Can this synth restore his faith in Monosynths?

video upload by Oscillator Sink

"I must confess, for the past few years I have felt sort of burned out on what you might term “traditional mono-synths”. Not because of the sound or their utility in electronic music, but because…well I guess the fact that I used the word utility sums it up: it had been a while since I had come across a mono-synth which felt like more than a means to a musical end; it had been a while since a mono-synth felt fun.

Which is why I was overjoyed at superbooth this year to come across a number of mono-synths which renewed my faith in the genre - instruments which did something fresh and exciting in their presentation, features and sound, which iterated on traditional ideas in truly interesting and useful ways leading to instruments that felt fresh and playful without being unfamiliar.

One of those instruments was the SWEN2 from Analog Sweden. Based on their earlier, rare and relatively expensive Swenigizer synth, which itself was based on an even rarer and much more expensive synth called the Energizer, the SWEN2 manages both to add new features while also moving to a manufacturing process that makes it a lot more affordable - it feels like a lot of synth for the money.

At its heart SWEN2 is a semi-modular subtractive synth but with so many clever little tweaks to its sound and usability, along with some ideas that I haven’t really seen in other instruments, as well as a very fun and jammable generative sequencer, all of which add up to an instrument that is a joy to use and, yes, extremely fun.

Transparency Notice: Analog Sweden kindly sent me this prototype unit for free after meeting the team at Superbooth, but they haven’t had any editorial oversight of this video."

Chapters:
00:00 Intro
03:01 The Oscillators
07:59 No talking demo: Pseudo Paraphony
08:49 The Filter
14:28 No talking demo: Faking Flange and Karplus-Strong
15:24 The Modulation Matrix
16:04 The Sequencer
19:17 Patching a Patch
26:38 No talking demo: Slow and Mellow
27:59 Making a DFAM
32:42 No talking demo: Acid Time
33:47 Patching something more mellow
38:31 SWEN2 loves to layer rhythms
42:34 No talking demo - A Lil Rave Lead
43:19 Patching something "Bongy and Weird"
47:26 Pinging the Filters
50:31 A Moment for Drone
53:07 Outro