http://www.moogmusic.com/filtatron

A large part of me is wishing it were April 1st.

I’m not against digital or virtual analog. I like virtual analog. I use it all the time. I proudly own an Access Virus, I would happily buy a Nord Lead, I use VST plugins, I run my Moog through my Virus and my VST plugins, but when Moog Music suddenly decides to get into the iPhone tomfoolery by attaching Robert Moog’s name to an iPhone application, a fucking line must be drawn.

The wording on the linked page is just gorgeous. Some of the following quotes just killed me:

“The heart of the Filtatron is a lovingly-modeled 4-pole resonant Moog Ladder Filter” (So Moog themselves are peddling a digitally ‘modeled’ Moog ladder filter? At least they did it with luuurv).

“Delay time is smoothly interpolated for analog-style delay time tweaks…” (I love analog ‘style’, luurvs it to bits. So, where do I go to get the former without the latter?).

“…warm analog distortion…” (analog distortion on my phone? My Nokia E71 is looking awfully cold and digital right now. Besides, I fucking have warm analog distortion already, I bought it from YOU, just not in iPhone faux warm form).

“The Filtatron comes loaded with edgy presets…” (I am all about the edgy. If only I were more edgy, and if only the edgy were available in preset form, that would certainly help me to out-edgy all the competition).

“Use the handy built-in Email function to send your Filtatron presets to your friends and bandmates.” (Why the fuck would I need a band when alls I need is my iPhone? In fact, fuck the friends and fuck the phone as well, let’s just call it the ‘i’).

“Also included is a handy Glossary of electronic music terminology that will greatly enhance your understanding of the Filtatron and electronic music in general.” (Oh, goooood, I always wondered what them oscillator thingys were. I thought I had one already, but it turned out to be a vibrator).

If it is real… well, please don’t be real, I would rather have egg on my face tomorrow and have this be a hoax.

I don’t know who actually did the algorithms for this, but I would like to at least hope they employed some programmers from the like of Access, Nord or even Arturia. Making an analog filter sound good is a completely different game from making a bit of code sounding like an analog filter sound good. Both are arts, one is not better than the other, but they are mutually exclusive arts. A team of analog synth engineers have no business trying to knock up a software synth, just as Access would have no business knocking up an analog synth. Both are great teams, but stick to what you know.

If Access were doing this, I would still be a little disappointed. The TI concept is far from trouble free just yet, but I have the feeling Access is scheming to make it the perfect system. At least if it were Access, I would feel safe knowing they, audio algorithm programmers at heart, were simply changing platform, rather planets or galaxies. It would still be a shameless, grubby, money grapping, whore move, but one you could have a little faith in.

The youtube clip doesn’t give much to go on. Maybe they will sound good. This clip, however, puts a diminutive smartphone app in front of a rack of gorgeous Moogerfoogers. That just about sums up the evil. The two concepts don’t bear the slightest comparison. Cute iPhone music apps are very fun, I’m sure, but it’s a different game from the one we all thought Moog was playing. In short, the Moog name does not belong on a cheap-technophile-office-lunch-break-water-cooler-party trick. The name belongs with serious synthesis.

A lot of people were critical of the various colourful incarnations of the Voyager (Electric Blue, and the Select Series). They had a point, it is about the sound only. However, I don’t think any Voyager owner bought one just for the backlighting or choice of cabinet colours. If the option were not there, I would have a plain performer edition and be well pleased about it, because it would sound great. If I have the option of both having the ‘sound’ as well something that looks cool, even better. Moog made a little extra money out of my select series, and I have a little extra shazam in my studio, everyone wins.

Other people dislike the XL concept. I don’t think it is a bad one, albeit looking a little rushed in its production. A longer keyboard is nice if you play some wild soaring leads, and the cv routing on the actual machine rather than on breakout boxes is also very cool. I wouldn’t pay the extra to get it given I already have the Voyager. I don’t have the chops for the wild soaring leads and I don’t really object to the breakout boxes. Little effort went into the ergonomics of its design, though. The touchscreen should have been moved further left to be in the middle, so performers don’t have to cross their arms too often during live tweaking, and other small points. It does look like a nice concept, just poorly executed. For example, moving the touchscreen would mean redesigning the internal circuits and getting new faceplates, which is all very, very expensive.

