DAWESOME KULT Review

Kult reviewDawesome Audio, the creator of Abyss and Novum, has come out with yet another creative and unique synthesizer. This time leaving behind the spectral and granular nature of previous instruments and treading the relatively unused territory of strange attractor based oscillators with Kult. While Kult isn’t the first synth to use strange attractors as a form of sound generation, it does give this rather obscure form of synthesis some unique features in combination and a deep modulation engine.
Kult has 2 chaos oscilators, a dual filter, a modular modulation and effects section, and an arpeggiator.

Strange Attractors? without going into too much detail, a strange attractor is a chaotic system based on a formula with a fractal pattern. They are very sensitive to initial conditions and distinct from noise in that the chaos isn’t purely random, but based on a formula. Perhaps with even less detail, they are somewhat ordered chaos. 
All you really need to know is that they generate mostly stable pitches, but have evolving and chaotic texture.

OSCILLATORS: Each of the two oscillators has 35 different shapes to choose from, each one with a distinct character and texture.
Above the display are controls which shape the oscillator directly, you have controls which add harmonics to make the sounds more “squarish” or “saw-like”and a frequency and sync shifter, which can really add a lot of motion to the oscillator, or even push into the audio range to create overtones.Below the display, each oscillator has another page where you can do the usual stuff like transposition, unison, and pan. But also has AM FM and a Vowel Filter.
Here alone there’s already a ton of tonal shaping available, but things can get pretty rough and scratchy. Luckily you are able to fade between both OSCs if you want to move from one sound to another. or if you want to simply add some sine back into the low end to beef things up

FILTER SECTION: You’ll notice the filter section is more than just a couple filters, there is also a pre and post filter comb section, and distortion before each of those combs
there are 3 distortions you can add up to sculpt the incoming sound even more, and the comb filters are keytracked, so they work like physical modeling resonators.
One thing I love to see on combs is an “inharmonic” control which moves the resonator into more atonal harmonic structures.
For the distortion section there is a soft clipper, a hard clipper, which seems to do some wave folding, and a “noise” distortion which is a weird wave shaping curve. Also there’s 2 multimode filters, which can be placed in series or parallel. and have their own drive control
I really appreciate how much control there is in this filter section, if you get a nice subtle texture going in the oscilators you can really shape and sculpt those harmonics here into something truly organic sounding

EFFECTS: Like Novum, Kult allows for a multiple instancing of up to 6 effects. It has all the same effects + an EQ for a bit of extra tonal shaping on the way out. 
The effects aren’t my favorite, but have their own character, the chorus can get very wet and squelchy, the reverbs are a bit lofi but can add a lot of lush tail to a sound. And the delay can get some weird glitchy tones when modulated.
You will likely have to play with the balance a bit when mixing in effects, this is one area I hope Dawesome improves on in the future and hopefully updates existing synths with if he does.

MODULATION/ ARP: Also introduced in Novum, Kult has a deep modulation system allowing for 14 different modulators, all capable of modulating any control in Kult, including each other. 
These include normal keytracking, modwheel and MPE controls, all with custom curves.
As well as drawable LFO, a step sequencer, envelopes and a random modulator.
I’m always a fan of seeing deep modulation systems, it’s nice being able to stack various randoms, or have a bunch of LFOs moving controls around
In the realm of modulation, Kult also is also the first Dawesome synth with an Arpeggiator. here you can set a chord for the Arp to play through, there’s various patterns to choose form, and you can even lock it all to a scale so your pattern doesn’t become too accidentally chromatic.
It’s also worth mentioning Kult has a mono mode, for legato playing and making certian leads or basses easier.

I had a lot of fun making presets for Kult, it is really interesting breaking out of my normal sound design territory into something a bit rougher and raw. It is clearly not analog modeling, but there is an organic and “analog”” quality to the chaotic oscillators.
I found getting  warm and textural sounds to be a breeze, Kult could sound (almost) like a blaring earthly horns, or an unusual textural cello or all sorts of tape worn vintage textures. It’s not always the easiest to work with, but if you can get past the strange qualities of Kult, and the less than normal character of the oscillators, these sounds can really stand out as something unique in a mix and add a new magic to its sonic fingerprint
I think my favorite thing about Dawesome synths is just how unique and interesting they are, they don’t need to do everything, but they all do something new. And Kult really covers a lot of ground that was missing from Novum and Abyss

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KULT: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/4-Synth/10082-Dawesome-KULT?a_aid=61c378ab215d5