Icelandic electronic music gear maker Genki has introduced the Katla, a unique new instrument that they say “draws inspiration from Iceland’s powerful subglacial volcano”.
The name ‘Katla’ means “kettle” in Icelandic, fitting for a volcano often on the verge of eruption. Katla is one of Iceland’s most active volcanoes, located on the South Coast near the town of Vík. It has erupted at least 20 times since 1100, making it the fourth most active volcanic system in Iceland. It last erupted on the 12th of October, 1918, but has been showing signs of unrest in the past decades.
Features:
- Handmade in Iceland
- Basalt side panels, each unit is unique
- Genki’s “digilog sound engine”
- Built in spring-reverb, analog filters and warmth circuits
Specifications are still to come at the Genki site, but it looks like the Katla offers four oscillators that can be used in monophonic, duophonic and four-voice paraphonic modes. Other features include a suboscillator, dedicated controls for aftertouch modulation, dual spring reverbs, dual filters, dual envelopes, LFO, chorus, and preset memory.
Pricing and Availability:
The Genki Katla is available now for €4.990.
This looks gorgeous, but where are the audio demos?
agreed. bit before the horse with this one.
I concur. No audio demos on their website either. Hope they fix this.
Exactly.
A shame that they missed to publish real photos [not only 3D models made with Blender] and only talk about the audio without real audio examples…
If indeed the synth has in total four voices only, it’s not only the volcano that erupted, its the price as well
Does the volcanic rock enable the synth the float in water?
Must have if you want that Icelandic subglacial volcano sound.
I’ll eat a lot of baked beans and fill the toilet with dry ice.
And I will record it 🙂
For serious collaboration visit my site!
Thank goodness for Dreadbox and Behringer
Straight up saying on the panel that your filters are WASP and MS20 sure dampens any excitement. Lovely filters by themselves, but not on a 5000,- thing like this. How are these even to turn the sound into unique rumbling volcanic sounds, as claimed? Too much design, not enough function.
Yes, where are those fractal and transtemporal filters that I’ve been hearing so much about? Oh… wait. Those are the voices in my head. Shut up, you guys!
the design is very beautiful, but it would need to deliver something serious for that price, especially when you can get flagship poly synths for less! yikes.
This. The weird BS on their website “inspired by volcanos”, “digilog” and the likes seem like red flags, despite no sound demos. I don’t get, what’s unique about this one, which I can’t get with mature products for 1000 bucks or so. I’d rather buy the whole Dreadbox lineup for the same price (probably not correct, but you get the point).
lol their website doesn’t have any working sound demos. the main page has an image that looks like a sound player but its a static image! If your quality is this bad, I can’t imagine the actual synth!
Website states 3 of 30 sold. I find that hard to believe when there are no sound samples and the synth is a four oscillator synth costing 5K. Zero musical pedigree. Zero spec. Spec subject to change without notice. Somewhere in the world are three dentists talking to their mates saying, “Yeah but it’s got basalt end pieces!”
I get the impression they’re ashamed of their oscillators, as they seem to be hiding behind dirty character filters, distortion and gimmicky spring reeverb…