Which makes you wonder…

Maybe Moog Music IS desperate for money. I don’t know how they could fix any financial woes they might have. I am busy thinking about the financial woes of the company I work for. Please remember, Moog Music has gone bankrupt before, and nobody wants that to happen again. The analog market isn’t exactly huge. VA did/has done/is doing just as the DX7 did back in the day. I always imagined Moog would be getting by, especially given they have the rights to the Moog name (in most of the world, anyway).

But therein lays the problem. Having the Moog name also comes with responsibility. Using this name to sell an iPhone app blows royally. There are plenty of less fucked up paths to make money before jumping on that wagon. Really, it just blows. I was toying with the idea of getting a Moog logo tattoo (I already have a Quake 1 tattoo, I don’t mind the concept if the logo bears real weight, which Quake 1 does for me and every other FPS fiend gamer on earth), but having the same logo on some downloadable via itunes phone application has killed that idea completely.

The idea came to me just a couple of weeks ago, and I almost got it done just last week when I was having some other tattoo work done on my arm, and now I’m quite glad I didn’t. I can imagine the conversation with the dropkick in the office right now. “Oh, you have a Moog tattoo, I have a killer Moog iPhone app, it sounds fully sick and fat, you should hear the fully sick beat I made, I love that techno shit”, leaving me looking for a belt sander to get the damn tattoo off right fucking now, so as to avoid the same retarded conversation. I would much rather the conversation go

Dickhead: “What is that tattoo”

Tzar Kong: “It is Moog, one of the godfathers of the synth”

Dickhead: “Oh, I love that techno shit”

Tzar Kong: “Oh, really? I love rubbing me semen into the eyeballs of philistine cocksuckers. Why don’t you get down on your knees and try not to gag”

Dickhead: “Ja, mein Kommandant “

This has ruined my day no end. Not in an angry way, if Moog had to do this to keep there heads above water, it’s like a women turning to prostitution to feed her kids. Sad, but party time for the meatheads who will be fucking her up the ass in seedy short time hotels. Said meatheads will surely not have iPhones in the back pockets, but a similar ilk of slightly more impotent idiots will be partying with their new ‘Moog’ iPhone apps. If Moog is doing well financially, and this is just to buy some ass with “executive” in his job description new rims on his sporting automobile… well, damn it to hell and if I catch you in the act of supporting the acquisition of new rims, you and your iPhone will be heading back to mummy in a cardboard box.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Moog Music. I have bought a lot of their gear, and plan to buy plenty more in the future. I recommend you buy their gear, because, names, logos, history besides, it is simply some of the best sounding audio equipment in the world. I am just shell shocked the company decided to take this direction. C’est la vie.

Reviewing musical instruments is a stupid thing to do. Reviewing a claw hammer, now that is sensible. Hammer connoisseurs out there, knowing the finer points of claw hammers, will no doubt ear fuck you with opinions regarding the grip, the shape of the head, the angle and curve of the claw, and could probably argue amongst themselves all day. However, in the end the hammer has two jobs, hitting nails in and pulling them out. Add subduing your enemies or gorging the eyes out of your neighbours dog and the ‘simple’ analogy might even fall apart. In fact, it is the eye gorging that illustrates the point here. You can only review something if you know how it will be used, and this is where reviews of the Voyager fall flat.

The Voyager gets pretty good reviews, apart from Minimoog Model D freaks that their panties and ill kept beards in a knot about it not sounding like the original (see appendix i). The good reviews are a moot point. The last synth designed by Moog before he died was virtually guaranteed to take the world by storm. As some people resent storms, there are also the people that must shake their fists at the storm and screaming “I am an individual who shall differ by principle” (see appendix ii). The problem is you never know where the reviewer is coming from. If, Zues forbid, I was a retro 70s funk producer, I would thinking about how fat funky fresh the bass tone is and leave it that, modulation busses untouched. A trance producer would be pondering how to make a lead sound without the option of 8 unisoned panned out oscillators. A backwards looking prog rock purist type would be peeing his pants over a 70s style analog synth with usuable and reliable patch memory saving himself a world of hell at his shitty café gigs. A psy producer would be wailing about the bizarre Voyager HPF filter fucking up his squiggly squiggle sounds. I could go on, but my point is, reviews don’t mean dick unless you are thinking specifically on how YOU produce YOUR sounds.

