Just got back from Machina Bristronica and I have much to tell you. So grab a coffee and let’s explore Bristol’s synth festival and a plenty of other bits and pieces from September’s releases.
Reflections of Bristonica
A fabulous weekend of beeps, boops, beer and conversation. In terms of performances, discussions and talks there was so much I didn’t see which I’m sorry about, but the days seemed to be whisked away in a hundred conversations with engaged, thoughtful and creative people passionate about synths and music technology. It was great spending time with you.
Much of what was on show is already known and I’ve already talked about but there were a couple of things that I hadn’t seen before that definitely grabbed my attention.
Atov Faderpunk – First was Faderpunk from the Atov Project. This is an evolution of the 16n CV/MIDI/I2C controller that’s essentially a massive 16 channel fader bank. With Faderpunk they’ve turned it into a infinitely configurable super-controller. The idea is that you can program each fader to be whatever you want it to be. So it could be an LFO, an envelope, a random generator, Turing machine, sequencer, quantizer, whatever. You just plug it into a computer, run the appropriate app and allocate it to a fader. What I love is that this is multi-functionality that doesn’t hide behind one slider or interface, you have it all out on the table as this fabulous surface of function and utility. I think this could be brilliant.
Forge-Time VHIKK X – What they heck is this thing? It’s some weird algorithmic sound generator and drone machine that warps, spans, morphs and seeds itself into existance. It has a lot of stuff going on and your job is to ride the knobs and convince yourself that you’re in control of anything. It pulses, globs and bubbles, it strains and spits against itself and then processes the heck out of the result. It’s difficult to describe but there’s something about it where you come away feeling like you were briefly engaged with something epic. The VHIKK X is being expanded and built on all the time – they have some new processing-focused algorithms which suggests that you should have one for sound generation and another one for processing. I spoke to the maker guy and he’s really chilled and is thoroughly enjoying the fact that people love his module.
https://forge-tme.com/vhikk-x/
Other bits I came across:
Runic Labs who are passionate about signal quality. They were showing a Passive DI that converts Eurorack signal into a balanced microphone signal that you can plug directly into a mixer. It gives you a solid audio connection and lets you use mic preamps to colour the sound – proper stuff.
Laine Modular focus on the 1U part of Eurorack and had a bunch of nice modules. New ones included the Calico wide bandpass designed to sort of hug the chunk of the frequency spectrum around some audio to keep your different sounds apart, and the Liana Boundary EQ.
Divergent Waves had the One Shot module that throws out a bunch of waveforms in response to a trigger. It’s about envelopes I guess but it’s really just a one-shot modulation machine for anything. You can set up repeats as bursts of stuff and it has that fab big button for firing off manual mods.
https://www.divergentwaves.co.uk/module/oneshot/
Dwyfor Tech I had seen before but I don’t remember talking about them so they had a really nice looking array of three modules, the Deuawd phaser, the Pas-Isel filter and the Cryfder dual-diode VCA with tube driven mixer.
https://www.instagram.com/dwyfortech/
Playtronica Orbita – I’ve spoken about this intriguing machine a few times and I actually had the chance to have a go on one. It’s more robust than I thought and a heck of a lot of fun. There’s a toy vibe about it that’s difficult to shake but I was really impressed with the build quality and it definitely gets you thinking. The only problem is that you start thinking you’ll need at least three!
https://shop.playtronica.com/products/orbita
Music Thing Modular – New version of the Radio music where you stick in an SD card full of audio and you can tune through them like a radio. The new version is much higher fidelity, it has speed control and, if you add the 8MU MIDI controller, you have remote control over all sorts of cool sampling parameters.
Half-time modular 8TR – 8 track recorder built into a module. A bit like the ALM Stem recorder we saw last month but this looks really simple. SD card, record button, 24bit/48khz, chainable for more channels or expandable to output. 4HP or 1U.
https://www.halftimemodular.com/
Seaside Modular Proteus Sequencer – Pulled into reality from VCV Rack Proteus is an impatient generative sequencer that will regenerate melodies depending on how bored it gets. What a totally fabulous approach to sequencing – a search for something less tedious – love it.
https://seaside.digital/product/proteus/
Konstantine Croak – Extended Technique Generator is a complex oscillator that makes weird sounds through the manipulation of faders as two elements drive into each other. You have things like Bite, Swell, Growl and other physical modelling concepts that lean towards woodwinds. Odd and fascinating.
MyVolts Silent Alchemist – Isolated USB power hub that removes all the noise from your gear by using USB-C power and the MyVolts “step-up” adapters that turn the USB connection into DC power. All the ports are up to 20w and there’s one that’s 100w that can power a laptop. Basically it can power anything except direct mains gear. It’s the future of synth jams.
https://myvolts.com/SilentAlchemist
Feedme Synthesis Cadex – Huge desktop circular polyrhythmic sequencer that runs 5-channels of sequencing and moving between a couple of patterns via a touchable interface. Looks pretty mad.
https://www.feed-me-synthesis.co.uk/
I’m sure there was loads more and I’m sorry I didn’t get to speak to everyone I wanted to or see all the things I hoped to. So If I missed your new thing – let me know and I’ll have a look next month.
