In this performance, SOMA Laboratory founder Vlad Kreimer & creative director Sofia Rubinstein demonstrate what happens when audio signals travel through your body.
The video features the SOMA Labs ENNER, an analog synthesizer based on the principle being that all signals that make sound pass through and are managed by your body. Your hands become the central part of the circuitry.
Touching different contact pads with different parts of your fingers and palms with different amounts of pressure, letting signals pass through your body controls the mixing, volume, timbre, feedback and other parameters of synthesis.
And all the pots of ENNER are metallic and function as inputs or outputs, so touching pot can not only change the parameters, but also patch audio signals.
Here’s a video demo of various ENNER playing techniques:
Details on the ENNER are available at the SOMA site.
Check out the performance and share your thoughts on the ENNER in the comments!
It has a great potential for solving family disputes 🙂 Soma is Soma. I wouldn’t expect anything else.
Pétr Valek needs this quickly!
. sounds are other worldly
wow thats it!!!!
This sounds as
1956 Bebe Barron Louis Barron : Forbidden Planet.
1959-1967 Pauline Oliveros : Mnemonics, V of IV, Time Perspectives, Once Again.
1967 Morton Subotnik : Silver Apples of the Moon.
1969-1970 Elaine Radigue : Feedback Works and Vice Versa.
that interface is hideous
That’s funny, when I first saw it I was amazed how beautiful it is. Guess SOMA is really polarizing, which is a good thing in my book.
Close your eyes and focus on the music.
Soma are very interesting in making esoteric instruments but also in making them more mainstream. It’s great they’ve had such success at both which is often difficult to achieve. Enner seems cool but I’d need to hear more personally. I have a number of noise synths now and Enner reminds me of the circuit bent variety. It’s kind of a more cryptic version of a Folktek omnichord and their Garden stuff which is also great. Anyhow, if you need weird and lack weird gear…you probably can’t go wrong with Enner. I’m more interested in the odd digital synth that Soma are working on however.
I don’t know that I would ever need to own this, personally, but seeing SOMA stuff in action just brings me joy
It seems like a lot of noise and distorted samples to me. Can it be more beautiful played in another way?
“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”.
Does not sound like samples to me. Sounds like oscs, noise, FB loops, effects, etc. I am sure there is more to it than that, knowing Vlad. He tends to favor older circuit designs when he designs his instruments. It is not for everyone for sure, but niether is a theremin…Me – I love his designs. They take time to master but it is worth it to me.
I had to sit with the design and read the specs and notes, but yeah this wasn’t too hard of a purchase decision for me. This is the kinetic realm of SOMA with timbres I’d only really expect from the folktek family otherwise. I like that this is the launchpad to their REFLEX synthesizer in development. SOMA’s experiments with interface are commendable.
It’s a pity that the design is horrible, not even funny. The soundscapes are beautiful nevertheless.