Novation (makers of super nice hardware) today announced the release of a special version of their Bass Station II which comes with a new AFX mode which allows you to assign a patch to every key. This basically means that you can create that mad glitchy fast scan across tons of different patches sound that you hear on many AFX records. The thing with the Bass Station II is that it's also a bit of a beast and let's be honest any synth with the amazing AFX logo on it is fine by me.

Going further down the AFX logo wormhole. The AFX logo (which is a fine fine piece of design) was designed by Paul Nicholson and was drawn by hand using circle templates and rulers in late 1991.

He said in an Instagram post in 2017, "With there being many incorrect versions of this logo floating about, I thought it about time to release the definitive logo construction. Enjoy."

This you can see above.

Going further down the logo wormhole, Nicholson met Richard James in the early 90s. In a Q&A on Reddit he says, "I was already aware of Richard’s music having heard Analogue Bubblebath on Kiss Fm. At that time I would religiously tune into Colin Dale and Colin Faver’s broadcasts from the ‘Outer Limits’ and feast on the finest electronic hardcore, noise and experimentation. I started dating a Cornish girl who upon hearing the music I was into told me that she knew a guy that did that ‘kind of stuff’. Once she mentioned his name, I knew exactly what he did and wanted to hook-up. The rest, as they say, is history." To find out more Paul get to his Instagram here.

Anyway, we digress. Back to the synth... It also comes with 128 new synth patches and seven overlay banks from other artists, including Richard Devine (who has a pretty tidy Instagram) and Noyze Lab.

The synth comes in packaging from Weirdcore who have been doing all his mad graphics recently and will be available from the end of October. More here.