Molten Music Monthly April 2025

Molten Music Monthly April 2025

Molten Music Monthly
robinv

Crazy machines, a lot of Synthesizer Expander Modules, and a bucket full of modular feature in this month’s music tech roundup.

 

Balfolk Boombox – Kicking off with something you’ve never seen before – a modular synth playing hurdy gurdy. A hurdy gurdy is a fabulously ancient instrument that consists of a wheel that essentially you turn to bow strings. It generates these earthy drones that you can then play using an integrated row of buttons. I almost made one at university when i was seriously into my folk music. Anyway, some bloke called Rory was inspired by a MIDI hurdy gurdy made by famed hurdy gurdy builder Sam Palmer to pump one full of synths – and that’s what we have. Looks like he’s got a Behringer Model D in there, a drum source, effects and a sample player. It’s very cool while at the same time inevitably sounds like a wasp trapped in a bottle – which is what all hurdies should sound like. Best thing of the week though – we need more handle driven music.

Bastl Instruments Kastle 2 Wave Bard – Another one of these weird little patch boxes from Bastl in the same form as the FX Wizard. This is a sample player with sequences, patterns and some cool sample manipulation. Obviously it’s packed full of patch points and is going to get fiddly but is it fun? Hopefully some videos with turn up to tell us.

Make Noise Jumbler – It’s a six input, six output re-routing party where the inputs can be rotated through the outputs. This gives you a lot of potential modulation variation or audio destination shenanigans. It’s analogue and all about smooth transitions rather than switches. Rotate changes the order, Radiate combines and blends. You can send one thing to six things or vice versa. LEDs are nice – Could get fun!

Gforce TVS Pro – Gloriously authentic emulation of the Oberheim TVS Pro – the modern version of the classic two-voice, double SEM, super sequencer synthesizer. It has a unique way of working where you have two completely independent SEM voices working together or apart with this need to be sequenced. It sounds very old fashioned, like it’s from your dads old prog rock records. Sounds amazing though and feels very different to other synths.

Behringer Deepmind X and 2-XM – Having just done an extensive review of the Gforce TVS Pro emulation I can assure you that the Behringer 2-XM is no “Two-Voice”. The TVS was brilliant because of its combination of keyboard, sequencer and SEMs and the way they could be routed and played with. The Behringer 2-XM basically gives you two SEMs to play with – and that’s awesome – but don’t think it’s something it’s not. As it is it looks fun and you can address it in unison, split or duo mode via MIDI, which is something.

The Deepmind X is a tenth anniversary edition of Behringer’s first jump into synths a whole decade ago. It’s been painted to be a lot more blantantly Roland Juno-esque and that’s about it. It’s the same decent analog polysynth in 6, 12 or desktop voices which seems to have out of stock for years – so it’s good to hear that stock is coming back. Shame there’s no big new feature.

NR Synth Solo – talking of SEMs, NR Synth has built one by hand based on the origianl specs. It has an additional sub oscillator, noise, punchier envelopes and some additional modulation but otherwise it’s that fabulous two oscillator into SEM filter sound.

Rides in the Storm SED-CSM – The long awaited synth voice from Rides is upon us. It has two VCOs, the subs, wavefolding, noise, ring mod, loopable enveloeps, two LFOs and a 24db filter packed into a eurorack module. I’m enjoying the layout, loving the mixer section and the ease with which everything seems to flow. It’s busy but intuitive and semi-modular so it will work without patching.

Cherry Audio Yellow Jacket – It’s a Wasp! Of course it is, that most lively and unreliable of British synths that buzzed its way into classic status – for the colour if nothing else. Chery audio have cheerfully taken it to a ridiculous 16 voices, tidied it all up, expanded the filter, emulated the silly little internal speaker and bolted on an arp with probability.

Cre8audio Assembler and Boom Chick – Assembler is the little desktop Eurorack and synth mixer you’ve been waiting for. It’s simple, sounds good, three aux sends, mono and stereo channels, panning, mute and a mix output. None of this channel strip nonsense although there’s some eq on the first two channels. No frills but no filler either – great job.

Boom Chick is an analog drum machine with kick, snare and hi-hat and then two analogue FM drum channels which can be all sorts of things. I’m still getting to grips with it but I’ll have a review soon.

Intellijel Multigrain – More granular nonsense this time with 8 stereo channels of morphing. It scrapes grains from 8 available sounds on the SD card and layers them up into some sort of nightmare. You have, i think, two scenes that you can morph between and you can sequence between sounds. Looks pretty exciting in the video if you like zapping between samples in an aphex twin sort of way. I rarely find anything i like about granular sampling but if anyone can make it interesting Intellijel can….. Or maybe not.

