life’s a Bistritz

That thing about the next album being comforting? I recorded a first track last night and it turned out spooky and tense. But nice.

My spouse was listening to a Dracula Daily podcast. The story begins on May 3, but on May 4 (*) Jonathan Harker is warned about it being St. George’s Eve and spooky stuff goes down at midnight. And, well, this recording sounds like spooky stuff is about to go down.

(There’s some conflicts about Harker’s Gregorian vs. local Julian calendar having an 11 day difference, which Stoker seems to have simply ignored, and the year is non-specific in the text. There are good arguments for it being 1893, other arguments for it being 1897 when the book was published, and another for the late 1880s. This only matters to me because I was going to use the date for a title.)


Superbooth, by far the world’s biggest and most important modular synth convention for the past few years, is next week and the product teasers and pre-announcements have been flying. Of interest to me:

  • Make Noise is up to something and have been teasing it heavily. There’s a lot of speculation about what it could be, and I’ve personally picked several likely possibilities — nowhere have they specified it’s just one new product they’re announcing. Some intriguing sounds for sure, and they have my attention.
  • Xaoc Devices has previously said they’ve got 6 modules to be released this year, and teased the blank backs of panels. They make some cool stuff and are one of my favorite brands, so the chances that something will be of interest are pretty decent.
  • Noise Engineering, another favorite brand, vaguely teased something new in their “meet us at Superbooth” post. But before that, they showed a photo of a circuit board about the size of a small desktop unit, or else it’s a quite large module. Color me curious…
  • A few other scattered things, and no doubt a couple of items that haven’t been hinted at yet.

Obviously, the modular case is full, and there’s not really a good place for another desktop synth; we’re back on the “anything new has to replace something old” thing. So far, though I hear nice stuff in the Make Noise videos, a lot of the best of it sounds like a cleaner Akemie’s Castle. I just need to remind myself that however cool the new stuff is, my “old” stuff is absolutely great. Maybe I can find inspiration in the new stuff without actually buying anything else. Or maybe it’ll be time to make changes. Either way… that’s fine.

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