Liquid Sky D-Vices V4CO 8-bit dual wavetable oscillator and circuit bending expander Liquid Sky Artist Collective goes D-Vices and will soon release experimental Eurorack modules: an 8-bit dual wavetable oscillator with a circuit bending expander. The Liquid Sky Artist Collective stands for a very wide range of experimental music. From noise, drones, ambient… there is a lot of “refreshing different” music to discover here. One of the most influential people in this collective is Ingmar Koch, aka Dr. Walker Besides music, the collective has a strong interest in music technology and gear. Now they are making their own gear under the instrument label Liquid Sky D-Vices. The first products will be Eurorack modules in the UFO series, and two modules are making the start of this new adventure.
Liquid Sky D-Vices V4CO The new V4CO is a wild dual 8-bit wavetable oscillator, each a separate square sub-bass oscillator to add body to your sounds. Each oscillator consists of 16×6 sets, and each set has 16×10 waveforms compromised in wavetables. You can choose the content of the wavetable manually with the slider or animate it with a CV signal. You can also transpose it and detune each oscillator. According to the developers, it tracks up to 8 octaves and has a built-in chromatic Quantizer. A very handy functionality. Then, you mangle the wavetables in different ways, including hard sync, linear FM… And thanks to an analog VCA for each oscillator, you can also do AM. Inside each VCA, you can also find a dirty-sounding analog overdrive to add more grit and character to your 8-bit sounds. Cool, you can also flip both oscillators in LFO mode. So you get LFOs with complex waveforms.
Output side, you get individual outputs for the oscillator and sub-oscillators as well as a mix output merging all signals together. There is also V/oct input for the oscillators. Liquid Sky D-Vices V4CO GLITHC BOARD eXPENDR For the Liquid Sky D-Vices developers, however, the V4CO was not crazy enough, so a suitable expander was developed with which the whole thing can be teleported into the experimental, wild, noisy fields. More precisely, it’s a GLITHC BOARD eXPENDR that introduces real-time circuit bending to the module. The expander is basically a patch matrix where you can break the signal path of the V4CO and flip the actual bits of both oscillators and sub-oscillators. The module consists of a bit-manipulation section where you bend the individual bits of the wave and bank select and of the actual wavetable. Further, you can find four Logic functions (AND, OR, NAND, NOR) as well as three mini non-consecutive sequencers. They are made for sequencing the bank/wave and the wavetables. There are also multiples and MIDI with three Thrus. The patch options and the results are particularly exciting here. For example, you can cross-modulate both oscillators perfect for harmonic-rich sharp sounds. Liquid Sky says that they want to create modules that have lots of front panel space. That’s nice because many Eurorack modules today have very densely built front panels, which makes playing rather unsexy. They are also part of a reforestation project that is core to their artistic and business strategy. They promise that every module sold will go towards planting 20,000 trees in 2022 alone. Two exciting developments. I find the idea very special and crazy. I’m looking forward to the finished modules, and what sounds you can achieve with them. I’m pretty sure they will do a lot of bizarre noises. Liquid Sky D-Vices modules (V4CO…) will probably be available for Christmas 2022. Price is TBA. |
