Beats, shoots and leaves

Electronic music producer Arca has partnered with a leather company to create some BDSM headphones.

It’s a big moment for experimental music, after a week that saw one of its own go so far as spending time with Elon Musk in a Tesla choker just to get the sonic genre some inches in Downtime.

Arca might have been able to upstage fellow musician Grimes in the bid to gain the ultimate token of tech-world notoriety, but anyone who ever misplaces their favoured headphones and has to make do with the pair of Beats earbuds they have lying around knows Dr Dre still reigns as this field’s master masochist.

At a far more competitive price, and offering the thrill of mini sink plungers being lodged into your earholes to suck parts of your brain out through the sides of your head at any given moment, Dr Dre’s silicon ear tips are every sexual deviant’s dream.

But we know our audience and can hear the safeword being screamed out. We know when we’ve taken our tech-based observational comedy into realms too obscure. This one really depends on a knowledge of frankly esoteric musical references and once being gifted some Beats earphones during tense iPhone contract negotiations.

That’s all we have for you this week, though, and until someone gives Michael McIntyre an Amazon Echo, we’re all you’ve got.