This Elektron Analog Four Synthesizer Teaser May Freak You Out!

Elektron has released an ultra-bizarre, epic and awesome teaser video for their upcoming Analog Four 4-voice analog synthesizer.

Here’s what Elektron has to say about the video:

The situation for the protagonist Hector is critical, but something buried deep in the ground might give him the strength needed to continue his struggle. But will he get there before his demons consume him?

This movie announces the ‘imminent arrival’ of the next major product from Elektron Music Machines, the Analog Four. Specifications and pricing are to come.

Check out the video and let us know what you think!

via ElektronHQ

61 thoughts on “This Elektron Analog Four Synthesizer Teaser May Freak You Out!”

  3. 5 1/2 minutes of unrelated fluff for a few seconds of product shots from terrible angles. Perhaps Elektron should focus on releasing hardware that isn’t still in beta (Octatrack anyone?) instead of diverting money towards hyped commercials. I don’t really care about Hector. I want to hear how it sounds and see demonstrations of the features.

      1. I wouldn’t mind Elektron having a little fun by doing creative shorts for their products if they would release them with v1.0 operating systems. The first time they produced a video like this was for the Octatrack launch. This new teaser is a reminder of the poor OS that Elektron pushed out with the first Octatracks.

        1. I’m not clear what the teaser has to do with the OS. It’s not like they stopped working on the actual product to make the teaser. They likely hired a production company and an fx house to produce it. As a 3d professional, I can tell you that was an expensive commercial, btw.

    7. I agree all this creativity is useless…I want to just have the scematics sent to me….now pardon me I have some white toast to properly butter.

    9. agree! after owning machinedrum and octatrack here seeing this useless trailer makes me wanna care less and less. they should be putting their efforts to make their products less buggy and more intuitive to use, let alone all the stupid limitations we still have in 21 century. trailer is a timewaste, and i guess the product will be too. something thats good enough by itself doesnt need trailers to get sold, heavy advertisement is usually used for weak products… *sigh* elektron…

  5. Completely brutal.

    That arm thing is going to stick with me for a while.

    Mike – seems like they did the same sort of thing when they introduced the OctaTrack. They’ll have plenty of demo videos once this is released.

  6. Wow, best teaser I’ve seen in… well, ever! 😀 Yes, you barely get to see it but that’s the point of a teaser. If you want specs and evenly lit full frontal, you’ll have to wait for the release. I’ll definitely be waiting for the release.

  8. The video didn’t freak me out nearly as much as the Octatrack manual. Positively the most confusing and frustrating thing I have ever experienced. The whole thing was so alien to my way of thinking that I came to the point of selling it off. I hated to do it because I know that it was capable of doing so many amazing things to audio and a large part of my work involves abusing field recordings. I got to the point of avoiding my Command Center just to not be reminded of the unfulfilled promise that was sitting there.

    The guy I sold it to seems to have figured it out and gets along with it fine.

    Just a suggestion to Elektron. Try to make your UI and manuals make more sense so your customers do not want to kill themselves rather than deal with them.

    1. The octatrack clicked with me right away, I spent 5 minutes with the manual figured everything else out through use. I think something needs to said for the value of a tool that doesn’t work for everybody.

      Sorry it didn’t work you.

      Regardless, the ease or difficultly of using the analog four doesn’t have much to do with the octatrack. Lots of machinedrum and monomachine owners also complain about the octatrack.

    2. Totally with you on that. If Elektron have cash burning a hole in their pocket then they should invest it in a usable OS for their products not the current press button b 5 times then press button c whilst simultaneously holding button e crap that they churn out at the moment. For products claimed to be “intuiitive” I have never come across anything that was less so.

    3. If Elektron have cash burning a hole in their pocket then they should invest it in a usable OS for their products not the current press button b 5 times then press button c whilst simultaneously holding button e crap that they churn out at the moment. For products claimed to be “intuiitive” I have never come across anything that was less so. Considering how good their products sound they should seriously invest time and money in making them much easier to use. Their user videos are a constant whirr of button pressing and knob twiddling which tell you nothing.

  9. Maybe their grooveboxes wouldnt have to cost over 1000 eur, if they stop playing hollywood…not bad for a short movie, but so cliche it hurts.

  11. I dig the teaser, it has got me more excited, can’t help it. Maybe it’s just me but I assumed the soundtrack was done with the Analog 4.

  12. “5 1/2 minutes of unrelated fluff for a few seconds of product shots from terrible angles. Perhaps Elektron should focus on releasing hardware that isn’t still in beta (Octatrack anyone?) instead of diverting money towards hyped commercials. I don’t really care about Hector. I want to hear how it sounds and see demonstrations of the features”

    what?

    r u for real?

    it was a well done short… with a message.

    maybe you should not be making music at all…

  13. Cinematic futurist sci-fi gritty product teaser with a soundtrack that surely is a harbinger of what is to come. Fantastically expensive, complex products that are capable of pure sonic genius. Um… what exactly is there not to like here?

  14. I get that a lot of the sounds in the video are assumed to be made with the Analog Four. What I want to see is a demonstration where Elektron goes through the feature set and creates those sounds. Perhaps I’m overly critical of Elektron but I feel that they need to spend less money on marketing and more on engineers. I had an Octatrack for almost a month before I returned it due to an OS riddled with bugs.

    1. you know that being a company the WILL demo the shit out of their product all over the place in addition to making a really crazy cinematic short, right? when a new trailer for video games comes out it’s the same kind of thing. just play one and make your own shit. It is nice when companies use their own product to make something legitimately cool besides it being just demo of knobs making filters zip and zap etc. etc. obviously we know that shit is gonna happen on the hardware. does anybody on synthtopia like fun AT ALL besides the synthmaster himself?

