Published on May 29, 2016 Bastl Instruments
"Distortotron was made in 1993 by Psybe - Svein Berge and Henrik Sundt"
"Bastl Instruments in cooperation with Mental Overdrive made a documentation of a unique piece of electronic music equipment from 1993 called Distortotron. They created a short film to trace the origins of the instrument and provided sound demos.
Distortotron is an effects processor: downsampler, bitreducer and clipping overdrive. It was made in 1993 in Norway by Svein Berge and Henrik Sundt a.k.a. PSYBE for a Tromsø based musician Per Martinsen a.k.a. Mental Overdrive. The concept for such instrument came from the need to bring back the aliasing and noise of early 80s samplers and it heavily formed the sound of Mental Overdrive’s debut album Plugged released in 1995 which became the landmark of the so called Tromsø sound. The album got re‐relased in 2016 on Prins Thomas’ label Rett I Fletta.
The Distortotron inspired Václav Peloušek of Bastl Instruments to design eurorack module called T romsø. note: Svein Berge is NOT the guy from Röyksopp – just has the same name More information about Distortotron [link]
Mental Overdrive album Plugged from 1995 is reissued on Rett I Fletta label Reissue info: [link]Album on bandcamp: [link]
Eurorack module Tromsø is available from Bastl Instruments"
Pics and info via Bastl Instruments:
