Thanks to work I got a chance to go to Superbooth, in Berlin, Germany. It was my first time ever at Superbooth. It was fun. It was interesting. It was busy. It was crazy. It was nuts. This is pretty much how I would summarise this annual event that takes place each year at FEZ Berlin. As I was trying to take in as much as I could, I didn’t take as many photos as I intended.
There were a lot of things to see and test out. Unfortunately, I was on a very tight schedule and wasn’t able to try out everything that I want. I did get to see everything that I wanted.
I had a list of things I wanted to check out ASAP. I started with those. Here’s the list: Elektron, Korg, Korg Berlin, Novation, Sequential, Sennheiser, Modular Grid, UDO, Expressive E, Teenage Engineering, and Synth UX Academy.
This list was quite tricky to go through because, if you’ve been to a trade show, you know that there is a lot of ground to cover. All the booths that I wanted to check out were located in different areas. This can be annoying or not, depending on how view the situation. I didn’t think much of it because I tried my best to see everything that I need whilst checking out other cool booths like Din Sync’s Acid Booth.
You read me right! The acid booth was dedicated to the beautiful recreations of Din Sync, which included the 808, the 909, and the 303. There were quite a few of these latter babies. Another booth that was cool to see was Soma’s. It wasn’t special or anything but was well-located and quite big. Imagine 2 tables, seating about 6 people each with lots of gear laid out in front of you to try.
A bit further on that level, was located Expressive E’s booth. I first heard about them through a friend who pre-ordered their flagship keyboard, Osmose. Even though he cancelled it for financial reasons I was happy to meet him again as he now works with the French company. After a quick catch-up, he gave me a tour of the massive and beautiful synth that is the Osmose. I, unfortunately, do not remember much of it apart from that it felt super expressive, reactive and easy to play. I do not play well the keys, yet I could see myself owning an Osmose because of the 3 key points I mentioned. I would personally use it to build soundscapes for ambient music or fast percussive arpeggios.
I soon after went for food because I was starving and had nothing substantial in my body for several hours. On my way to the food court, I saw a sake bar. This sake bar was actually the booth of Play Differently as they were presenting their Model 1 mixer.
The food court was not massive. There were 4 tents from which you could order and a bar. The rest of the tents were booths from Reason, IK Multimedia, Bitwig, and a few other companies I do not remember. As I’m having my beef noodles, I heard some live drum and bass happening on the stage next to the bar. It sounded cool but couldn’t spend more time there as I needed to head back to the Arturia colourful booth.
We could try the newly released MicroFreak Stellar, the PloyBrute Noir, Pigments, the MiniFreak and the DrumBrute Impact. In the same booth, Norand had a table on which were displayed two of their Mono MK2. I had an interesting chat with Paul and Matthieu who got me intrigued about the portable analogue synth. I then continued to explore Superbooth and visit tents and booths to see what was what.
I had a couple of drinks with the team, went out for dinner and got to see Ivy Lab perform at the Gretchen for the last date of their Infinite Falling Ground Live AV show which was both amazing and mesmerising. Thank you Edouard for the ticket.
As the night was a hell of short, I headed back to the Superbooth for a few hours before having to head back to the airport to fly back home. I have decided that next year I will take some time off to visit both Berlin and the Superbooth.
Until then, take care and have a sound day!