I really don’t like synths that I can’t remember how they work, which is why I was very happy to see Baby Audio’s BA-1 released today.
It’s a nice clone of a Roland SH-101 that can sound very gritty, circuit bent, or nicely retro in all of the best ways, all while having everything visible on one screen (much like the original hardware).
To show you what it’s kind of aimed at soul-wise, there are bass presets for John Carpenter style bass along with lots of synthwave patches, not that you would really need them as easy as it is to program.
My favorite way to abuse any synth works supremely well here, which is to run it through five different tape-effect plugins. You definitely don’t need five different tape plugins, you could definitely just use one several times instead.
This instantly gets you to Boards of Canada or VHS horror movie territory, or in a good position to replace those people doing the Stranger Things soundtrack.
Using another synth as the sound source does not get you to the same place nearly as well, just like an accordion would stick out at a rock concert, you simply can’t put a Moog on everything. I can also imagine it being very good for drones.