For me, the beauty of the Yamaha CS-80 was never in the instrument itself; it was in what Vangelis did with it. There’s nothing about the bulk of this synth that particularly appeals to me. It’s unwieldy, ungainly, strange and somewhat ugly. Give me a cool Sequential or moody Moog anytime, but this? It’s some […]
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Burst modules tend to give you a bunch of triggers or gates in response to an event. It’s like a rattling, a ratcheting or a fast slap about the face. You could use them to add sudden explosions of activity or if you massage them correctly they can produce interesting and varying rhythms for running […]
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My initial impression of the Malevolent was a bit of a car crash. I couldn’t get any sound out, couldn’t find what it was I needed to do. This was all during a live stream, so there was all sorts of pressure to get it playing, and I couldn’t seem to see the synth through […]
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Today we’re looking at the PONY VCO from Befaco. Why is it called the pony? I don’t think it’s important. What is important is that it’s an adorable, mini, compact analogue VCO with Wave Folding, Through Zero FM modulation and a built-in VCA. It’s the perfect little module for a small compact little modular system. […]
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The Pizza from Bastl Instruments is a fascinating digital oscillator with self-modulating FM and wave folding shenanigans. It’s carefully curated to make it full of sweet spots and nearly always musical. If you don’t normally like FM and audio rate modulations, then this might be for you. Here’s my video review and also an extended […]
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Today we’re looking at the Moog Mavis. You may have noticed when they released there was a tsunami of gooey and lovely videos from gooey and lovely YouTubers all about the gooey and loveliness of the Moog Mavis. It’s quite an extraordinary little synth, almost half the price of the Mother-32 and yet contains all […]
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Inspired by Buchla magic the West Pest embraces wave folding and dynamics to offer a left-field synthesizer experience. The West Pest is of course Cre8audio’s counterpart to the East Beast, a synthesizer I’ve already reviewed which is butchery smooth with that fantastic filter. So what is it that the West Pest offers that the East […]
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Today we’re looking at this teeny weeny Korg Volca FM2, the new version of the very popular Volca FM. It’s a little DX7 in a box or at least that’s what we like to say. It has that styling; it has the sound, and now perhaps with version two it also has the feel of […]
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Today I’m reviewing the Nymphes six-voice analogue polyphonic synthesizer from Dreadbox. The review is an edited transcript from my video review (below) for people who prefer to read. What you immediately notice is that it’s very small, adorably small. It’s made completely of metal, it feels as rigid as you could possibly imagine and it’s […]
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The East Beast is an East-coast synthesis-inspired subtractive semi-modular little synthesizer and Eurorack voice. It has one oscillator, a filter, an envelope, an LFO, VCA and then just a little bit of magic permeating in through the bottom section. It’s capable of smooth buttery sounds, of weirdness and strangeness; it’s capable of taking you out […]
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