Rather than going over the specs of the Voyager or a jpg of its triangle-saw-sqaure-pulse wavs, which you can easily find on any of the usual gear magazines, this review is going to be about how I use it. I do most of the leads, strings, fx and scratchy noise sounds, Virul3nt taking care of bass, percussion and vocals, which I think is how it goes down on the album liners (appendix iii). When it comes to my job we are thinking modulation, we are thinking distortion, we are thinking noise oscillators, and that is what Uncle Kong is going to talk about while stroking your hair and fondling your naughty bits.

To continue my new found love of chaptertising everything we have:

Part 1: Teenage Peach Fuzz

Part 2: The Spice Rack

Part 3: Lepers

Part 4: Conclusion (I’m out of wit)

Teenage Peach Fuzz

I have eschewed distortion completely for the past few years, after using far too much of the cheap digital variety in my misguided youth. Until recently, most of my ‘distorted’ sounds came from using noise as a modulation source. This sounds especially good on filters, but unfortunately, very few synths allow you to do this. There are more that allow you to send noise to an oscillator, which also sounds good. The Voyager can do both, but it is slightly disappointing for reasons that will be discussed later.

On its own, the Voyager certainly lacks grit distortion wise. The synth sounds big, bold and full, but kind of in the way fat sweaty men in Hawaiian shirts are big, bold and full. If you want to lose the Hawaiian shirt and a little weight, don aviators, live in a Caribbean mansion and sell pure to finance revolutions, you need a little distortion. You want that guy to lose the facial hair, move to Soviet Russia and become a foxy lady selling other foxy ladies to finance revolutions, you need also need an HPF, which the Voyager gladly sports, but that is another story. That leaves us looking for other ways to get our peachy fuzz on.

On the original Mini D, the oscillators could be overdriven in the mixer section, and a lot of people consider this a large part of the Mini D’s sound. The Access Virus TI has options for adding extra drive at no less than three points in the signal path, though I don’t mean to compare a VA synth to an analog, it is just to point out how important it is. The Voyager doesn’t do this at all. You can have every oscillator turned up to the maximum and everything will be crystal, sparkling clear. Some people think this is a good thing, and I agree, but only given that I have other bits of gear to overdrive the Voyager with.

The more extravagant solution is to use the very clever insert effect loop on the Voyager. You can break the signal path and send the oscillator output through external effects before returning to the synth’s VCF and VCA. Here I use my Moogerfooger MF-101, not for its filtering (though I sometimes use it to add an extra static resonant peak), but because it has a nice little knob labeled ‘drive’, which really should have been on the Voyager itself. The Moog LP has it, and this sets it apart from the Voyager, especially for bass. I don’t know if it is exactly the same, in that I don’t know where the drive is applied in the chain on the LP, but on the Voyager, at the oscillator stage, it makes a world of difference. Of course, any guitar stomp box could be used here, but I’m pretty satisfied with how the MF-101 sounds.

This also ignores what you might be running the Voyager through from its final output, and of course distortion could also be added there. Now I know how distortion sounds when applied to the oscillators, but keeping the VCF and VCA clean, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Distortion post VCF/VCA can easily kill all the dynamics of a sound, which rubs the wrong way. Regardless, all this adds other bits of gear to the line-up, which is a little disappointing.

Fortunately, there is one very well known trick that also worked well on the Mini D. Connect the headphone out to the external in on either instrument and there will be a significant thickening of the sounds, and lashings distortion going to towards incomprehensible throbbing as the external input level is increased. I have never actually laid fingers on a Mini D, but Moog seems to have designed the external input of the Voyager to be especially hot. This seems to be a nod towards knowing that people will be doing this trick with the headphone output, and also running other external sounds through the Voyager. For both, being able to push the sound into creamy analog distortion is a large part of the point, so I’m glad Moog took this on board. My rig, having both the MF-101 and using the headphone trick, there are two entirely different flavors of distortion to choose from, and infinite number of shades between the two.

