in 2026 from the industry's own reports

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About

XLR is a magazine, a radar and a diary about music gear and the making of music — for the people who make records and put on shows, wherever they do it.

The name is the three-pin connector that every signal in the business passes through: the microphone on stage and in the booth, the line to the desk, the DMX cable that runs the lights. Studio, stage and lighting rig share it, and so does this magazine. Every few hours XLR collects what the makers shipped, what the reviewers heard, what the studios and the touring crews are doing, which producers and collectives are surfacing and what they are saying — synths and modular, plugins and DAWs, guitars and drums, microphones, monitors, PA and lights, the rooms and the people — from a few hundred sources in English, German, French, Spanish, Japanese and more, then plots what is moving. The editor writes a letter every few days. Nothing is sold here; when a link leads to a shop, that is the maker's shop, not ours.

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The WireScenes

Against The Grain: Listening after Palantir

September 8

Machine listening is transforming environmental sound into data points that support surveillance infrastructure, changing what it means to hear, argues Stephen Roddy in The Wire 512 On 28 February 2026, Shajareh Tayyebeh

Read at The Wire ↗

One letter a week, in your inbox.

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Against The Grain: Listening after Palantir

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