Bastl Instruments in cooperation with Mental Overdrive has made a video documentary of a uniquepiece of electronic music equipment from 1993 called Distortotron. The short film traces the origins of the instrument and provides sound demos. This is what they have to say...

Distortotron is an effects processor: downsampler, bitreducer and clipping overdrive. It was made in 1993 in Norway by Svein Berge and Henrik Sundt a.k.a. PSYBE for a Tromsø-based musician Per Martinsen a.k.a. Mental Overdrive. The concept for such instrument came from the need to bring back the aliasing and noise of early 80s samplers and it heavily formed the sound of Mental Overdrive's debut album Plugged released in 1995 which became the landmark of the so-called Tromsø sound.

The Distortotron inspired Václav Peloušek of Bastl Instruments to design a eurorack module called Tromsø.

Pricing and Availability:
Tromsø costs €109.

More information:

• Distortotron

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