Xploration • Curation • Recommendation
Chase Bliss announces August Order Window for Small Batch Release of new Bad Mood variant, and new Lost + Found Colourway variety
This month has had a plethora of interesting releases - where there are just too many worthy pedals to get them all - you need to prioritise and make your choices therefore. I’m still waiting for my Big Time to land - I’m hoping sometime during August, there’s a few Kickstarter projects I’m involved in that should be landing then too - but you never really know until those actually cross your threshold.
I already have the original Green Colourway Lost + Found, where Chase Bliss is making ...
MXR unleashes its excellent Textures Granular / Glitchy Synth Texturizer Engine with 3 Modes onboard - Delay, Auto Freeze, and Layers
I thought this was the 4th or 5th pedal that MXR had released in this format, while this exact format including the Presets only came in with last year’s Bass Synth! There were two pedals before that with the two colour-changing top push-buttons and 6 knobs - the first was the Poly Blue Octave in 2022, then the Joshua Ambient Echo in 2024. I though the Layers was similar - but that has quite a different topology,
I have a feeling that the Joshua will eventually be updated to include the ...
My OBNE x Emily Hopkins x B's Music Purr-ting is finally purring on all cylinders!
I first featured the Old Blood Noise x Emily Hopkings Parting back on January 21st. All the demos were great, but I was massively put off by the overly cluttered nature of the artwork. Even in the early monochrome edition - that ultra busy design made it really hard to even look in the direction of the pedal - I imagine anyone on the spectrum would not have reacted well to that design. It kind of drowned out the functional ability of the pedal - and made it look far tricker to deploy than it ...
AC Noises unveils its Continua Stereo Sample-Repeater / Glitch / Modifier / Multi-FX - in the same pedal format as its recent Ricorda Granular Reverb
"Continua is a stereo dynamic sampler and multi-effect that doesn’t just play your sound back : it listens to how you play and reacts in real time, capturing, shaping and transforming your repeats through a wide range of controls including mix, tempo (TAP function included), pitch, sustain, freeze, glitch, dimension, lo-fi, downsampling, reverb, smear and filter."
I am a huge fan of Continua’s predecessor - the Ricorda Granular Reverb, and will undoubtedly love this new one just as much - ...
2026 June Pedal-Chain Update - Episode VI - Verb-a-thon
A super busy month - with plenty of highlights and heatwaves.
My house is finally cooling down as I write these last few observations - we’ve had around 10 days of oppressive heat now, and there’s another wave on the way at the end of this week - which makes for very difficult conditions to have sessions with said pedals.
We’re in the final consequence of global climate change now - with increasingly more extreme weather patterns occurring - alternately cold snaps, heatwaves, and torrential ...
Meris Evolves and Super-Sizes its Bitcrusher / Sequencer / Texturizer - now the Ottobit X Modular Degradation and Texture Engine / Workstation
I’m a little late with this as Meris held back the press release until launch - so I was only provided with the details at the same time as everyone else - which is really rather unusual. I had a number of other projects already on the go - and so I’m a couple days late with this!
As always - each Meris device delivers way beyond its specific core category, its Enzo X for instance is almost as much a multi-modulator as it is a synth - and here we have lots of extras thrown into the mix - ...
My Gamechanger Audio RECODER Spectral Morphing Workstation has landed - a really interesting digital phrase recorder, modulator, modifier and looper!
WHAT is the RECODER?
’A SPECTRAL MORPHING WORKSTATION’
- a signal cross-pollinator
- a dynamic filter
- a moving audio prism
- a ghostly vocoder
- a formant resonator
- a granular echo creator
- a sound-imprint machine
A first impressions dive into Isn'tses Chernobylizer Radioactive Atmospherics Noise-Maker Mini Art Synthesizer
I was somewhat wowed by Isnt’tses Mini Art Synths at the recent Birmingham Noise Maker Market Show. These are intricately designed open circuits - with topological details worked into the surface - in a mix of black, white and gold, and various strategically and topologically placed components - which often represent structures from that landscape.
For the Chernobylizer the art-side is a mix of realism and impressionism - where the 4 large capacitors represent the 4 Chernobyl Nuclear ...
Isn'tses brilliantly combines creative sound generation with electronic arts and design for its series of Experimental Mini Art Synthesisers
At the recent inaugural Birmingham Noise Maker Market Show, one of the highlights for me was London-based Isn’tses - namely duo Lisa McKendrick and Tim Drage - who perform highly stylised experimental electronic music with colourful visuals and costumes to match - including Mexican Lucha Libre animal masks.
They make their own instruments too - including this superbly themed quartet / quadfecta of mini noise-maker Art-Synths featured here. Each of those has a highly evocative theme and a ...
Glitch Cloud's Haze is a cool Stereo Lo-Fi Looping Tape Machine, Glitched Digital Buffer and Sample Juggler
I’ve featured a number of sample-repeaters / micro-loopers of late - while I really like the sound and look of this one from Glitch Cloud Audio.
"Haze is a generative composer that transforms sound into texture. Skips, stutters, and fluid time become rhythm and motion. Feed it a loop. Plug in an instrument. Let it mutate for hours."
I recently covered the Puremagnetik JOTS - which I likened to pedals from Chase Bliss, Discomfort Designs and Kinotone. And this is another of that ilk, and...