If you want the dark and nasty, it would be absolutely insane not to be running the headphone outs in to the external input at all times, and you would be slightly less insane not to have some kind of distortion running in the insert loop. It sounds fine without doing either of those, but the sugar, the money, the power and the women are what it is all about.

The Spice Rack

Comparing modulation to cooking isn’t especially witty, but it really is the best one out there. Let’s say you want to cook some fine beef. Obviously, you need to get some good cuts first, so you go and spend your dough on the more tender expensive meat. Your not home yet, you still have to marinade it, garnish it and cook it. Fuck up those last three steps up, and your fine beef turns to vinegar (or such is my understanding of cooking). The Voyager oscillators give you the beef, but they still need to be cooked, aka Modulation. I just thought a ‘meth cooking’ analogy would be cooler, which ends in fucking it up, your fine meth turning to vinegar and blowing up in your mum’s basement, but I’m just not cool enough to know that’s done.

On the front panel you get two modulation busses. That doesn’t seem like much, and it isnt’t really, but livable. There are more mod options in the menu system, but I really couldn’t be fucked with LCD menus, ever. I would have bought a Voyager Old School if they weren’t already sold out, and I do like my MIDI control over the front panel parameters without having to shell out for an extra MIDI-CV converter. On the Voyager, it is kind of atypical in that you get a mod source, a destination and amount (business as usual), but also a shaping control. This is odd in that the shaping control is so prominent, most synths I have worked with require a second mod source to be applied to the ‘amount’ value of the first mod source to get any kind of shaping control. It makes for a lot of variables in adjusting the amount of both the mod(1) amount vs. the mod(2) amount in an endless merry go round of excessive time wasting thought-per-function ratio. Most of the time I just have the shaper set to ‘on’, because shaping options are just filter env, velocity, pressure and ‘on’. Obviously these options are aimed at performers, and the whole minimoog concept was a reduction of a regular modular death star to a portable road capable death star, so I won’t complain (though as an afterthought, the rack version could well have had something more studio/sound design orientated options on the shaping selection). In the future, I will get the CV expander and Control Processer and have modulation modulating out every hole, but for now, I will have to live with just the two.

The modulation I do use basically falls into just two categories, noise or lfo to pitch or filter. I just want the expanders so I can have more lfos, more noise, and more destinations through the multipliers. This doesn’t really need explanation except for a side note about the noise source for modulation. The noise oscillator is kind of quiet in the audio mixer, and also kind of weak as a modulator (same oscillator, as in literally the same, or less likely, two noise oscillators of identical design and low output, it doesn’t make much difference). Noise to pitch works out well, because it only needs to be subtle to dirty up the sound a little. Noise to filter is where the cute modulator bunny sheds a quiet tear. I want to be able to crank the noise to filter so hard that oscillators are no longer needed and the entire sound can be made from the noise modulated filter envelopes snapping away and filter cutoff slipping around the key tracking. The Voyager can be very crackly when the resonance high, but with zero resonance the modulation is barely present. I have softs that go crazy with some noise modulation on a filter with zero resonance, but the Voyager cannot. Ask not for who the modulator bunny weeps, it weeps for me.

In addition, the noise oscillator is stuck somewhere between pink and white. I don’t find this a major issue, but being able to tweak between white and pink is certainly something I would be putting on my wish list for Santa.

How important modulation is very much dependant on the genre you are writing in. For some, two busses will be enough, but for me it isn’t. I will get the VX-351 and Control Processor, maybe even getting 2-3 control processors, LFOs, multipliers, attenueators and CV mixers are really that important to me (appendix iv). Moogmusic will be getting a new villa in the Riviera courtesy of my eccentric ass.

The Lepers

Just to make this review a bit more complete, here is a quick low down on the things that don’t matter to me (lepers also don’t really raise my eyebrows, as long as they stay in their cages in the zoo).

The keyboard is of whatever quality. The original one was clearly shit, by anyone’s standard, but Moog replaced it and it seems fine to me. If I could play it well maybe I would think the Fatar board is great, maybe I would think it terrible. Like it said, seems good to me. The velocity response is fine when MIDI sequencing, but is a little sluggy when using the keyboard. Seriously though, buy a pianoforte if piano > forte is that important to you.

