Tom Furse Epileptic
Darkness
The Horrors’ sexy and troubling melodies float up high, and one of the reasons is their masterful keyboardist Tom Furse. Take a trip with us into the epileptic darkness of sound, guided by PolyBrute’s cunning powers.
Ra(n)ge Against the Machine
Tom Furse and Faris Badwan started the English garage rock band in London in the early 2000s, playing covers by Joy Division, Screaming Lord Sutch, and The Sonics. They have since evolved their sound into a throbbing mix of dark rock, punk, and synth soundscapes, which is where Tom’s experiments come in.
At first, what makes the PolyBrute exciting is the kind of the stuff I’ve played before, it’s just all the sounds that I want. It can be clean or it can be dirty.
With instant access to 768 preset slots, including patches from world-renowned sound designers, the sonic universe of this beast is as colorful or as dark as you want it to be.
Having that range of character is just what I need, because I’m pulling on a decade and a half of synthesizer experience.
Tom shares he’s owned plenty of synths across the years and has played most of them, including the rare gems, such as the DX1 or the CS-80.
I’ve used them all, and they’re great. But what I need is really just one keyboard. In an ideal world, I have one synthesizer that can go to all these places that I wanna go to.
With 7 EQ shapes, 6 polyphonic voices, Chord mode, and its brainiac Matrix, PolyBrute is built to serve the undiscovered sound. It has options you won’t get lost in, but options you’ll find yourself in.
I don’t think you should be able to get this many sounds out of one keyboard. It’s not fair on the other keyboards!
Bipolar Phonics
The analog powerhouse was built to express fearless travels across sound. The option to morph between two presets on one control creates an endless platter of sweet spots:
One of the things that I really love about this keyboard is the fact that you can have two sounds set up, an A sound and a B sound. And then you can morph between those two settings by just using either the morphing pedal - or you can assign it with anything.
The result is a wondrous trip beginning in a full-bodied, dissonant chord taken from a haunted church, to a sense of relief in hopeful fairyland where the ground is made of clouds. To take this to the next level, a 96-point digital patchway with up to 32 destinations is just waiting to be fully exploited. You can easily route any of the modulation sources and controllers to influence dozens of parameters at once. Let the sinus dance begin!
Hands-on, distractions off
Having a tactile experience with a piece of gear makes all the difference to a creative workflow. Inspiration often comes through the body, and keeping connected with it is one of the best ways to maintain the creative spark:
The PolyBrute has an expressive and tactile way of manipulating the sound. I feel like that’s a much more complete instrument than, let’s say, an MS-10. I know they’re very different synthesizers, but for the longest time, I felt kind of ‘caged in’ by synths sometimes.
PolyBrute breaks away from these past limitations and opens up a world where you can bend anything, your way.
Having its complex, yet accessible genius at hand inspires deep sonic play: “Cool, I can open up the filter. Great, it’s got velocity, okay - that’s a few extra ways of messing with it.” He reflects on the fact that this is another reason why PolyBrute stands out:
Having tactile, intuitive ways of controlling the sound and shaping the sound flexibly is rare.
The sensual keybed seduces any player with its premium velocity and pressure-sensitive keybed, allowing pitch wheel and assignable mod wheel.
It’s got a really nice keybed. You can get a lot of feel out of it, like a piano.
The One
With Arturia’s love child synth, nourishing one’s synthmania is both a matter of indulgence and productivity. The intuitive workflow and the soundscaping possibilities are what makes this creature a responsive tool ready to pounce with beats:
It just removes a lot of the stop gaps from actually having the idea of a track or a sound, and just lets you actually do that without me having to go into the cupboard and pull out some synth that I haven’t used for ages.
No more dusting off unused pieces of gear - it’s time to enjoy a condensed world of magic, an all-in-one key to the world of unexplored sounds.
For me, the big draw is that it sounds really good, it’s very flexible, and it does everything that I need it to do.
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