Review: BlipBlox After Dark

The world of modular synthesis is a gearhead’s paradise. During the Covid-19 quarantine, I watched my ex-boyfriend and his friends become obsessed, picking up new and expensive modules with sleek, sexy names (Clouds, Yarns, Maths) and perfectly resistant knobs.

There were rainbows of patch cables strewn throughout our basement. They sat me down and tried to loop me in, explaining where to start and that the end only came when I wanted it to. “How do you record it and save it?! How do you replicate it later?!” I cried. “You don’t, really!" was the answer. It was chaotic. It was beautiful. I still don’t really get it.

But when an ad for the BlipBlox After Dark synthesizer crossed my Instagram feed, I was immediately intrigued. I’d seen the WIRED Review of the BlipBlox MyTracks before, but if MyTracks is a beat-making pad with a focus on looping, then After Dark is a user-friendly exploration in the manipulation of sound waves. And it rocks.

Pull the Lever

Photograph: Louryn Strampe

The BlipBlox After Dark looks like a children’s toy on purpose. It’s meant to make the heady concept of electronic noise production more accessible and user-friendly, whether you're a toddler or an adult woman. It’s beyond approachable. I don’t feel like I’m going to hurt anything by messing with it—which is huge, because messing with it is exactly what you’re supposed to do.

The housing doesn’t feel too cheap or too luxurious. It's toylike, but not in a chintzy way. The unit can run on three AA batteries (a set is included) or on the included USB-A to DC adapter (you’ll need your own wall charger). The included instruction manual helps you make sense of what the heck all the knobs, levers, buttons, and lights mean.

You’ll start with the sequencer, which is where you’ll find a selection of hundreds of premade melodies with or without drum beats. Then you’ll use the other controls to manipulate this sound. The tempo lever controls the speed, the AMP(lifier) release controls how long or short each note is, and the filter lever adds or removes frequencies from the sounds you're generating. There are also buttons for kick and snare drums to add percussion. An entire area of knobs and buttons is dedicated to sound modulation using either Low Frequency Oscillators or Modulation Envelopes.

That array already gives you a lot of control, but the BlipBlox After Dark also has two buttons that throw chance into the music-making mix: a Randomize button that resets everything (and saves the current settings, so you can press and hold it to go back to the most recent settings and parameters), and a Soundfreak button that adds a random sound or effect to whatever is currently playing. The latter button in particular is very entertaining to press.

It was fun sitting down and just winging it. I felt a little bit like Charli XCX at her Boiler Room set and a little bit like 8-year-old me trying to figure out how to make my church choir’s keyboard sound more like the chords in the background of Britney Spears’ “I’m a Slave 4 U.” I tested this machine heavily during the week I quit nicotine, and it was a welcome distraction. I lost hours just fiddling with it, trying to see what sounds I could elicit.

I realized at one point that this must have been how my friends felt during quarantine. I might not have had patch cables or seven rows of modules or whatever spark makes Fred Again … himself, but I could make the womp … womp … womp … noise turn into different womps, and damn if that wasn’t the neatest thing in the entire world at that moment in time.

Button Mashing

The instruction manual does have some really good information that could answer all my burning questions, and there are YouTube videos galore that show you how to navigate the controls.

In the manual you'll find a signal flow map, which helpfully shows exactly what the electrical signals are doing inside the unit, and how to manipulate them at any point. There are also detailed notes on what each button and component of synthesis does.

And as much as this is a user-friendly, toylike object, it is also completely capable of being used for live performance. There are special settings for this—an automatic drum machine, an editor for the drums, the ability to edit the LED lights and output volume. A standard 5-pin MIDI input for connecting the synth to a controller, other instruments, or a computer. There are even hardware bundles that come with the different BlipBlox components, which might be extra great for siblings (or budding music producers).

All of this is to say that you can get really detailed and precise with the sounds if you want. But you don't need to know a lot about sound synthesis to have fun with this machine, and that's exactly why I like it.

I love the encouragement to play and experiment. I love the plethora of resources available online. I love the weird sounds. I love feeling like a little kid again, forgetting entirely about my phone and making strange little noises without needing a giant bass amp or a 43-piece drum set. The accessibility of the design—and the fact that it looks like a toy—made it just as much fun to play with alongside my 3-year-old niece and my little sisters (12 and 13), as well as my thirtysomething friends. It’s complex enough to feel like a challenge, yet approachable and intuitive enough to feel like one worth overcoming. I think it’d make a great gift for any kid in your life—of any age.