There is a nice switch for oscillator 3 frequency modulation of oscillator 1, which I use a lot, and hard synching oscillator 2 to osc 1, which I hardly ever use, especially seeing as I like the way the Freqbox does it better. This isn’t really a Leper feature, but also works in exactly the way would expect, so on the grounds of being adequately satisfactory, with the lepers it goes, so sayeth the just lord Kong.

The touch screen is a novelty for me, but seems well made. Like the keyboard, I’m sure serious performing synth players will have plenty to say about it, I played with it a bit, but morphing multiple parameters isn’t really the sound I’m after (just reminds of didgeridoos, which isn’t especially cool, being out of Australia releases me from having to be stupidly politically correct about it). It transmits MIDI which will be good if I want to fuck with it live, recording the MIDI output and then use it to multitrack some synth layers, but like I said, didgeridoos. I can get enough automation action by sending MIDI CC to individual parameters. In combination with the cv output expander you could control multiple parameters on any analog synth with just a single finger, which is also cool. My main fear was that it would be flimsy and prone to dying, as most touch screens are, but feels tough and roadworthy.

The envelopes are farking snappy. You might feel either way about this. I actually find them a little too snappy at times, but that might be because I’m usually dead against compression on anything except vocals. We are in one of those retarded periods of history where people are heading off in one extreme and in a few decades we will be shaking our heads and feeling ashamed of ourselves (think the holocaust, slavery or reality tv). At the moment, every layer in your average tune gets compressed to hell, then the tune gets sent to a mastering engineer, who compresses the hell out of it some more. I don’t mean organic tape saturation or tubes, I mean ham fisted digital plugins with everyone panting about ‘brick’ wave forms on the screen. It means your tune will survive the ipod vs. traffic noise ratio on the way to work in the morning, but fuck you all the hell to putting that as your first priority in music and may the good, old school lord give you the gift of tinnitus. When my chorus kicks in I want it to be louder than the verse, terribly old fashioned. Anyway, better to have envelopes with excessive snap rather than lacking in snap, so all is well.

I am feeling pretty elite about reviewing a Moog instrument without talking about the filter. It is very cool. Having twin LPFs means you can have two self oscillating peaks sliding around… which I have never found a musical need to do. I’m not sure if the key tracking is in tune on this more recent model of the Voyager, but I don’t really care. You can also send the two filters to right/left outputs for pseudo stereo effects, which nobody in their right mind would do, but it is nice to have made the option. You can select the filter pole from the menu, though, like most people out there, 4 pole is the business and I don’t change it often. The env>filter amount goes into both positive and negative values, which is a very nice touch as well. The HPF, however, does concern me greatly, I like my business quite thin, and there is a problem…

The major gripe with the HPF is the envelope control (prepare thyself for tech boredom)… in LPF/HPF mode the filter envelope affects both cutoffs in the same way. This is completely retarded. COMPLETELY RETARDED. When will synth makers learn that the HPF needs an inverted envelope to make the slightest bit of musical sense? The Virus offers the same complete retardation and I have to modulate the HPF cutoff from the modulation matrix to get an inverted envelope signal, which pisses me off no end. I can’t be the only person thinking this. I would make a diagram to show ridiculously stupid it is to have the LPF and HPF cutoffs moving in the same direction, but I am far too lazy. For the bandpass kind of sound it is nice to have them going the same directrion in terms of a filter sweep, but for the note by note triggered envelope it is CUNT CUNT CUNT, I can’t think of a better term, CUNT. It is fortunate that I prefer my filters to be fairly static envelope wise, otherwise I would be having a fit right now. The only reason this is in the Lepers section and not getting an article entirely devoted to it is that other manufacturers suffer the same drooling vacant eyed retarded problem, so there might just be something my ape brain is missing here. If there were a reason to go modular, this would be it. Fuck these people, maybe those hermits in the hills have a fucking point. Blah.

Now I have that off my chest.

The Conclusion:

Despite the niggle with the HPF, it rocks da house, as young affluent white kids from the suburbs would say. I don’t know why I feel like I should add a conclusion, but it is kind of like cuddling after intercourse. Neither party wants to, but one thinks the other would be upset if it didn’t happen, and the other would be upset if the she thought the former didn’t think to think she would be upset if he didn’t. You know you understood that sentence. So cuddling happens, though both parties are really thinking about a co-worker or mutual friend. Yes, if I am insecure, I want everyone else to be the same. Enjoy your next post coital cuddle.

