Cosmic percussion from Asteroid Mini

Percussion synthesis is hurtling towards us from Blue Lantern Modules

Blue Lantern’s Asteroid Mini percussion synth is a flavour all its own. The big red Push button makes us feel like we’re launching into space, aided beautifully by a range of cosmic and far-out synth percussion sounds hiding under a large selection of mini pots and inputs.

The Asteroid-Mini-Synthesizer – to give it its full name – is a full (albeit mini in size – 20HP) synth voice in Eurorack format. It’s based around percussion synthesis but can be pushed and pulled to do much more. It has 12 inputs, seven outputs, four switches and 17 knobs – so it’s far from simple in terms of control and sonic manipulation.

At the core of the Asteroid-Mini is a Buchla-based triangle core oscillator that we can modulate with sync, linear FM, pitch envelopes and external CV. There’s onboard noise generation, a click or pop generator to give a little transient smack, and also a PT Delay with both knob and CV control over feedback and delay time. We can also mix external sounds into the VCA and split both dry and mixed delay outputs. It’s bonkers and we love it!

We’ll be teaming up this little bundle of synth drum love with three her Blue Lantern modules: On the Mini Shimmery Generator we get three square waves with individual pitch control, global pitch control, on board VCA and decay envelope for creating metallic percussion i.e. cymbals. The Asteroid BD is a bass drum module capable of a range of solid and deep bass drum tones. Finally, Mr Fill Gates provides us with 16-step switch-based sequencing.