An international festival (or trade conference, of sorts: interference?) happens in May, and through peer-pressure & a certain keeping-up-with-the-joneses energy this has become the bottleneck through which entire yearsworths of ideation, development, & market-speculation get simultaneously rammed, for hundreds of boutique, cottage-industry concerns adjacent to the production of electronic music. I have been scouring the announcements w/ bated breath while simultaneously drawing the pursestrings oh so tight; one wonders how this spontaneous, Vesuviusian eruption of produkt benefits the greater marketplace, as a majority of similar-category devices are swiftly ruled out in a brutal cage-match ladder-tournament, the victorious always being the one w/ exaggerated feature-creep & mission-bloat. Let’s take a look:

This effete gentleman right here ostensibly brings the psychological rein of the OG “Elite” bespoke synthesizer concern to an end by offering a seemingly-nerfed (yet quite capable, feature-laden) just-above-triple-digit desktop unit rife with glorious connectivity. That said, eyes closed, (dancing) in my head I’m struggling to visualize the person for whom this is: generational boffins that matter (or have the resources to appear so) have already fuxxed with this whole ecosystem via the deluge of Antipodean & now domestic easels & the younger svelte/uptight techno-ambients will assuredly cringe in extremis at the ah chopped Space Weasel unc aspect, so I guess its someone like me (modest pocketbook, glory days visible albeit fading in rearview; still in the mindset of success if not necessarily chasing the global criticality, wanting to continue to tinker until the dying of the light). Bold move for Fox & friends; very glad to see them taking wild swings & the IP / Don’s legacy deserve such radical departures: definitely on board.

Honestly love the Afro-Futurist connotations here; I’ve spent a little time w/ this digital-generation of modules & objects from the Czech developer & have found them to be the exact level of overengineered (both endless keycombing to be unlocked & firmware revisions adding features long after the fact) to keep the spark alive as romance dwindles. This tiny handheld rejuvenates the immediacy of Waisvisz’ Cracklebox into a 21st Century possibility-set that feels novel, although we’ll see just how loud & at what response that embedded speaker operates.

Ostler has put two things out into the void; most impressively a 4hp audio/CV interface that lets you pipe 8 signals from your phone/computer directly into Euro via USB-C. Would have killed for such a simple thing BITD; wrestled with all of that ADAT/lightpipe crap for so long that by the time the ES-8 came in I had already jumped ship. There’s also an 8hp triple-mono audio-freezer that people are going to want, although I do wonder about the sort of music this leads to & if any of the folks sweating the hardware have considered any of it.

Tom & Tony are each royalty, and as such this (full stereo!) update of the Echophon/Erbe-Verb (the OG “Playable” Euro reverb; an instrument more than either an effect or an algorithm) is a major cause célèbre. While the recent NUSS innovations have been incredible, they insist on a system-wide integration that feels like commitment… whereas the processors & effect-modules can be dropped into extant setups at a moment’s notice. Excited to hear this one in person.

I’ll get to the ALM, Instruo (10hp mic/line input module w/ EF & Phantom), Jasmine & Olive Trees, Oxi, Polyend, RYK, Vostok (10hp Quad triangle/square LFO w/ logic), WMD (the superb Cosmic Debris 16-tap delay-line plugin-in-a-module, which is already here), etc. things shortly; looks to be a good year for innovation after a somewhat sleepy phase defined by the detour into trade-policy instability.