With a Digitone on my desk I can’t really justify it… but having all those controls at my fingertips… damn…
Yeah,
that’s it. It’s the hands on.
But not only that… unison on that thing and you will get the run if you know what i mean.
Its brutal…
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mine died sadly.
had exact that look in my face.
Korg NTS-1 and eventually some paid algo’s from SineVibes or just get 2 NTS-1 and use one as extra effects. Or Roland JD08.
I would suggest a Waldorf Blofeld or a Virus Snow TI. If preset recall isn’t such an issue, a Korg MS-20 would work nicely.
I think we lost something when “MIDI Song Select” went out of fashion and/or went obsolete. I could do something close to instant recall* between, say, my ESQ-1 and TR-626 because they’d speak MIDI Song Select to each other. Bummer those days are gone.
* close, I mean, maybe with some additional Program Change messages being sent around, or not
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I’d say that if instant recall, not analog and no tweakability are the requirements then your best option is to use a computer. A second hand iPad is probably the most space efficient and cost effective way to introduce that workflow whilst having lots of sound design potential. Hardware seems like the wrong tool for that job to me - which is all about physical interaction.
But there are some good suggestions that meet the recall requirement: Typhon, MM2, Freds lab stuff, Blofeld - those were the ones I thought of but they were all covered early in the thread. MM2 probably opens the most doors with the smallest footprint and would give your Syntakt some much needed polyphony. I get what you’re saying though about the aesthetic - and I think that makes the hands-off requirement more difficult as a lot of experimental devices are quite hands-on.
I think you should go the other direction and get a SOMA Pipe - I’m assuming even if your hands aren’t free your mouth is 
I think the MC-101 might be a good fit for you, since
you want polyphony. It would also allow you to sequence more things on the Mc-101 too if you fancied giving that workflow a try. The sound engine is really good and since the 1.8 update you’ve got a lot more control over it. You’ll get instant classic Roland sounds plus it does stereo sample playback. If you’re into multitrack recording from your syntakt I think you should be able to multitrack record the mc-101 alongside the syntakts overbridge instrument so you could get a really sweet multitrack recording of your jams to turn into full songs in your DAW. I think the micromonsta 2, the mc-101 and the syntakt Will give you a massively broad sound pallet.
Also I agree the Fred’s Lab stuff looks wonderful.
Edit: sorry just reread your post and realised you said microfreak not micromonsta - either way. Good pairings with the MC-101 I think.
I can confirm that the Argon8m is wonderful with my Digitakt’s midi tracks and does patch recall initiated from the Digitakt pretty well (very occasionally it misses, but it’s easily sorted). Plenty of CC control too.
For something a bit different the Streichfett works well with midi cc control from the Digitakt and I’ve
Had some great sounds out of it applying the DT’s FLO to the sound morph control.