Apothek nerd out about Synths

Critter and Guitari - Pocket Piano

I remember the first time I saw this little strange synth. Justin Vernon of Bon Iver was playing it in this 4AD live session video that was just released and there was this little strange synth with a lot of personality running through the first track. A super simple sound - but there was something about it. And I found myself really needing to find out what generated it. Now - I’m usually the kid who doesn't really want the toys the other kids are playing with - so this was quite non-typical for me. But here I was googling away trying to figure out what made it.

Turns out it was the Pocket Piano from Critter and Guitari. They make super silly promotional videos for their products and everything is really colourful and has a lot of personality even though they are all super digital and simple. The pocket piano is all over this record. The first track I ever used it on was "Family" - playing the instrumental theme of the track. Making the super digital sounding arpeggios of the PP sound like almost like a string orchestra was something that immediately came to mind. The top end of it almost sounds like something is wrong with it - one of my all-time favourite qualities of an instrument.

The third verse of "Waiting For The Thunder" is another example of the way I’ve wanted to use it. But here with a bit more aggression to it. What a fantastic little box! After working with a lot of sound sources that people can go 'oh! That sounds kind of like an old computer game' and where I can go 'it does no such thing!' - I just fell in love with the little playful instrument and how it's sound kind of reminded me of how Wall-E looks. A bit sad, but hopeful.

Elektron - Machine Drum UW

This machine is an enormously vital part of the percussive sound of this record. I have an immense love for drum machines - and I own quite a few of them. They're my friends.

What Elektron has done with this machine is to make something so flexible, so direct, and so precise that it continuously melts my brain. It's one of the machines I’m pretty sure I can identify on a record no matter how mangled it might be. This is probably one of the instruments I own that I know the very best. Once you get past the initial shock of how far into the programming it can take you it almost literally has no bounds as long as you play by its rules. It does sound digital, harsh and precise. But that is exactly what I love about it.

This machine makes all the glitchy, rolling, unpredictable and harsh percussive elements to this record. It's been run through amps, re-amped in big rooms, distorted and pitched. Listen to The Knife's mind-blowing record "Silent Shout". It's (almost) all Machinedrum I think. I've taken on the programming a bit differently and use it to create grooves in the tracks that no other drum machine can do. The drums in "Inheritance" are played with a pad for variation and then reprogrammed solely on Jomox X-Base09 and Machinedrum. The amount of tracks in the mix still gives me a headache.

After a while I also got an Octatrack which you'll hear more subtly on the record but bringing a lot of the similar dynamics to the productions. It's great for making crazy rhythmic patterns out of field recordings. "Reunion" for instance features the ambient chatter of other guests on one of my go to Oslo cafés as percussion on the pre-choruses if you listen really closely.

Yamaha CS-15

This is a really cool synth that Yamaha started producing in 1978 - the same year Korg made their better known Ms20. And in a way they might feel like competitors for the same market. Architecturally they aren't very far apart - so I can understand someone saying it. But once you work with them - and I’m lucky enough to own both - they are completely different.

I don't know many who have used this one. So it's a little bit secret to me. It sounds hollow but massive. And compared to the MS20 which every producer might (hopefully soon) be a bit sick of hearing all over the place - it's a bit easier to mask and a bit more unfamiliar to the ear. At least to me. I do, as I write this, realize that I sound a bit mad and that I might need to buy a cape very soon.

It shines in the spotlight on my favourite track of the record – "Departure" and is responsible for the screechy, distorted and to me really beautiful top tones on the choruses. I clearly remember physically patting the synth on the back after I tracked those sounds. It was a moment. Ha!

Formanta Polivoks

This is another super strange beast. It's a soviet produced synth that sounds like nothing else in the world. I've made it up - but I want it to be made in the Soviet version of Area 51.

It's unpredictable. It sounds like the angriest most pent up guy inside a box letting a few screams out every time you press a key. It's wildly aggressive if you let it be. More so than any other instrument I’ve played.
You'll notice it in the ending of "Departure" and "Inheritance" lurking in the deep being menacing. I'd have to never turn it off - because if you did it would be so out of tune once you turned it on again it'd have to be left on a few days before it stabilized.

At last - it broke. So sadly I don't have it anymore. Breaks my heart.

Never come across anyone else using this one. But this rather cinematic SUPERSTRANGE video (featuring Charles Manson) says a lot. Oh how I miss it!

Yamaha VSS30

This is what the unenlightened might call - a toy.

It's made of plastic. It runs on AA batteries and sounds like something you might find at a yard sale. But it has a sample function that lets you record 1 second of sound - 12 bit - through a horrible microphone. And at that point something truly magical happens.

With a bit trial and error you learn which sounds it works well with - and from then on it makes the most beautiful ambient sounds. It's very basic - but for me it's a go-to thing when a track needs some mystical ambient sound that sounds just in the borderland between man and machine.

Featured heavily on the Sigur Rós record ( ). They used it mainly for making strange choir like pads and Icelandic wool sweaters sounds. Oh! Now I’ll have to revisit this gem of a record. Joyous news!

Apothek's self-titled debut album is due out on 30 September via Propeller. They're headlining The Pickle Factory in London on 25 October. A full list of tour dates and tickets can be found here.