Page 2: Black Corporation Kijimi

The Menus

The rest of the Kijimi's programming takes place in the parameter access editing system accessed via its tiny oLED screen plus the associated knob and three buttons. I was rather critical of a similar system on Deckard's Dream, and I have no reason to revise my view of it here. With messages that work best when viewed though a medium powered telescope, this is far from the ergonomic editing systems that we've come to expect from elsewhere and, as yet, there's no mention of a software editor to ease the pain.

While the Kijimi's front panel design hints at the Polykobol II, the 4U rackmount format takes up considerably less space than its inspiration.

When I first received the Kijimi, the menus covered facilities including tuning, MIDI, velocity and aftertouch curves, the knob mode, unison settings, additional LFO functions, calibration routines and more. However, this list became even more extensive when I upgraded the firmware from v1.0 to v1.1, adding several important functions that had been missing from the original version. Before upgrading, I was going to make a point about the Kijimi's inability to direct a little of a given LFO to one destination while directing a greater amount to another, but this has been cured by the addition of Amount Mode, which allows you to program individually the amounts sent to each destination. Similarly, I was going to express my disappointment that the LFO contours could affect only the LFO amounts, not their rates, and that there was no way to synchronise LFO1 with LFO2. Again, all of this has been cured. The new menus also allow you to select the minimum and maximum LFO frequencies within a total range of 0.01 to 100 Hz, and determine the maximum Attack and Decay/Release times of the LFO contours within a range of one to 20 seconds. Another criticism was to be the lack of MIDI Sync, but there are now 16 sync ratios.

Moving on, the number of memory banks in v1.1 has also been increased from three (one factory bank and two user banks of 128 patches) to 10 (one factory bank and nine user banks of 128 patches) and you can now select patches using MIDI CCs. This is not a trivial improvement because you previously had to choose the appropriate bank manually and then scroll through this to reach any wanted sound, which was a pain in the arse. Microtuning has also been implemented using downloaded MTS (MIDI Tuning Standard) files, and there have also been some housekeeping improvements and bug fixes. In short, if you're running v1.0, you should upgrade immediately.

Kijimi can produce bass patches that make my Taurus pedals duck behind the sofa.

When programming, you can select the modulation wheel destination (one selected from LFO1 rate, LFO1 amount, LFO2 rate, LFO2 amount or the VCF frequency) and polarity. It would be nice if you could affect LFO1 and LFO2 simultaneously but you can't, so I hope that will appear later. You can also determine the pitch-bend range from one to an immense 99 semitones and select from the five available velocity and aftertouch curves — linear, logarithmic, exponential, S-shaped and N-shaped — on a patch-by-patch basis. Furthermore, the Kijimi will propel itself into CS80 territory if you use polyphonic aftertouch, while using MPE takes it beyond anything that was possible in the late-'70s and early-'80s. When this is selected, the Kijimi uses your choice of MIDI channels 1 to 8 as the master MIDI channel, with channels 9 to 16 reserved for each of the synth's eight voices. Since MPE controllers such as the Seaboards and the Continuum use CC74 as the 'top of the key' controller, the Kijimi allows you to direct this to one of five destinations: LFO1 rate, LFO2 rate, filter frequency, filter resonance and sub-oscillator amount. I hope to see this list expanded in future firmware revisions.

The Kijimi also offers three voice modes in its menus — polyphonic, last-note priority monophonic, and 8-voice unison. In the monophonic and polyphonic modes you can determine how many voices (one, two or four) are used per note, which can reduce the polyphony to four or even two notes, but with a corresponding increase in the thickness of the sound. In addition, you can detune the stacked voices. This detuning isn't implemented in the form of drift, but rather as a quasi-random but fixed offset of between 0.1 to 3 Hz on a note-by-note basis.

But perhaps the most unusual patch parameter in the menus is call Playback, and this selects between the SUSTAIN I and SUSTAIN II modes found on the Yamaha CS80 and recreated on Deckard's Dream. Sustain I is the what you might consider to be the normal mode of operation and, when this is selected, all of your notes are articulated as you would expect with independent attacks, decays and releases. In contrast, releasing all existing notes and then playing a new one when Sustain II is selected curtails all of the existing notes' releases, no matter how long they are programmed to be, thus sounding the new note (or notes) in splendid isolation.

In Use

The Kijimi is simple and immediate but, with no multitimbral capabilities, no effects, just a single output, and nothing obvious to make you go 'wow!' it doesn't seem to be particularly exciting. But as I experimented, I found that high-quality sounds just stream out of it. These range from powerful monosynth leads to bells, percussion, wild effects, and polysynth pads that can be remarkably rich and animated. Stick any of these through external effects and the results can be superb. But its strongest card is its basses. As long as you don't invoke any filter resonance (which guts the low end of the signal at the same time as emphasising the cutoff frequency) it can produce bass patches that make my Taurus pedals duck behind the sofa. In contrast, I found it quite hard to create orchestral and other imitative sounds, and polyphonic patches that use cross-mod or oscillator sync were often inconsistent from note to note. But I doubt that flutes, trumpets or harpsichords are why you would consider buying a Kijimi. It's a great big, fat, 20th–century analogue synth, so stick to the synth sounds that pour from its wave morphing and SSM filters and you won't go far wrong.

But there are a couple of MIDI issues that need airing. Firstly, while the Kijimi sends and responds to an extensive list of MIDI CCs, its map is not always compatible with the standard MIDI 2.0 specification. This is not unique to the Kijimi but, for example, when CC5 (portamento time) is routed to Modulation LFO1 amount, CC65 (portamento on/off) is routed to VCO2 frequency, and CC66 (sostenuto) is routed to VCO2 waveform, there's a significant risk of problems if you attempt to play existing MIDI sequences. Secondly, while backup and restore can be performed over SysEx, this is only possible on a bank-by-bank basis, so a librarian is going to be vital to get the best from the instrument.

Finally, there's my pet hate regarding external power supplies. Give me a locking plug and a chunky cable as robust as an IEC mains cable and I'll forgive you for using one; use thin cable with a barrel plug and offer no stress relief and you know that I'm going to criticise. At this price, manufacturers should do better.

Conclusions

The Kijimi is a throwback to the days when men were real men, women were real women, small furry things from Alpha Centauri were real small furry things from Alpha Centauri, and polysynths had immense depth and character but few if any of the niceties that we now take for granted. Can it survive and prosper in a market that already includes the Sequential Prophet 6 and OB6 desktop modules, let alone more affordable alternatives such as the Novation Peak? Possibly. But, lacking the kudos of Deckard's Dream, it's hard to see it crossing over from the boutique to the mainstream. I suspect that, like the Polykobol II that inspired it, it will sell in small quantities and then, in decades to come, will become one of those rare and unobtainable synths that inspires unbridled lust in those who have never seen, let alone played, one.