Magnetic tape reels, once the foundation of music recording, are now collecting dust in forgotten basement corners, but in the hands of Japan’s Open Reel Ensemble, these relics become something extraordinary: the JIGAKKYU. This trio—Ei Wada, Haruka Yoshida, and Masaru Yoshida—have created an unconventional sound using bamboo bows and magnetic tape .
Paul Davids, a Dutch guitarist, walked into the vast halls of Austria’s Zwentendorf Nuclear Power Plant three years ago. The plant was built in the 70s, but never operational. However, it had an acoustic wonder: a reverb so big it felt like the notes went on forever. Davids captured this with guitar in hand, and the result was a sound akin to playing in a concrete and steel cathedral. Fast forward to 2025 and that experience has been transformed into the Nucleo Reverb, a pedal made by Italian boutique maker Cornerstone Music Gear.
Photo credit: Porsche | RM Sotheby’s
Dua Lipa, the British pop star behind hits like “Levitating” and “Don’t Start Now,” has a secret passion: cars. She’s co-designed a bespoke Porsche 911 GT3 RS, a beautifully engineered machine that combines Porsche’s precision with Lipa’s style. Up for auction to support her Sunny Hill Foundation, this is a showstopper.
Out of the blue, a band called The Velvet Sundown exploded onto Spotify, racking up close to a million monthly listeners in just a few weeks. Their tunes are being described as a trippy, psychedelic rock. But here’s the kicker: behind those guitar licks and mysterious vocals, there’s a big conundrum—no one’s quite sure if this band is actually real.
Cassette tapes, those chunky ‘80s and ‘90s throwbacks, are sneaking back into the spotlight. Riding the wave of vinyl’s comeback and the allure of tangible media, Maxell’s MXCP-P100 portable cassette player is an interesting blend of old-school aesthetics and new-school tech. This $90 gadget plays your long-forgotten mixtapes and beams their fuzzy charm to Bluetooth headphones, feeling like a time machine you can juice up with a USB-C cable.
Roland’s Mood Pan (MN-10) is a wild mashup of electronic hand percussion, Bluetooth speaker, and meditation tool, built to carve out a slice of calm through sound. Known for ruling the electronic music gear scene, Roland’s crafted a portable ASMR buddy that’s as intriguing as it is soothing.
Amid the jugglers, singers, and contortionists on America’s Got Talent, a pack of robotic dogs from Boston Dynamics trotted onto the stage, delivering a performance that left jaws on the floor. These weren’t your average auditionees. They were Spot robots, the four-legged marvels of engineering, choreographed to Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now”.
Wu-Tang Clan fans, get hyped! Revealed at Summer Game Fest 2025, Wu-Tang Rise of the Deceiver, crafted by Brass Lion Entertainment, is a co-op action RPG that blends the raw pulse of hip-hop with slick anime-style combat and a bold Afro-surrealist twist. You’ll plunge into the mythic world of Shaolin, teaming up with the Wu-Tang Clan to take on a shadowy force called the Deceiver.
Loughborough University’s physicists have pulled off something wild: a violin so small it could sit on a human hair without breaking a sweat. Clocking in at just 35 microns long and 13 microns wide, this platinum stunner isn’t headed for Carnegie Hall but a microscope slide, showcasing the mind-blowing precision of a new nanolithography system that’s got big ambitions.
