Enzyme
A synth by Humanoid Sound Systems (and sadly no longer supported). This is a synth that uses Scanned Synthesis - which I don’t fully understand but the principle seems to be related to being able to emulate the way a physical instrument changes how it sounds over time - and how humans hear that change and react to it whilst playing. I am imagining a guitarist playing a sustained note and perhaps bending the note as the sound changes (rather than bending the note at a given point in time - perhaps controlling guitar feedback is a good example? Do comment below if anyone knows better and see http://www.billverplank.com/ScannedSynthesis.PDF for more!)
What’s interesting about Enzyme is it uses the idea but has no interest in recreating a real world sound: “Almost everything it produces has a natural instability about it, meaning that scanned‑synthesis sounds are fluid, evolving beasts that can change wildly with pitch or velocity. And best of all, it excels at producing sounds that are extreme yet nevertheless highly usable: crunchy, atonal, sinister, but somehow organic rather than unreal and glassy.” (Sound on Sound May 2014). I like to think that description could apply to some of the songs I write!
I thought about buying it because of the above review and I liked the idea it uses of starting the synthesis by hitting nodes that are connected with springs with a “hammer”. But I really bought it because of the lovely green hue used in the interface and it has buttons called Psycho and Danger.
Its features heavily in Red Dress in three of the sounds used - in fact it's fair to say it was playing with the synth that led to the track. It's most easily heard as the main driving sounds as vocal comes in at around 0:24 (the video above has an extract of the synths being used later in the song). It’s also on Lost In Sound (though it is a touch hard to hear …) where it comes in in the background as the fuzzy sound at around 1:37.
I don’t think I used it on Confection - but as long as it still works I will pick it up again to add the odd bit of chaos when I need a sound to spark off.
Cheers, Mark