Appendix i

I think we should get over that now. The Voyager is like the Minimoog D, the emphasis being ‘like’. Maybe the difference is just 30 years of dust collection, or intergrated circuits, though I gather later Minimoog Ds used ICs anyway…I really don’t know, I’m talking out my ass here. Something I read even bitched about the Voaygers using op-amps, which I wikipedia-ed, and sure as fuck looked pretty fucking analog to me. Given the choice of a Voyager and a Model D, they sound more or less the same. Add complete MIDI control, NOT having it serviced every six months, dedicated LFO, adjustable performance parameters us digital kids grew up and take for grant, tech support, need I go on? I would take the Voyager hands down. If someone is pissing in your ear about how the Mini D is the business and the Voyager is a pale marketing ploy, chances are they aren’t signed, chances are they have never even finished tune, chances are they know a shit load more about resistors and capacitors than they know about music, and almost definitely they have an ill kept beard. Don’t listen to these people. Let them piss away their electrical engineering job dollars on museum piece synths, MIDI retrofits (or worse, analog sequencers) and have their elitist get togethers with like minded hippies and leave the actual music to musicians. Think of it this way; think about how pissed all the harpsichord aficionados were when the piano was invented. Suddenly all there mad skills at breathing life into an instrument that had no dynamic variation was pissed away with an instrument that could actual respond to how hard you hit the keys. They grew poor beards and met around secret bonfires are made forum posts on how the piano just don’t have that genuine plucked sound warmth you can only get from a genuine fucking whatever…

To be serious, the Voyager is a great instrument, but it doesn’t mean your music will instantly kick ass. Whether the original Minimoogs or the Voyager sounds better, it is less than 1% of the equation. It comes down to how well you use it. They sound virtually the same, but the Voyager is infinitely easier to use, meaning more time spent on writing music, therefore better for actually writing MUSIC. It is only chumps like me that are willing to spend thousands of dollars to get ‘that’ sound that keep companies like Moog in business, but I don’t put my bets on making sweet mullah in the music business on it, I just have too much disposable income and my life plan doesn’t include a car, a house or a retirement plan. There are plenty of artists out there getting more love than me just using soft synths. If I were to be talking to some young go getter about taking his/her first steps in to electronic music, I would say go straight to softs. I would shoot myself before saying “well, first you have to invest tens of thousands in elite analog equipment, because your music is going to suck if you don’t” (and believe me, I was told that by a cocksucker back when I was a young).

Appendix ii

User reviews are about as unreliable as the magazine reviews. Oddly enough (or not), if you want to a host of negative reviews, go to the forum of a competing product. In this case, the closest thing would be DSI mopho and it’s larger brothers. Both modern analogs designed by old hands in the synth world. Oddly enough, the DSI forums were full of people complaining about the Voyager sounding too “70s”. That just blew my mind. What do you want? An original DX7 to push you into the 80s, a Nord Lead to get you into the 90s, or a plugin for 00s?? What the fuck is wrong with you people?? 60s and 70s synth sounds were cool, then everything turned to shit in the 80s, a decade to which this day regular more American folk will either think you a gay bear disco freak or maybe a gay twink disco freak for liking synthesizers (depending on body hair levels). If you’re lucky they will say “oh, yeah, I like Tietso guy”. It kills you on the inside and you begin to feel maybe a better use of your 20kg monosynth would to be bash their indy-rock heads into a bloody mushy pulp.

Appendix iii

As this is article published, the two discs released by Shiv-r (Parasite Ep and Hold My Hand Lp) were written before I owned a Voyager. Mine will be featured a plenty on the next Shiv-r CD. I just want to point this out lest the synth be judged by the sounds on the first two discs. The bass sounds on the discs, on the other hand, are almost exclusively from a Moog LP, courtesy of Virulent, and they rock, so judge away.

