Patching Panda Blast & Hatz V3

New from Patching Panda are a pair of 10HP percussion modules, each offering a wide range of traditional sounds, but with some serious experimental potential as well.

Blast

The Blast is apparently the result of two years of research into what makes the perfect kick drum. Luis from PP’s stated mission is that the Blast will give you the tools to precisely design the right kick sound for your track, which by his definition means it will have sufficient punch to cut through a mix without sacrificing body or fullness, and that it will blend well across different genres. Tools are certainly not lacking. The usual Tune and Decay controls are augmented by sliders for Pitch Decay (with adjacent Amount control), Body, Shape (which folds the fundamental sine wave), Compression and Through‑zero FM. Modulation inputs control much of the above, but there are also Accent and Amplitude Modulation inputs and outputs for +/‑ Envelope shape. These last are a nice touch — the negative envelope is perfect for ducking a track around the kick — and invite‑cross patching, say positive envelope to the Shape or TZFM inputs.

So there are plenty of tools — perhaps too many for some. If you’re looking for straightforward TR‑style sounds with the usual 808/909‑type controls then what the Blast offers may be a bit overwhelming. But if you’re serious about kick drums — and many people are — then there’s an awful lot to explore here, and the Blast sounds good. Really good. It’s capable of a huge range of analogue kick sounds, from a polite ‘phut’ to the kind of noises that will worry structural engineers, with a whole spectrum in between, and all, as Luis intended, precisely controllable. And while useful for distortion or grit, the TZFM and AM inputs can take it in another direction completely, adding complex harmonics and the possibility of more metallic sounds. In fact you could almost see the Blast as a simple complex oscillator, if that’s not a contradiction in terms.

The controls are well judged: the decay reduces from a ringing sustain to an abbreviated click and the interplay between Body and Comp can be subtle and nuanced, while the combination of Pitch Decay + Amount can take you all the way from assertive initial transient to Star Wars laser sounds. All told, it’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into the Blast. If you want to go deep designing kicks it can do that — and much more besides...

Hatz V3

Alongside the Blast we have the third version of the Hatz. Conceptually, the Hatz is a similar kettle of fish to the Blast — a toolkit for conventional and unconventional hi‑hat sounds. It has open and closed hats, each with their own trigger and controls for Decay (hallelujah!), Frequency and envelope decay curve, and shared controls for ‘Metals’ and ‘Texture’, which balance the metallic and noise elements inherent in a synthesized hi‑hat. There are individual modulation inputs for Frequency and shared inputs for Texture, Decay and Hold alongside an Accent input and a switch that turns choke on and off. Hold is an interesting one; a voltage here will sustain the sound indefinitely, which is good for adding interest to a pattern and equally good for off‑piste noise exploration adventures. The sort of thing you never realised you needed before you tried it.

Like the Blast, a considerable amount of thought has gone into the Hatz — two previous versions, in fact — and once more the controls and modulation are very well conceived. The decay can be very snappy indeed — more clicks than hats — which is always a good option to have, and the Metal and Texture controls can take you out of hi‑hat country completely, especially when combined with Hold.

The hats are very ‘electronic’ — more 606 than 808 — but there’s a lot of potential within this sphere (are hi‑hats spherical?) and the option to move into experimental noise and texture is always there. It’s easy to achieve a sort of shimmering digital quality that would be at home on a Mark Fell or Gábor Lázár record, and in the unlikely event that Ryoji Ikeda should ask you to recommend some Eurorack percussion, the Hatz would likely be a safe bet.

Both of these modules offer useful conventional percussion sounds, especially the versatile Blast, and would be worthy additions to any drum rack, but it’s the additional scope for experimentation that really makes them special.