Buchla 200e
Don Buchla was, with Robert Moog, one of the leading creators of electronic music tools in the 1960s. Both started with revolutionary ideals to create instruments that would enable new modes of expression unfettered by the conventions of centuries of previous music — such as keyboards designed for even-temperament. Moog's designs became the basis for the VCO-VCF-VCA architecture that took over synths for decades, and despite his intentions ended up being used in much more conventional genres of music. Buchla took a completely different path, eschewing the use of filters and basic oscillators that became a mainstay of those conventional electronic music genres in favour of manipulating timbre through more abstruse methods such as wavefolding and frequency modulation. As a result, his instruments were never widely used in popular music but instead became legendary for a small cognoscenti of more experimental musicians. This led to a significant revival of interest in the 2010s in his designs and in the philosophy that shaped them, and many of the more interesting trends in recent Eurorack modular design — from lopass gates to complex oscillators — can be traced back to Buchla. This instrument is a mid 2000s 200e — an update of his classic 1970s designs, with MIDI functionality and — more remarkably — preset storage to allow patches to be stored. As an instrument, it is capable of a timbral variety unmatched by most of the other synths here, and lends itself easily to more experimental sounds.
Classic: As Wendy Carlos did with the Moog, Suzanne Ciani did groundbreaking work to establish the Buchla 200 — the predecessor to the 200e — as a serious musical instrument, and in particular as one not limited by the need for a standard keyboard. Her 1975 Buchla Concerts is tonal but never conventionally so. She now performs exclusively on the 200e, and the video recording of her recent Improvisation on Four Sequences, for Resident Advisor, gives a fascinating insight into her technique.
Contemporary: Like Ciani, Berlin musician Kai Niggeman is also a Buchla specialist, and his 2018 album Heart Murmur, recorded live, shows the breadth of sounds the instrument is capable of, from the motorik pulses of The Pretty Blaze to the formants of Called Phoenix.
Club: The Buchla 200e is all over Cascade, Sam Shepherd's most recent release as Floating Points, but on Birth4000, it's pretty much the only instrument used besides programmed drums. The bassline here is absolutely characteristic of the Buchla 200e: raspy, at times nasal, at times bellowing, with lots of FM squelch and bite.