Author: catsynth

Farewell to 2025: Brightness from Darkness

2025 is drawing to a close, so it is time for our traditional end-of-year collage and post, a year that was “the best of times, the worst of times.” It was simultaneously one of the darkest and one of the brightest. If I focus on the personal and professional, it was a great year. If we look at the country and the world as a whole, the story is completely different. Our collage focuses entirely on the bright, even as our minds and souls are pulled by both poles simultaneously.

For CatSynth TV, it was another year of strong growth, 50% again in views, and strong growth in subscribers. But it’s not just the raw numbers. I am especially proud that this growth came on my own terms, rather than by “following the crowd” so to speak, maintaining the quality, diversity, and uniqueness of what we do on the channel. We’ve done more interviews with more people, explored more highways, enjoyed the cats’ antics on Caturdays, and of course, reviewed a lot of great synthesizers and music. The blog has found some new energy as well, where we have drawn in more regular viewers to our tried-and-true photos of cats and synthesizers, as well as our long-running Wordless Wednesday series.

We found community at NAMM, at Buchla and Friends, and Knobcon. We traveled not only to New York and Los Angeles, but also to Chicago, San Diego, all through the southern California desert, and to India. And many new friends and new connections along the way. And close to home, the cats are doing great, as are the humans at HQ. I am grateful for the companionship, both human and feline, for family, friends, and community that have sustained me throughout the year.

But one cannot ignore what is happening beyond our bubble. On day one of the new regime (it feels more appropriate to call it that than an “administration”), they chose to cruelly target people like me in one of the first executive orders, and it has cast a dark and stressful pall over all the bright and exciting things that happened. And it was far, far worse for many other people. It was also disheartening to see so many institutions, in media, in business, and even academia, seem to cave so quickly. If there has been a bright spot, it has been the way ordinary people are standing up and resisting, on the streets, in the courts, and in their work, with more strength than I would have expected given those dark days in the early part of the year. And as strange as it seems to say it, the regime’s own incompetence gives me a modicum of hope.

What comes in 2026 remains to be seen. We will hopefully be adding more travel, including to Superbooth this coming year! There are so many videos in the queue as we speak that we are excited to share with all of you. At the same time, I want to find more time to focus on music, both recording and performing. Oh, and the perennial goal of de-cluttering both our physical and metaphorical space. On the larger front, I do hope the world can find a bit more peace, and the regime here in the United States continues to fray at the edges and perhaps even crumble.

We at CatSynth wish you all a Happy New Year and all the best for 2026!

Miss Little Star with Korg microKEY and Akai MIDIMix

The adorable Miss Little Star steps onto the Korg microKEY for her co-producer debut.

From Martyna Basta (@martynkabasta on Instagram).

warning 2026 my co-producer is about to detonate

You can see a short video of Miss Little Star on the microKEY here

Haku and Infinite Machinery modules

Tabby cat with two eurorack-module boxes. One os marked M-infinity and TZ Dual VCO.

Haku helps his human pal Erik Ribeiro (@eriksuperlazy on Instagram) unbox and set up new modules from Infinite Machinery. Erik got these back when we were all at Knobcon. I, too, am still setting up some of the modules that I acquired there.

It appears the Infinite Machinery modules in question are the TZ (thru-zero) Dual VCO and Low Road filter.

And here they are installed and set up to make some noise.

Sunday Newsletter: The Final Night of Hanukkah

Tonight marks the final night of Hanukkah. A particularly poignant one given the tragedy that unfolded in Australia just one week ago, as people gathered on a beach to celebrate the first night of the Festival of Light.

Honestly, I was not feeling it at all last Sunday. In addition to the many tragic events one after another, I was still recovering from a nasty ailment that had me completely down for the previous week. I was just drained. But I was reminded that it was ultimately important to light the candles, maybe even more so to symbolize both resilience and defiance. It’s a difficult time to be Jewish, just as it’s a difficult time to be queer or trans. Which makes it all the more important to be openly and defiantly Jewish and light these candles for eight nights. No matter how much some people hate us, or kill us, or try to co-opt us for their own nefarious purposes, we are still here, and we are ourselves.

As always, I brought out my somewhat idiosyncratic menorah with musicians fashioned from metal hardware. I think it perfectly characterizes both the music and modernism here at CatSynth. And it seems to be a hit with friends online.

The Hanukkah origin story is itself one of Jewish defiance, but in some ways, a very uncomfortable kind. It celebrates the triumph of religious fundamentalists over the more cosmopolitan Greek/Syrian/Jewish state. If anything, my own celebration in this time is the opposite of the original legend, i.e., as a more cosmopolitan Jew against the more fundamentalist and nationalist forces casting darkness over the United States and other parts of the world at this time.

As the holiday draws to a close, just as we pass the winter solstice, we can look forward to the days once again growing longer and a couple of quiet weeks of calm, care, music, and, of course, cats.

We at CatSynth wish everyone a happy holiday season, however you choose to celebrate!