Greetings from Signal Sounds HQ

Tonight’s the night! Incredibly, all seven of us have managed to prepare a live hardware set that we’re going to unleash on the Glasgow public as we take over Noise Box at Bloc from 9pm. If you’re in the area then do come by and say hi - not only are you almost guaranteed to hear some cool electronic music, but you could win a £200 voucher for the shop!

Elsewhere in Glasgow, a quick heads-up that artist and friend of the shop Scott Myles has a solo exhibition, Head in a Bell, at the Gallery of Modern Art that opens on Saturday 27th July. The centrepiece is his Instrument for the People of Glasgow, a ‘social sculpture’ in the form of a massive modular synth made up of donations from Eurorack manufacturers, which will in turn be donated to the Glasgow Library of Synthesized Sound (GLOSS) at the end of the show. We’ll cover more on this brilliant project on our blog over the summer.

Meanwhile, at the shop, we’re getting ready to ship out some of our most hotly anticipated pre-orders like the Forge-TME Vhikk-X and Befaco Oneiroi (which are both en route to us as we type!) plus lots of other cool new stuff has already landed - read on for all the juicy details...

Until next time,

Jason, Aleks, Kyle, Luke, Molly, Rob & Tom

New arrivals

One of the big new polysynth launches at this year’s Superbooth is now here! Sitting between the smash hit Super 6 and the monster Super Gemini in UDO Audio’s range, the Super 8 is a 16-voice, bi-timbral analogue-hybrid performance synth that boasts polyphonic aftertouch and that lush, all-conquering UDO sound.

Another one we all got excited about at Superbooth was the Body Synths Metal Fetishist, and it’s finally here. A digital percussion synth with a loopable random sequencer, it’s perfect for extreme drum sounds - think of it as the DFAM’s even naughtier little brother! We sold most of these on pre-order but we have a couple left in stock if you’re quick…

PWM’s Mantis has landed - a unique, duophonic hybrid synth that’s being hailed as a spiritual successor to the legendary OSCar - not surprising as it was co-developed by the late Chris Huggett, the brains behind the OSCar, EDP Wasp and more. You get a hell of a lot of synth for your money with this one, and it sounds awesome (check the Loopop review!)

We were well impressed with the Synthux Academy when we met up with its founder Roey at Superbooth, and we’re delighted to have got our hands on some of their Touch 2 multi-model synth platform for the shop. It’s a hand-held device with swappable panels - just upload firmware from the community (or write your own!) and turn it into anything from a stereo looper to a multi-voice synth or drum machine! Seriously cool.

Another clever module from SSF, Impulse Dynamics offers an easy way to bring velocity control to your LPGs, drums, envelopes, filters and VCAs. It generates pulses and envelopes and lets you control them dynamically, really bringing patches to life. DivKid’s demo video shows some smart ways to use it.

Winterbloom teamed up with Carson Walls of Decapod Devices for Neptune, an amazing-sounding diode ladder filter module with a unique ‘Salt’ feedback circuit that brings some gorgeous distortion into the audio path. Another clever touch is the separate high and low pass inputs, which let you spectrally morph between two sources.  Magic!

Latest restocks

After our first batch flew out the door as soon as we unpacked them, we now have more of the mighty Atlantix in stock, fresh off the plane from our pals at Intellijel! Building on the classic Atlantis, this adds a host of new features to the SH-101-inspired analogue synth voice. And while we wait patiently for the next batch of Torso’s S-4 desktop sampler, we’ve got a fresh delivery of their popular T-1 sequencer, available in black and white.

In the spotlight

DivKid has dropped another ace video all about Manic, his collab with Apollo View which came out earlier this year. Not only is it the definitive guide to this ‘VCA with superpowers’, but it’s a brilliant primer on all things to do with amplification in modular, from VCAs and ring modulation to wavefolding, clipping, distortion, bipolar TZAM and more. Strong recommend!

And finally...

One of our old pals (and brilliant musician) Daniel Ibbotson has launched a new album project with a difference. The Glasgow-based producer/designer was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, a rare form of blood cancer, a few years back, and he’s donating all profits from sales of his new album, From The Echo Department, to the Beatson Cancer Charity and Myeloma UK. Not only is it a good cause by the music is genuinely great, too - check out the full story, listen to clips and order a copy here.

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