I have this long-running "What I'm listening to today" thread on Mastodon where I post music I found (mostly from the bedroom synth jam community on YouTube) that infatuated me on some particular day.
This week the YouTube recommendation algorithm gave me a bounty of jams based around the synths by SOMA Laboratories (a company that makes idiosyncratic, opinionated electronics that center the imperfections and unpredictability of analogue electronics-- they call this approach "organismic"), so I wound up doing a week every song I posted was based on SOMA equipment:
(I use the Cohost embedding feature below instead of the thumbnail+link approach I normally use when reposting videos here. Is this better? Worse?)
- "Chudraga", porfiry
A piece based around the Pulsar, SOMA's drum machine. This one's paired with the Ornament, SOMA's oblique "sequencer": a controlled chaos generator based around crosswired capacitors that build up accumulated charge like timers until they discharge to fire drum triggers and empty new charge into adjacent capacitors.
Here the Ornament triggers congo patterns and distorted industrial drums while something (also the Ornament?) pushes semirandom notes into a 90s-IDM-reminiscent synth lead that the musician seems to have jury-rigged from nowhere by hijacking one of the Pulsar's drum oscillators.
So if I'd made this I'd probably have named it "poolcore", but… whatever. This is a spaced-out clicks-and-cuts percussive blend with the Pulsar controlled via MIDI from the Elektron Digitakt; the Pulsar supplies glitchy sounding analog drums while the Digitakt overdubs the standard Amen break samples. The tension between the two modes of techno fixes a mood that's a fascinating split between chill and anxious.
- "Lyra 8 + Strega", afxtr
SOMA's Lyra-8 is all about reverb; its oscillators are detuned and modulated to maximize skittering harmonics, so the reverb can smear those harmonics out into airy tones.
This musician decided that wasn't enough reverb, so he added the Strega for maximum possible ominous howling drone.
Note the 0-CTRL isn't sequencing anything, and every button does the same thing; it's wired just so the harder he presses the keyboard the more the reverb expands.
- "Industrial Raga 1", adjuse
Again, the Ornament is a machine for algorithmically sequencing triggers. But one of its trigger output types is "connect to ground", which means wiring those outputs to the touch plates on the Lyra simulates the touch of a human finger.
So in this one a PO-32 drum machine plays highly distorted beats while the ornament picks out a note sequence on the Lyra's finger keys, producing something intense and unsettlingly alien.
This one has the full SOMA complement of a Lyra, a Pulsar, and two Ornaments, with each Ornament controlling one device and the Lyra controller on a much slower timescale to differentiate drums and "melody".
The result: A long, slow dirge with a beat so chill it's frigid and a sinister hissing hum, like you're being serenaded by a bank of air conditioners or a swarm of wasps. I absolutely love this one— definitely my favorite track linked in this post.
Cohost bonus tracks
There were two more Pulsar jams I ran across this week I liked but didn't link on Mastodon because they're not really "songs". Both of these are just long running recordings while the musician fiddles trying to create a good loop, which means long periods of repetition intercut with two-minute stretches where they nail something that is absolutely lovely. Presented for anyone with a long attention span:
- "Soma Laboratory Pulsar-23 Dawless Jam", Colby Kennedy (Pulsar)
- "Pulsar-23 / Ornament-8 Long Sketch #1 - "???", Synthesist Sketches (Pulsar, Ornament)