New Module Promises To Put Dirt In Your Modular Synth

erderd001

The ERD modular eurorack series promises to put dirt in your modular synth.

Not ‘sonic dirt’ – literal dirt.

According to the developer, they aim ‘to infect and contaminate the world of Eurorack with a radical, new artistic sensibility.’

ERD/ERD (Earth Return Distortion) is the first and most extreme expression of the ERD philosophy, seeking to literally put the earth back into circuit with technology.

All world electricity travels through the earth and nearly all electronic circuitry and devices are extracted and refined from the earth. ERD/ERD puts a small block of forest earth into the Eurorack circuit, allowing control and audio signals to be distorted and amplified as they pass through the earth block.

It can be viewed in conventional terms as an earth conditioned VCA (amplification factor by knob control or CV) and distortion. Local electrical and atmospheric signals can condition and distort the earth signal.

Two jack connections are also included, optionally switching out the local earth block in favour of routing through local earth piles and forest sites.

Here’s a preview of the ERD/ERD in action:

In this recording a sine from RS-95e is passed through earth and modulated in ERD/ERD by a triangle living VCO.

The ERD/SIR is a digital/analogue module which can be used as a stochastic, chaotic pattern and waveform generator.

The three knob controls and CV can be used to change the speed of simulation and output voltage, the selected plague and instruction set, and to actually input instructions, live coding style, into the simulated plague processors or CPUs.

Here’s an audio preview:

ERD/ERD (Earth Return Distortion) and ERD/SIR (Susceptible, Infected, Recovered) are the first ERD releases of 2015. All ERD modules are supplied fully hand assembled and totally Eurorack compatible (+ and -12v supplies).

Each series will be sold in a limited, strictly numbered edition of 40 modules each. Future modules planned for 2015 and early 2016 include: ERD/?, a radioactive source and true random voltage generator, and ERD/WORM speech synthesizer and vocoder.

via Chris Sloan

24 thoughts on “New Module Promises To Put Dirt In Your Modular Synth”

  1. Now if I could be able to _change_ the dirt inside the box….. Now _that_ would be interresting. “Tonights music will quite literally be of Bergen” (my hometown btw).

    But on a serious note. I like their idea. To go t the outmost extreme in the sonic world og sonic experimentation. Follows in the path of Buchla and the newer Make Noise. Well, that is if they do this with a serious undertone.

  12. Seriously though, I’m not exactly sure what this does, but I really like the idea of modular interacting with natural objects/processes. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe hooks stuff up to plants some times. I would love to see more modules that take that interact with nature in some way. Also, the clip sounds cool.

    1. This is a bit different than any applied radionics- the whole point of hooking electrodes to plants is to listen in to the plants bio-generated signals, not to effect other signals running thru it.

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