Knobula Monumatic – Knobula are back with another polyphonic synth for Eurorack. This time it’s billed as a huge monophonic CV synth or a wide MIDI polysynth and I think that’s a great distinction. The Polycinematic suffered a bit for not getting across the CV vrs MIDI thing and ended up perhaps frustrating modular users who didn’t have MIDI. Monumatic handles this better and has a more lucid chord system so you can get polyphony out of it with CV. Otherwise it has a wonderful stack of virtual analog sounds from Supersaw, Vox Humana, Casio CZ, Solina, organ, strings, PWM, saw and square. It also has six filter types and overdrive. I’m going to be doing a deep dive into this one very soon.

Arturia V Collection 11 – One of the best collections of software synths gets an update and adds one or two nice little trinkets. Along with absolutely everything else you get the new JP-8000 supersaw VA synth and the Pure Lofi vintage synth. I’ve reviewed the Pure Lofi and found it to be pretty darn awesome. Someone commented that it was just like a sample set of Pigments but actually that’s not the case. It’s a proper synth with lo-fi focused oscillators and sounds generators, filters, modulation and vintage effects by the bucket. You can add your own samples and mix it in with the library and virtual analog elements – it’s really good. Other existing synths like the Minibrute and Synthx get added and there are new Augmented Instruments. A solid update i would say and much better value than buying a handful on their own.

Vadik Minkin Kaleidoscope – Another one of these crazy little boxes full of every type of synth. But this is from Soma’s Vadim Minkin and has something about it. It’s called Kaleidoscope and features four tracks of generative grooving using subtractive, additive, physical modelling and FM synthesis and some serious overdrive. There’s all sorts of clever pattern generation going on a wonderfully retro display to baffle you with parameters and values. The interface is intriguingly weird and it could be a lot of fun.

Sebsongs Rhythmatic – Drum machine derived from the Roland CR-78. It features kick, snare, conga, rim, hi-hat and cymbal. It comes with 64 patterns ready to go with swing and synacable tempo. It uses cryptic LEDs to indicate bank and pattern selection, and you can aslo use the same buttons for muting the tracks. You’ve got some tuning and decay controls over various bits. You can program your own patterns in step mode. The big knob in the middle adds intensity by throwing in extra steps and triggers making the track more or less busy.

Mzourack Diktaat – loving this four-channel trigger sequencer. You may know that I had to give the Detroit Pink87 back which was a similar idea. I loved being able to generate quick trigger patterns. You can do it with the Bastl Neo Trinity but it’s a bit fiddly. This could be a great replacement for the Pink87. Four channels, four switch/pad/buttons, it has mutes and probability and pattern saving although I quite liked having to refind the rhythms whenever i powered on my case.  It looks a little complex and fully featured but could be awesome.

Erica Synths FM Drum – A cool drum circuit designed around FM synthesis and part of the mki x es.edu series. Comes as an easy to build kit and explores FM in its most basic and raw way. They also announce that there will be a complete DIY Drum system that features the FM Drum along with the previously seen kick, snare, hit-hat, compressor, and BBD along with a forthcoming drum sequencer and mixer.

Adamsynths Warthog – Total Recall Modular system. It’s a futuristic looking modular synth system with the ability to recall all the settings, including patch points. So you can morph between presets, and get directed as to what patches to which and then get full MIDI control as well. The standard serving suggestion has three oscillators, two filters, routing matrix, couple of envelopes, a modulation module and the all important central control unit. It’s certainly something interesting for people who need to return to a patch – for live performance or repeatability. But we have lots of MIDI control on semi-modular synths already so it’s not that innovative. Ultimately for me the fun of modular is in the discoverability and always finding new sounds rather than returning to something – surely it would be easier to use a regular synth?

Noisy Fruit Labs Mango – A hybrid MIDI and CV controller? Whatever next? 141 addressable controls including knobs, pots, encoders, faders and buttons. All the faders and most of the pots also have CV outputs. It’s quite an immense thing and could be brilliant for people looking to integrate MIDI and modular in their performance. There’s a smaller desktop one called Lemon and a Eurorack format one called Kiwi.

Tariffs – Youtuber and music tech influencer Ricky Tinez had some things to say about tariffs. Mostly we’re trying to ignore the implications but as I’ve been recently working on a “Best Synths under $1000” video it’s become a bit of a problem. The basic issue is that Trump has imposed tariffs on almost everything coming in from outside america. As the majority of synths are made outside america that means prices will go up for americans because the tariffs are due on import. So, while it’s true that Trump is raising a load of cash with the tariffs the reality is that its americans who are paying for it – it’s just a tax on yourself. Anyway, go and listen to Ricky’s measured wisdom. Sonic State has also talked about doing a special on it.