MOOG Matriarch £1,959

Choosing a hardware synth can sometimes feel a little bit daunting. There’s always going to have to be a really good reason for handing over a fair wad of cash, rather than simply heading for the cheaper alternatives that are available today. Thankfully, if there’s one thing that you can guarantee from Moog, it’s that the company’s hardware will be well made and sound excellent, but does it sound good enough to warrant the additional expenditure? Your decision may well be swayed by any additional functionality, and in the case of the new Matriarch, you effectively get a monophonic, duophonic and four-note polyphonic synth in one machine, with a large number of other facilities, such as modular-style patching and an onboard sequencer.

THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY

When Moog announced the Grandmother semi-modular, there were some very mixed feelings evident from the synth community, not least of all for its rather interesting colour scheme, which some considered a little garish. This colour scheme carries through to the Matriarch, but there are a number of things to unpick here; despite the look of compartmentalisation, the numerous synth elements are firmly mounted within, not being separate module entities, and as for the choice of colour, I can’t say that it’s any more outlandish than some synths that offer an almost radioactive sense of lighting when you first switch them on. In fact, once you’ve lived with it, the colour scheme not only grows on you, but actively guides your way, with a certain