Appendix iv

“Why didn’t you go for a modular some heckler” down the back cries? Because time is money, and nobody’s paying for you to sit there wondering how to hook up your whatever-module to Doepfers fancy pants internal cv/gate kajiggy whatsamebob. I do dream of going modular, and did think about going that way instead of the Voyager. The real turn off came in when listening to audio samples. The ones I liked the most (Motm, DotCom and some of the Modcan stuff… ¼” jacks sound cooler for whatever reason, science has proven it) were all unique sized units and would leave you dependant on ‘some guy’ in his pokey workshop to be sorting out any tech woes forever more. Most of the Eurorack stuffed sounded appalling, with the big exception being Macbeth, which has some of the nicest sounds I have ever heard (I thought of writing a ‘shit list’, seeing as there are so many companies riding the modular pony at the moment that just sound awful, but good taste dictates I shouldn’t). Going Eurorack would have the advantage of being an increasingly universal format, so if something broke, worse comes to worst, you can replace with something from another manufactuere. Some might think it would be indy and hip to be getting backyard synths, but wait until you have a real problem with a $4000 piece of equipment, nobody to fix it, and a deadline. Suddenly your kajiggy whatsamebob seems a little less cool and a lot more silent.

UPS delivered to my door in an obscure little building in the northern outskirts of BKK. What an age we live in. I do wish to whine about import taxes though… damn import tax blows…

Although I’m sure you all know this, it’s a filter in a box. It’s Fairly similar to the original Minimoog filter, and as far as I can tell, identical to the Moog LP filter (sans MIDI triggering or real envelope control etc). It has a 2pole/4pole swtich, and an envelope follower that tracks the input amplitude, but simple is good. I got the whitewash version, and at the risk of starting the bitching to early… the white is not exactly the best. The wood version looked hot enough already, but I just had to be different and get the fancy white one. It turns out this is just very very very badly painted wood. I mean, it looks like a kindergarten project. Moog seems to have gone all out with their crazy range of woods and backlight themes lately, which is very cute, but if they are delivering things like this, I would say stick with the original versions.

I’m in a list mood, so here we go:

Pros:

- Good price. Well not so good if you are thinking of it just as a LPF that takes up a lot of room on the desk. Good considering it sounds just as Moog does, ie. very good. I think back when these were sold as “Big Briar” they were a lot more expensive, but the build quality was better. As long as the insides stayed the same, I’m not too fussed.

- The drive is very satisfying, especially on low frequencies.

- The difference between 2pole and 4pole is very noticeable, as you would expect. Unfortunately, on a lot of other gear including my Virus, switching slopes doesn’t really get the results one could wish for.

- The env follower is very effective on the “fast” setting, even for sounds with a lot of release, it tracks perfectly.

- The resonance is ever so Moogy. There is something about the resonance on Moog filters that is so distinctive, especially on high settings with the filter very open. It adds a kind of nasty hiss that is just, nasty. I’m probably sending myself deaf and killing my speakers with supersonic ribbish.

-It also does something odd when the env amount and resonance are set quite high, the cutoff is fairly open and the incoming signal is fairly constant in volume (ie. fast attack, full sustain and no release… I’m not sure if this is making any sense). It adds a strange sizzle that I have not been able to catch since I stopped using the Waldorf D-pole plugin many years ago. In theory, any filter with an amplitude follower should do this, but these are the only two I have found that do it just the way I like it.

Cons

- There are two settings for the env follower, “fast” and “smooth”, on a rocker. Basically it seems to effect the attack time only, or maybe the release as well. I would hardly expect a full ADSR on something in this price range, but having a pot here sweeping the between the two values would have been nice, even if it had increased the price a little.

- Why is there a mix knob? Maybe guitarists using it as a wah wah thing need it… I don’t know, I never wah. I do know I don’t need to mix wet and dry on a filter. Maybe a heavily driven single could be mixed with the dry to add “depth”, but seriously, “depth” would have to be one of my least favourite words. So, I will reiterate, why is there a mix knob on a filter?

- Added to that, when the filter is as low as it can go, ie. more or less silence, and then you turn up the volume high and listen really hard, a little of the dry signal is coming through. Practically, this isn’t important at all, and I reeeeaaalllly shouldn’t be pushing the volume up with the filter at 20hz (the resonance was on zero so my monitors were relatively safe, but anyway)… I expect more than that!

- It would have been a lot nicer, and smaller, if it weren’t doubling as a stompox. Guitarists with their bluesy wails and drunken, clumsy feet don’t rate highly in my world. It also makes patching the cv controls a pain seeing as the jacks are at the back of the unit.