    1. I have worked in film & video for a decade. Don’t worry about the cost; this involved about a week of work and would have cost only $5-6000 – less than the full page ad in this month’s Sound on Sound. The special effects are not complex at all; they look more elaborate than they really are because they spent a little extra time to get the color grading right. Controlling light and color properly is 90% of having that ‘movie’ look; the other 10% is having clear, natural-sounding audio recordings for dialog etc..

      1. that city looked expensive, though, for a small company like Elektron. I’ve worked in feature cg for 12 years myself….

  16. Loved the video! Who cares how Elektron spends their money? As long as they continue to make an incredible product as they have never failed to do, my trinity will have a new friend 🙂

  20. I appreciate the skill it took to make this, props for that. But it bored me enough that I stopped watching about 45 seconds in. The gruff talking loner guy is such an over used stereotype in movies, games, books, etc that many of us simply turn away when we see it. So while this is clearly very exciting for a certain demographic, it’s going to completely alienate a portion of other potential customers.

    1. I’m glad that they’ve got the guts to do something different with their marketing and the creativity to pull it off.

      If that’s not your thing – they’ll surely have a batch of demo videos when this gets officially announced.

  23. Simply fantastic! Elektron you are the bestest! Who else would do a promo like this? Maybe a videogame company…what I love about elektron on is that they have the giblets to actual do something like this…it’s their culture, and I personally I’m always happy to see more…what ever you think about these shenanigans ….you never see roland, korg or any other big dog company, put this much effort into the romance of gear lust…..elektron thank you for hector…it made my day…and quenched my ache for all things elektron….( I own an sp-1 uw+, an octatrack, monomachine and a sidstation….and yes I’ll be owning a analog 4 Aswell!….even if it makes me homeless! Lol!

  24. Basically if the whole soundtrack was made from only their OWN synths then that was amazing. The story line was a visual help and nothing else…

    I am also glad not the whole internetS is lacking a sense of humor and adventure. That was a cool mini movie.

  26. +1 “Controlling light and color properly is 90% of having that ‘movie’ look”

    +1 “I appreciate the skill… But it bored me enough that I stopped watching about 45 seconds in. The gruff talking loner guy is such an over used stereotype… many of us simply turn away when we see it”
    Rambo anyone?

    +1 “teaser is a reminder of the poor OS that Elektron pushed out with the first Octatracks”

    +1 “Perhaps Elektron should focus on releasing hardware that isn’t still in beta instead of diverting money towards hyped commercials”

    -1 “what? r u for real?”
    he/she is, I am too, and so are A LOT of others so cool down

    -1 “it was a well done short… with a message.”
    agree to disagree

    -1 “maybe you should not be making music at all…”
    maybe you should not be talking and writing at all…
    you see how your ‘message’ sounds just a bit rude?

    +1 “I had an Octatrack for almost a month before I returned it due to an OS riddled with bugs”
    it’s much better after a few updates…
    it should’ve been at least like it is now… when it came out!

    +1 “The video didn’t freak me out nearly as much as the Octatrack manual. Positively the most confusing and frustrating thing I have ever experienced. The whole thing was so alien to my way of thinking that I came to the point of selling it off”
    “The guy I sold it to seems to have figured it out and gets along with it fine”
    Unfortunately you still have to “figure it out” a bit too much… part depends from the fact that is a deep machine, but this doesn’t justify why some things that are so simple turn out to be so fucking complicated to use

    -1 “Basically if the whole soundtrack was made from only their OWN synths then that was amazing”
    I don’t see nothing so amazing in that… there are a lot of soundtracks done with only few pieces of hardware or software

    +1 “I am also glad not the whole internetS is lacking a sense of humor and adventure”
    I am also glad about this… in this case I think the lack of sense of humor or adventure comes mainly from the ones that, for having that sense of adventure, spent 1000 euro for the octatrack and received a machine clearly incomplete and not up to the hype.

    To put everything into words…

    Don’t… don’t… don’t… Don’t believe the hype!

    1. what hype? there are a few people that are excited of the prospect of what elektron + analog could mean.

      and rambo is the reference you pull out for the inner monolog loner? that is profoundly funny.

  27. Wow a cool $1000 analog product without trivial subtractive dubstep sounds, I hope moog pays attention.

    Dang that think had alot of buttons on it, I am interested to know what all it can do.

  28. If what some of the people here are saying is even remotely true I don’t think that moog or anyone else in a similar line of business will be much worried. Analog Synths tend to be quite straightforward, there may be lots of buttons but in the end one of the main reason people buy them is that once you know the theory behind the modules you just play them directly. no software menus to dig in, you just play

  30. I would not be so excited.
    With the announcement from the minibrute I also was fascinated.
    Till today it’s still not available in my country and Im’reading bad stuff about it.

  33. annoyed by the octatrack trailer but this one was lot more interesting. some parts were very cheesy but fuk it.

    and i bet elektron has not paid for this trailer (or not much). it seems to me like a collab with a director / dp who are looking for an openminded client to expand their portfolio. common practice and to mutual benefit.

    what is important is the 4x voice analog groovebox i always wanted from korg (idiots).
    more knobs means less menu button combos and convoluted shortcuts. fantastic.

    this looks like a must have for me come next 15% discount.

  34. I thin its one of the best if not the best presentation of synthesizer off all time so far, what everybody was expecting was a damn video in some club with a dj playing, that would be brainless, this video especially the sound shows the capabilities of the synth, and i think is awesome.

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