Sequential Fourm – The star of the show was probably Fourm, a new, relatively affordable synth from Sequential. It’s a good-looking little synth and surprisingly compact and quite cute. It has Prophet style flourishes, a straightforward interface and sounds great. It is a four-voice analogue synth with two oscillators, two envelopes and an LFO – good basic stuff. The surprise is that it has polyphonic aftertouch. This is cool while also being weird. It means that nearly all the presets wobble all over the place as soon as you apply a small amount of pressure. Thankfully, you can turn it off, and then enjoy the simple pleasure of analogue synthesis before digging back into the manic modulations. It has presets so the knobs don’t always point to things, but I liked the layout but was disappointed by the lack of DSP which gives it a very dry sound – that’s fine but means that you feel you’re going to have to plug it into something else. Also, the black keys are weirdly slim. But for £799 it’s possibly the first sequential synth I could actually afford. Similar in price to the Moog Messenger which gives you quite an interesting decision.
https://sequential.com/modern-analog/fourm/
UDO DMNO – Looking a lot like an Oberheim Two Voice the DMNO is an 8-voice hybrid synthesizer that actually has nothing to do with the two-voice and I think they’re going to get annoyed being asked about it because it’s seems so obvious – anyway! It is two synths, two four-voice synths giving you a bi-timbral experience with lots of fun play modes. Like the other UDO synths you have high-resolution FPGA digital oscillators which run through the new Multi-Core stereo analogue filters. It has an arpeggiator, sequencer, lots of effects and is all pulled together rather smartly in a compact-ish form factor. I didn’t get a chance to try it but this looks pretty fabulous.
https://www.udo-audio.com/dmno
Kodamo MASK1EX – Kodamo brought us something interesting a while back with the Bitmask synthesis built into a large format synthesizer for a relatively premium price. Bitmasking splits up waveforms into parts which can be flipped and messed with giving you a huge variety of sounds from simple sine waves. Now, they’ve dropped the MASK1EX, a compact desktop version that has all the sounds of the MASK1 but for a fraction of the price. It has two bitmask oscillators, two filters, four envelopes and a couple of LFOs. It’s a little bit cut down in terms of specs from the original, but by-golly you get a lot of sound for your money. Apparently this is one-off run and it’s already sold out so….. What can you do. It sounds really interesting but it’s not exactly thrilling me with that interface.
Future Retro 777 – They first produced this in 1997 as a take on the Roland TB-303 but with more of everything. It had a second oscillator, FM, noise, filter overdrive, different filter types, phase distortion and lots of other goodies that were being hacked into 303s at the time. Of course it had a much better sequencer which is why it was so popular. Future Retro has dug up the old schematics and have been working to bring this back using more readily available parts and modern manufacturing. This will include a REMIX feature from the Revolution/Orb sequencers to add a bit of spice. It’s on kickstarter and they’ve already got double what they were asking for.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/futureretro/futureretro-777
Robaux SL0P1 (sloppy) – Cool looking circular quantizer for Eurorack that builds scales and chords…. except this is all about MIDI. The idea is that you plug in your MIDI controller and it will give you built-in scales and one-note chords. All you do is hit the notes on the keyboard wheel and you will be pulled in line. While some Eurorack modules do have MIDI its still a bit of a rarity and so I’m left wondering why this is a modular module rather than a standalone little box. It’s a useful idea for your MIDI gear but seems like a slightly odd use of HP.
https://robaux.io/products/slop1
Elektron Tonverk – It’s another one of these dark and brooding Elektron boxes that certainly doesn’t look a bit like anything else they’ve done. The Tonverk is a powerful sampler, with 8 audio tracks and 8 bus tracks to power and manipulate the sampling engine. You have regular single samples and for the first time polyphonic multi-sampled instruments. You can also craft your own sample-based instruments. It has a huge sequencer, loads of effects, tracks within tracks, a built-in keyboard and a whole bunch of routing options. Actually it does look a bit different and maybe this is going off in a different direction taking in more of a workstation feel and perhaps offering a more complete solution. Is it about time for me to look a little deeper into the Elektron ecosystem?
https://www.elektron.se/explore/tonverk
Noise Engineering Mimetic Digitwolis – It’s a four-channel cartesian performance sequencer. Each channel can be pitch, modulation, triggers, gates or a quantizer. The sequence patterns are displayed on the little screen as a 4×4 grid and you can manipulate it into all sorts of directions and forms. You can save presets, capture CV direct to steps, divide time and build up a library of happenings. The Shred mode adds generative probability to your existing sequence giving you new ideas and directions. It also handles MIDI. Interesting and knob-sparse module that does a lot of stuff.