- There is no true bypass. The big ugly stompbox switch will bypass the filter, but not the drive. I don’t really mind, seeing as the drive sounds great anyway, but it makes it difficult to see exactly what the thing is doing to the sound.

- Bob’s grandchildren should be taken off the décor committee.

If you are one of the below DJs and don’t want your feedback shared, let me know. 

• “Parasite contains 5 tracks. The opening songs is identical to the album title and contains hars, but familiar beats, ready-cut for the dancefloor with little vocoded vocals. Fractured Lights is a more relaxed song, ambient in nature but seemingly fit for the clubs as well. Even less BPM contains Control, with emphasis on lyrics, fighting for…control. The Kong rmx doesn\’t add much but the Virul3nt rmx of Parasite is nicely done and highly danceable.” - Denniz
• “nice ep with some good clubtracks, although maybe a bit to trancy ( especially the remixes )” - X-X-X
• “Wow, what a great promo this is!!! Maybe not the most original music, but it still stands out!!” - djSPUD
• “I like your sound!” - Cheminee
• “Typical EBM release. Good dancefloor stuff and easy to the ears written songs. Unfortunately not surprising enough to give some new input to the over-crowded scene. Still, the heavier beat oriented songs can compete with most acts in the scene and that should be (more than) enough to crowd a dance floor.” - Beautevil
• “The synthesizer on Parasite does sound like a mosquito and fits in nicely, the sound itself is raw but loud and will do great for the dance floor. Vocally it is quite moderate and typical for the dark electro sound.
  Fractured Light has a nice slow but danceable sound with a nice bass line and good kick. The high synth is a welcome change in sound.
  Control has a really freakish sound to it, lovely in contrast to the title. The synth resembling a theremin/female vocal is really nice done. Even the guitars that I usually loathe in electronic music have a great place in this song. For me this is easily the best song on this EP, but not suited for the dance floor, but in any other setting it might do great.
  Parasite (Virul3nt mix) is a better mix for the dance floor than the original.
  The Control (Kong mix) doesn\’t really do better than the original which is a shame.” - Nosferius

Here’s a funny story about how I submitted the CDs to Cybercase.  I already knew Kees (pronounced “Case”), the owner, as he had organised a Crystalline Effect tour in April 2008 in NL and was similarly promoting the Crystalline Effect EP “Hypothermia” to his pool. 
In August 08, when we were heading to NL for Summer Darkness, I e-mailed Kees and asked if he’d like to promote the Parasite EP.  He said yes, and to hand him the box of CDs at the festival.  He said he would be DJing just before Combichrist’s set on the Friday night, and to find him in the booth and hand him the discs there.  So on the night I find him and handed him the box.  I ask him if he wants a drink, which he does, and I then head to the bar.  When I come back to hand him the drink, he said “next song’s yours”, and sure enough the next song to come out over the PA was Parasite (Virul3nt mix) to a roomful of hundreds of dancing Combichrist fans.  Total trial by fire!  Incidentally, the track held the room just fine.  At this point I was infinitely glad we shelled out for pro mastering (from Kolja/Soman), so it could compete sonically with the other agressive EBM tracks played. 

So yes, farewell to London!  Over the course of our time here we did see plenty of great bands and went to plenty of cool parties.  Unfortunately we’ve been living in a bona fide ghetto area (Seven Sisters), so the filthy setting in a violent atmosphere set the tone for our daily lives.  Catching the tube and changing at Kings Cross at peak hour twice a day, being pushed into a Northern Line carriage by hundreds of dead-eyed suits, was at best “undignified”, and the world’s seemingly longest winter didn’t help matters. 
Of course, there was plenty of good to balance out the harsh, and not just the bands and the parties, but the point is our time here is over for the near future and I’m looking forward to hitting The Netherlands. 

Right now Kong and I are working full steam on the debut Shiv-r album.  This is our main focus now and the music’s sounding nice & dark.  It will take a bit of time to get settled in The Netherlands but it won’t take long to set up my music-space again so the album progress won’t be too hindered.  At this rate we should be finished the writing process by the end of the year. 

My next post should be from Amsterdam…