Elektron teases mysterious new product: could this be the Syntakt?

Elektron have ignited widespread speculation with a cryptic announcement that many believe could be hinting at the release of a new product, the Syntakt.

The manufacturer uploaded a mysterious teaser video to their YouTube channel yesterday, which you can watch above. Inviting viewers to experience "new sounds from a new place" and "lend us your ears for a slice of things to come," they haven't given a great deal away. However, the video ends on a shot of a blue box, with Elektron asking readers, in a post to their forums, to "hear what's inside the box."

In the same post, Elektron linked to a radio show uploaded yesterday to LA-based online radio station Dublab, which features unreleased tracks from a variety of producers including The Album Leaf, Lady Starlight and Yann Tiersen, with the caption claiming that "all tracks were produced exclusively" on an as-yet-untitled machine. 

All of this strongly implies the imminent unveiling of a new product, the nature of which has become the subject of enthusiastic speculation across Elektron's forums and various Reddit threads. Last year, forum members discovered that Elektron registered a trademark for a new hardware product with the name Syntakt. We've no word on what form the Syntakt will take, but there's some speculation that it could be a digital drum synthesizer in the style of the Digitakt and Digitone.

Today, Reddit user evnjim posted two supposedly leaked images of what seems to be that same machine, claiming (without proof) that they were mistakenly uploaded by a local synth retailer on a separate product listing. The claims could well be a fabrication, and the images a decent Photoshop job, especially as the unit appears to be near-identical in layout to the Elektron Digitakt, with only a few minor differences. The most obvious dissimilarity is that the machine in the picture is labelled as a 12-track drum computer and synthesizer, whereas the Digitakt is an 8-voice digital drum computer and sampler.

Both Elektron's forums and the Elektron subreddit are abuzz with guesswork as to what will be unveiled, with the original post receiving close to 1500 replies in 24 hours. Many are pointing to the inclusion of the word "slice" in the teaser video, which suggests that a sampler will be announced - perhaps a successor to the Octatrack MKII. Others have noted the inclusion of what looks like patch cables in the video, suggesting that Elektron may be moving into the Eurorack world. Keen-eared Elektronauts have also been analysing the sounds in the video, observing that they sound like they're drawing on a mix of FM, wavetable and granular synthesis.

Watch this space for further information - when we know more, so will you.