You can now build your own Liquid Foam Eurorack module from a relatively easy kit to bring some of that weird synthy groovy goodness to your modular.
Liquid Foam Eurorack DIY
It completely passed me by that Herbs & Stones had released a Eurorack version of the Liquid Foam. When did that happen? I love the whole Herbs & Stones vibe. It’s like an earthier, more organic and tangible version of Teenage Engineering. That probably sounds like a bizarre comparison, but it makes some kind of sense in my head. Both feel a bit too cool for regular people and somehow I’d never feel creative enough to own one. However, there’s a warmth that comes from Herbs & Stones that invites you into the grooviness of whatever it is that it’s about.
So what is it about? Well, Liquid Foam is an “analogue groovebox” that uses two sequencers that dual to the death over the generation of interesting patterns and grooves. It has a wave-shaped VCO, a self-inverting envelope, a 2-pole resonant filter and an overdrive.
Is it really a groovebox as we’d normally expect one to be? Probably not. Liquid Foam is more like a TB-303 Bass Line that’s spent the summer on a hippy commune getting groovy and out of its mind. It’s monophonic and so these two sequencers, set in the two boxes on the front, compete for dominance in a bit of a dance-off as you patch things in. It’s both much simpler than it may appear and then deeper in its exploration of rhythms and sounds.
The kit looks really straightforward. All the surface mount has been done for you so really it’s just about soldering the front panel hardware and putting the knobs on.
Definitely, an interesting box, as all of Herbs & Stones products are. And the particularly awesome thing about the DIY version is that it’s only €199, which is half the price of the built version and another reason why my comparison to Teenage Engineering is complete nonsense.
I’m very tempted to give this a go, but having recently impulse-purchased the Particles and booked flights to Superbooth I am well out of budget for nice things for some time to come. You should get one though; it’s pretty wild.
- Herb & Stones website.
- Herbs & Stones on Perfect Circuit.
