a quality somewhere between making music and playing chess
At the intersection of sculpture and sound, Berlin's SOMA Laboratory arrives at its tenth year not with a celebration of what synthesis has been, but with a provocation about what it might become. At SUPERBOOTH26 in May, the company will unveil ENIGMA, a synthesizer governed not by keys or knobs but by metallic objects moved across its surface — a gesture that asks whether the inherited grammar of musical instruments has ever truly served the full range of human intention. For a decade, SOMA has built tools for those who find convention insufficient; ENIGMA is perhaps the clearest statement yet of what that restlessness is reaching toward.
- ENIGMA arrives with no keys, no knobs, and no pads — just metal objects whose position and movement on the synth's surface become the instrument itself, dissolving the familiar boundary between player and sound.
- The debut at SUPERBOOTH26 (May 7–9, FEZ-Berlin) carries the weight of a decade of deliberate outsider thinking, making this anniversary feel less like a milestone and more like a manifesto.
- Alongside ENIGMA, the PULSAR-23 1984 special edition — with its redesigned Bass Drum architecture and Polivoks-inspired bass filter — deepens SOMA's commitment to sonic specificity that rewards the deeply curious.
- A community contest running through May 11 invites players to share how SOMA changed their musical thinking, with prizes including a LYRA-8 and limited PULSAR-23 1984, turning the anniversary into a collective reckoning.
- The metal-controlled interface lands not as novelty but as a genuine structural challenge to synthesis convention, positioning SOMA at the edge of a field still largely tethered to the piano keyboard's logic.
SOMA Laboratory, the Berlin-based instrument maker that has spent ten years building synthesizers for the experimentally inclined, is marking its anniversary not with nostalgia but with a question: what if we reconsidered how an instrument should be touched at all?
At SUPERBOOTH26, running May 7 through 9 at FEZ-Berlin, SOMA will debut ENIGMA — a synthesizer with no keys, no knobs, and no pads. Instead, players place metallic objects on the instrument's surface and move them around; position and motion become the control language. SOMA calls it freeform synthesis. It carries something almost playful in its logic, hovering between music-making and a kind of spatial thinking, and it feels like the natural endpoint of a company that has never been interested in doing what everyone else does.
Since emerging in 2016 with the LYRA-8, SOMA has built a devoted following among sound designers and experimental composers — people who find the piano-keyboard inheritance of most synthesizers too narrow, too assumed. ENIGMA extends that philosophy to its furthest point yet: if convention is the problem, why not question the very act of how an instrument is held and played?
Also on show will be the PULSAR-23 1984, a special edition built around a redesigned Bass Drum architecture by Noah Jolly and a bass filter drawn from the Soviet-era Polivoks circuit — the kind of detail that signals deep intention rather than surface novelty.
To mark the decade, SOMA is running a community contest through May 11, inviting players to film themselves with any SOMA instrument and complete the sentence: 'SOMA changed my approach to music because...' Prizes include a limited PULSAR-23 1984, a LYRA-8, the PIPE, and the ETHER. It's an acknowledgment that the company's most lasting innovation may not be the instruments alone, but the permission they've given people to think differently about what synthesis can be.
SOMA Laboratory, the Berlin-based synthesizer maker that has spent a decade building instruments for the experimentally minded, is about to do something that feels both inevitable and strange: they're releasing a synthesizer you don't play with your hands.
At SUPERBOOTH26, the annual synth gathering happening May 7 through 9 at FEZ-Berlin, SOMA will mark its 10th anniversary by unveiling ENIGMA, an instrument controlled entirely by metallic objects placed on its surface. There are no keys. No knobs. No pads. Instead, you position metal pieces across the synth's face and move them around—and the position and movement of those objects directly shape the sound. SOMA describes the experience as freeform synthesis, though there's something almost ludic about it, a quality somewhere between making music and playing chess.
It's a logical move for a company that has never been interested in doing what everyone else does. SOMA emerged in 2016 on the strength of the LYRA-8, an instrument that already felt like it came from another planet. Over the past decade, the studio has cultivated a devoted following among sound designers, experimental composers, and anyone who finds the standard synthesizer interface—the one inherited from the piano keyboard—a bit too limiting, too predictable. Their instruments sit deliberately outside the mainstream. ENIGMA feels like the natural conclusion of that philosophy: if you're going to reject convention, why not reject the entire idea of how an instrument should be touched?
Alongside ENIGMA, SOMA is bringing a special edition of the PULSAR-23, called the PULSAR-23 1984. This version carries its own sonic and visual character, built around a completely redesigned Bass Drum architecture created by Noah Jolly, plus a bass filter derived from the Polivoks circuit—a nod to Soviet synthesizer design. It's the kind of deep-cut detail that matters to the people who care about these things.
To mark the anniversary, SOMA is running a community contest through May 11. The rules are straightforward: record yourself playing any SOMA instrument in a video between 15 and 60 seconds long, complete the sentence "SOMA changed my approach to music because..." in the caption, tag #mysomastory on Facebook or Instagram, follow the company's account, and register through their link. The prizes are substantial—a limited PULSAR-23 1984, a LYRA-8, the PIPE, and the ETHER. It's a way of acknowledging that the company's real innovation isn't just the instruments themselves, but the community of people who've found in them permission to think differently about what synthesis can be.
What ENIGMA represents is a shift in how we might interact with sound itself. The metal-controlled interface isn't just a gimmick; it's a genuine rethinking of the relationship between hand, intention, and tone. In a field crowded with incremental improvements and nostalgic recreations, SOMA continues to ask a more fundamental question: what if we started over?
Notable Quotes
SOMA describes the experience as freeform synthesis, somewhere between an instrument and a game of chess— SOMA Laboratory
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
So ENIGMA doesn't have keys or knobs at all—just metal objects on a surface. How do you even know what you're doing when you're playing it?
That's exactly the point. You're not following a predetermined map. You place the metal pieces, you move them, and the sound responds to where they are and how they're moving. It's more like conducting or sculpting than playing a traditional synth.
But doesn't that make it harder to play the same thing twice? Or to write a song?
Maybe. Or maybe it frees you from thinking about songs in the first place. SOMA's always attracted people who are interested in sound design and texture more than melody and structure. This is just taking that further.
Why metal specifically? Why not just touch sensors or something more conventional?
Metal has weight, presence, physicality. You can feel it. And the way it moves across the surface, the way it can be positioned—there's something tactile about it that a button or a slider doesn't give you. It's almost like the instrument is asking you to think about space and movement, not just input and output.
SOMA's been around for ten years now. Does ENIGMA feel like a natural evolution, or a departure?
It feels like both. The LYRA-8 was already weird and unconventional. But ENIGMA is SOMA saying: we're not just going to make instruments differently, we're going to make you interact with them differently. It's the logical endpoint of rejecting everything about how synthesizers have worked for fifty years.