Aphex Twin – “Vas Deference”

Liaisons Dangereuses – “Peut Etre… Pas”

MOOG MINIFOOGERS
Some companies are reassuringly expensive, never delving down into the plastic mass-market. They take the luxury higher ground alongside Louis Vuitton, Moet, Hennessey—heck, the whole LVMH set. So the five Minifooger guitar pedals probably mark the first time you’ve been able to buy something with a Moog badge on it for less than $200.

Here’s Troy from Queens of the Stone Age to demonstrate these all-analog boxes:

I like them. They’re good. They’re cheap on the wallet, but expensive to the touch. The knobs are pleasing to turn. My only gripe is that from a distance they all look the same. Some variation in colors would be appreciated.

And on the sound of each individual pedal, my field notes run like this…

Boost:
Having a boost or preamp pedal is an extravagance for any guitarist. I mean, Angus Young from AC/DC managed with the setup GUITAR—LEAD—AMP:

And he destroys all ears in his path. So the idea of taking pedalboard space with a pedal that makes your tone a bit nicer? Heck, who am I to argue. We’re out of recession, officially. Go wild, people.

Drive:
This pedal sounds awesome, and if you throw a synth bass through it you’ll be in acid heaven in no time. These pedals are a way to get classic Moog features—the ladder filter in the Drive and the Ring mod itself—for cheap. All of them can be controlled with an expression pedal, so use this for sweet filter sweeps.

Trem:
It’s analog, beautiful, and lush (all the things a tremolo should be). GOOD VIBES. As with all of these pedals, its responses are subtle and sweetly musical, responding to your playing and the particular harmonics of each voicing.

Ring:
Like the Boost pedal, no one needs a ring modulator. They’re big in modular synthesis, and Doctor Who’s Daleks speak through them (here’s a young man doing it in his house, filmed on a potato:) And again, if you need a ring modulator in your life you may as well get a Moog one. The price is right.

KORG VOLCAS/LITTLEBITS
I’m lumping these two together because a) Korg are involved with both and b) they’re both toys. Kind of. The Littlebits/Korg Synth kit is meant to be a toy and part of the amazing Littlebits range. If I were lazy, I’d describe it as Lego meets circuits, connected by magnets.

So I’ll be lazy (and we interviewed the Littlebits folk already here).

The only obvious criticism is that the learning curve for kids might be steep. It’s an amazing introduction into modular synthesis, but as soon as you start playing analog synths you realize that getting good sounds isn’t all that easy (the MS20 requires similar gentle care).

There are no presets here, just raw noises and some great module choices: an MS-20 filter is in there, plus a sweet sounding delay and the wherewithal to route it in interesting ways, such as triggering the envelope from the sequencer, for example.

On the other hand, the Korg Volcas aren’t explicitly toys. They’re toy-like, for sure, plastic cases and tiny knobs. But they have a weight to them: you could knock someone out with one if you had to.

They’re also a victim of their own portability. Personally I’d have left off the tiny in-built speakers, because it doesn’t give a fair representation of the monstrous sounds lurking within each of the Bass, Keys, and Beats versions. They also have 1/8” output jacks, which is great to save space but just plain annoying when trying to find enough 1/8” cables to plug everything in.

Like the Minifoogers, these analog synths are cheap—like $150 cheap. So stop listening to my stupid complaints and just enjoy your life.

ARTURIA MICROBRUTE
Fine wine. Efficient and (so far) accident-free nuclear power. Deep resistance to the McDonalds corporation. All of these things are rightly held as proud examples of the French spirit. And to these I’ll add Arturia, a synth manufacturer.

Tenuous, maybe. But Arturia have graduated from wide-ranging software emulation of synthesizers into actual honest-to-God physical analog keyboards. And not content with the compact form of 2012’s Minibrute, they’ve pared it down even further to create the Microbrute.

If you want a full analog synth to go with your 13” computer which you can carry on your back like Luke carrying Yoda, look no further. Arturia have packed the tiny space full of features, some unique to this synth (the Metaliser/Ultrasaw/mini patch bay) and some cleverly borrowed from others (the “Brute Factor” which replicates patching the MS-20 back in on itself to create brutal distortion).

Me and the Microbrute get on well. It’s capable of gentle wobbles, wide death basses, and it’ll even talk to your Eurorack systems through its semi-modular patchbay.

Here’s M83 getting down:

**
Boom. There you have it: it’s too late to atone for all your misdeeds this year and ask Santa to buy you something good, but if you return his gifts then maybe you can get some of the above.

The keywords of the year, in case you didn’t notice, were ANALOG and PORTABLE.

You’ll find Davo begging for dials to twist on Twitter – @battery_licker