Anti-Kulture Precision Disrupter

Generative sequencing is a tricky balancing act. Straddling the fine line between inspiring randomisation and programmability is something many sequencers get wrong. The Precision Disrupter aims to get it right by offering tools to help you develop sequences fast and mutate them during a performance without discarding the accurate editing features every sequencer needs.

The Disrupter is a 16‑step, 303‑style sequencer. It has outputs for gate, 1V/oct CV, accent, clock and reset. The trademark 303 glides we all love are generated internally, so any connected oscillator will slip and slide in all the right places. The 16‑step sequences can be saved to one of 16 preset slots and chained together in any order to create longer loops.

The large 40HP front panel is delightfully easy to understand. Three rows of LED buttons deal with gate, accent and slide triggers. The fourth row is used to store and recall up to 16 presets. A small one‑octave keyboard layout with octave buttons allows you to set the precise pitch for a step or to add and remove notes from the automatic scale quantising.

So far, this is all standard stuff. Where the Disrupter starts its sequence sabotage is with the five randomiser faders and the two ‘Disrupter’ buttons. Each fader adds controlled randomisation to an element of the sequence: gates, accents, slides, notes or octaves. The gate, accent and slice faders will add or remove triggers from the appropriate lane. The pitch and octave sliders will add more or less variation to the note and octave numbers stored in each step.

The word ‘randomiser’ isn’t entirely correct in this context. The faders act on a ‘more or less’ basis. For example, if you have a sequence with five gates,...