https://noiseengineering.us/products/mimetic-digitwolis/
Strymon SuperKar+ – Karplus is the name of the game and this could be the module to knock my favourite Qu-Bit Surface out of my case. It has up to 32 voices of Karplus-Strong based synthesis and is capable of knocking out plucked strings and blown pipes amongst other things. It sounds totally captivating, as these things always do, and is wonderful to play with. It has two modes, which you can use at the same time. One side is for solo playing, although you can still overlap polyphonically, and the other is for chords that you can dial in and trigger via CV. It also has a MIDI input so you can play it like a proper synth. Elagently designed, beautifully realised, I’ve had one for a few days and it’s a lovely thing. Full review coming soon.
https://www.strymon.net/product-category/eurorack-modules/
WMD Cosmic Debris – Built in collaboration with Infrasonic Audio it’s a delay and reverb module that combines to shift time, speed up the harvest and teleport you off this rock. It go can from rhythmic repeats to smeared atmospheric washes. You can scatter taps, reshape feedback paths and drift into complete textural changes. There are 16 delay lines, pitch shifting, warping, glitching – all sorts of craziness. They also had they’re Scorpion waveform reanimator at Bristronica but I’m much more into a bit of Cosmic Debris.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DOJWSRcjZZD/
https://wmdevices.com/products/cosmic-debris
Guru Gara Synth Riot ST VCF – This is a good looking filter with a cool name that I’ve been using with the Strymon SuperKar+ to great effect. I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on yet but it seems that it’s a stereo filter that loves nothing more than creating dynamic space between the channels using a helpful crossfader approach. I’m loving it so far – Full review coming soon.
https://gurugarasynth.com/products/riot-st-vcf
Enjoy Electronics Elfo – I dropped by the Enjoy Electronics table and took at look at the DeFeel modulator – it is pretty spectacular but not new and fires out modulations in response to sequences and triggers. What I didn’t realise they had was the very similar looking ELFO. This is a four-channel LFO that is a bit more free flowing and in motion while using some similar facilities like finger drawn waveshapes and that fantastic front panel. You can also set modulation of the modulators going with the drag of a finger or use a matrix to have the channels modulate each other. It then has a weird magic crystal that places itself in the path of your modulations and redirects and reflects them to different places throwing your ordered world into a delicious amount of chaos. These are both beautiful objects that I’d love to get my hands on.
https://www.enjoy-lab.com/elfo
Axis Modular cases – Our friends over at Axis Modular have started doing some useful enclosures. There are some good value 3U and 3U+1U DIY cases from around 60 quid unpowered. They also have some travel cases built into those hardened plastic protective flight cases from around 180 quid that fit 59HP 3u + 1u.
https://www.etsy.com/shop/axismodular/?etsrc=sdt
Ableton Rentals – Here’s something I thought was very cool and that’s that you can now rent-to-buy Live 12 Suite from Ableton. Rather than a subscription model you can throw Ableton around $25 a month and after 2 years it’s yours to keep. Brilliant for students or people starting out who don’t have hundreds of pounds to drop on a DAW but would like to move on from using a free one.
Synth East update – Synth East is booked for the 20th to 22nd of February 2026 and the details are nearly set. We have a great individual pencilled in for the Friday night interview and a top band headlining on Saturday night neither of which I can confirm for you at the moment. But as soon as they’ve confirmed we will be launching the website and selling tickets. This should be in the next 3-4 weeks. In a week or two I’ll open the bookings for manufacturers so if you would like to rent a table and haven’t already contacted me please drop me an email so I can add you to the mailout when it opens. I’m also looking for a couple of acts for the Saturday morning. I would like these to go to local artists ideally as an opportunity to play in front of an audience. Also I’d like to encourage women to apply in particular as there’s always a danger of it all being a bit too blokey. These are EMOM style slots, so 15 minutes, electronic performance and it gets you free entry. Anyone is welcome to apply – just give me a shout.
Synth Picnic update – Synth Picnic is not to be confused with Synth East. The Synth Picnic is a super-mad idea of running a popup synth event in Norwich every month. It’s free, rough and ready, just a bunch of synths and modular in shop space in the Castle Mall. The idea is that you drop in and get the chance to try out synths and electronic boxes. We’re not a shop but we can direct you to Signal Sounds who can supply pretty much any synth or modular module you want. I’ll also be offering modular rentals so you could go and try it out for yourself for a month. The first Synth Picnic is on Saturday 11th October up in the Honestly Library at the top of the swirly stairs. Come and have a look.
Coming soon – I’m going to try to get some DIY done this month as it’s been a long time since I got my iron out. Also reviews coming on the Strymon SuperKar+, Stylophone Gen X-2, the Riot filter, Pianist chord module. MH Mixer and more besides. Live stream on the 5th October? Yes, quite possibly.