ARTURIA Pigments 2 €199

ou might know Arturia for its range of hardware keyboards, synths and controllers such as the popular Beatstep sequencers, or for their emulations of vintage hardware synths including the Moog Modular and Buchla Easel V, but now it has the Pigments synthesiser added to an already sizeable arsenal. Pigments is perhaps a more contemporary software instrument than many might expect, introduced just over a year ago. It’s a perfect example of a synthesiser that couldn’t really exist in hardware, and kudos to the brains at Arturia for developing it—pressing ahead into innovative new frontiers instead of looking backward via retro reproductions of the classics (though Arturia does this very well!). Yes, it is possible to look forward and backward at the same time! Now we have a bigger, expanded version in the form of Pigments 2, which looks likely to be