14 thoughts on “Orbitals Paul Hartnoll On The Bass Station II

    1. What you’re hearing are pieces of ideas. Listen to his work with Orbital. “In Sides” was amazing as well as “Middle of Nowhere”. Not to mention he paved the way when it comes to trance ‘groups’ creating an actual album. I put them right up there with Aphex Twin as far as importance to the scene. Go check out the track “Times Fly (slow)” One of my favorite slower tempo tracks from them from 1996 – incredible.

  1. IMHO Orbital has always had that indefinable “something” that sets their music apart. I don’t hear anyone else that compares to them.

    1. Memorable melodies and more traditional song structure – two things often missing from techno.

      Orbital is a “pop” techno band, and he’s awesome.

  2. I have a Bass Station II and it has a vast sound pallet capable of warm bass and leads, pseudo pads and discordant sounds. I highly recommend this synth.

  3. I want to like this keyboard as it’s a decent price for what it can do, I just haven’t heard any examples that grab my interest, quite a few that put me right off though.

    1. It can do nearly anything!

      Deep sub bass (subosc set to sine)
      Traditional mono synth sounds
      Clean, rubbery bass (single saw on classic filter)
      Zappy envelopes
      Sample and hold sounds
      Hard sync leads (set o/c pitch to mod wheel & go nuts)
      Full on filter self-oscillation (with smooth cutoff knob tweaks)
      12 and 24db filter options on 3 types (6 filter responses plus the Acid filter = 7 filter styles!)
      Wildly detuned dissonance
      OR Subtly detuned waves drifting up and down the phase ladder
      OR really cold and stable oscillator pitches
      a pair of really slow multi wave LFOs than can get cranked into the audio range or beat-division synced
      303-style (use sequencer with ties and glide, acid filter, post filter distortion)
      Tuned Intervals for house lines (4ths, 5th, 7ths, etc.)
      Weird noise and sync effects
      FM strangeness
      Slew, keysync, other
      Highpass and Bandpass sounds with high resonance
      A built in limiter
      Dedicated OSC filter mod (FM from oscillator 1)
      Filter external audio (ext in will mono invert-sum stereo input for fun effects)
      Huge oscillator range, from slow clicks into ear-shattering.
      Dubwubby LFO action
      Slow attacks and releases
      Pulse-width modulated squares
      Flexible arp and four 32-note sequences
      Portable, USB, lightweight
      Velocity and Aftertouch
      Lots of lights
      Patch storage
      No menus

      In short, classic synths like the SH-101 and Moog Prodigy are jealous. Not sure there are any other analog mono synths that can cover this much synthesis for $500. If you have not hear “your sound” coming out of it, it’s because you have not programmed your patch on it yet.

  4. I’m not even an Orbital fan but that’s a good ad.
    It’s a good synth just not super fluid to program, a bit like a JP-8080 in that respect

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *