Wood is more sustainable then processing iron ore or aluminum as seen in more trad synth housings.
Much less energy is required to process wood.
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Indeed. We pillage the Earth’s unsustainable resources in our everyday lives - fossil fuels in cars for example - yet something like this where a very sustainable resource has been used is an easy target.
Back on track - this sounds beautiful and I want one even more.
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CONSIDERABLY better than plastics as well….but I can still grieve for the tree that has become an monstrosity 
[a tree that has been filled with aluminium, iron, lead, plastics]
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THE big thing from Superbooth for me. I very much want to try it out. I need to start saving ASAP.
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Looks super fun! I’d love to eventually get all the Soma Lab synths.
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wtf… also coming in under a thousand euro for the mass production, non wood version is attractive. looking forward to see how development goes on this wild instrument.
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Is their (SOMA’s) website down? Ive been trying to access it to read about TERRA and REflex but it keeps saying “Critical error”.
Agreed, I wouldn’t want my corpse filled with electronics to be sold as someone’s weird synth. Maybe it’d be cool though… Don’t want to give Vlad any ideas.
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I was on it not long ago so yea someone must have tripped over a cable
In contrast I would be happy for any of you to rub your sweaty hands over my dead corpse to make weird boing boing noises.
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I think what we need is a way of ensuring the trees’ consent to such practices after their felling.
And at ~50 years on this earth it was definitely old enough to provide it.
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@trytykee are you at SB and got to try it? wondering if the music in the trailer multitracked. sounds fkn great but no idea if it’s pieced together or is straight from a single performance.
[edit] just saw the sonicstate vid
Yeah tried it, it sounds huge! If you mean the second part of the trailer, then yeah, I guess it’s multitracked.
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reminded me of…
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I’m in, probably for a woody.
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This sounds so nice!
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Let me swim against the tide here, and argue that Soma ARE conservative. Videos too, but I’m speaking of their — or rather, Vlad’s — ethos and ethics, aesthetics and… propaganda here.
On the surface, it looks psychedelic extravaganza, of course. But that’s not about it. It’s far from weird psychedelia of Ciat-Lonbarde, for instance. Whereas the latter is deeply rooted in contemporaneity, Vlad is all about new age, anti-modern, religious quasi-mysticism — if you don’t get those vibes from videos, just have a look at his book. It’s blatantly traditionalist if not outright conservative in its basic ‘hypotheses’, anti-scientific in argumentation and self-indulging in ‘solutions’.
This I think can’t be really disputed, as the man just put it all clearly himself. Then, in my not so humble* opinion, it’s also evident in his approach to instruments design. What he strives for is not ‘experimentation’ but just randomisation, perceived as ‘freedom’ — no control, chain of accidents, etc. This is open for discussion, but just listen to his music (he used to be a musician). It’s never been about anything remotely connected with contemporary academic and post-composer scene, nor avantguard jazz or electronica. It’s mainly a neo-spiritual, new-age and old pseudo-folk improvisation upon very common, albeit weird to the pop crowds, principles.
- and now to explain my un-humbleness, the last thing. I’ve to say it as SOMA just gets free pass here regardless of what’s going on in the world now, while clearly they should at least being asked — if not questioned. I’m very aware that they have expanded their business, but the core accounting is still in Moscow, ie profits flow there in the end.
Which is not a crime by any means, of course. And yet, less than a week after the war had started, in his personal blog, Vlad did comment on that. It was his and SOMA’s first and last words on matter. All he said — and I deduce, all he cared about — was, quote: “All international social networks, and here too, are now bombing like hell with videos calling you to withdraw your money from banks accounts immediately. It’s not hard to guess this is all just a massive information sabotage which aims to infuse panic and crash the banking system. Don’t give in!” — and then remained silent in comments where LOTS of people went mad and raged. I also believe Vlad was born in Kiev, which only adds cowardice to this already egoistic profit-first attitude which is one step away from official putin reich’s rhetorics.
And I know all too well how this current russian regime was built up, bottom-up, not the other way around. In culture it grew right out of those conservative, anti-modern, anti-western, anti-scientific illiterate ‘philosophies’ that Soma is built upon too.
You all have a right not to believe this last point. But it was, and still is in SOMA’s power to speak out — at least at international forums, off- or online. Yet they have not, and will not. And this negligence, ‘it’s not us it’s them’ silent non-position is what matters, I believe. For those who love their instruments, and care about Ukraine or Europe, or world and human life in general — just ask the company you bought from or willing to give your money to — what if you’re investing it wrongly?
sorry if it’s very off-topic here
mods have all their right to move this to separate thread if it’s worthy
but I hope this don’t get flagged and screen by soma fans
peace to all
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I won’t flag you. On this thread anyway.
To me Roland and Yamaha are conservative in the artistic sense, not the political sense. This is reflected in their advertisements, which depict normies - no goths, nobody wearing unusual attire, hair styles, no blatant violations of gender norms, etc. Just clean cut, normies who do not look like a threat to the establishment.
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