Ferry Island Modular: Metamyther Dives Into Eurorack’s New Sonic Street Weapons

The Four Seas isn’t your average wavetable oscillator – it’s a full-on sonic street weapon. Justin’s obsession with wavetables started with Mutable Sheep and a bit of synthwave nostalgia, but Four Seas takes things way further. You get four outputs, each with its own spread and position in wavetable space, and enough modulation options to keep even the most jaded drone-head grinning. The spread mode is a particular highlight, letting you create wild frequency relationships and stereo madness with ease.

But the real kicker? You can self-patch, turn outputs into LFOs, and even inject external audio straight into the heart of the beast for some truly unhinged results. Firmware updates have added glacial LFO speeds and more flexibility, making this thing a playground for experimentalists. It’s not just about harsh digital tones either – filter it, modulate it, and you’ll find sweet spots galore. For anyone bored of vanilla oscillators, Four Seas is a proper adrenaline shot to your rack.

Next up is Undertow, Ferry Island’s answer to the question: how much modulation is too much? (Spoiler: there’s no such thing.) This morphing wavetable VCO/LFO matrix is a five-by-three grid of outputs, each one interpolating between two independent oscillators. You can clock them separately, morph wave shapes and frequencies, and select from a range of mod types that take you from subtle movement to total chaos. The modulation amount knob is chunky, satisfying, and ready to push your patch into uncharted territory.

There’s no screen – and that’s a deliberate choice. Ferry Island wants you to navigate by ear and touch, not get lost in menus. The result is a module that feels like an instrument, not a computer. Whether you’re after macro control, swarm oscillators, or just want to drown your system in related LFOs, Undertow is built to make your patch buckle in the best way possible. If you’re sick of shift functions and cheat sheets, this is your new playground.

Beacon isn’t just another polite VCA – it’s a stereo VCA/low-pass gate inspired by classic vactrols but with a modern, digital twist. Justin’s gone full mad scientist, physically modelling a whole collection of vactrols to give you a range of response flavours, from Buchla smooth to snappy and aggressive. You get ping inputs, selectable models, and a character knob that dials in everything from subtle warmth to full-on saturation and distortion, thanks to some Moog-inspired circuit hacks.

The analog signal path is controlled digitally, so you get the best of both worlds: hands-on immediacy with deep tweakability. Expansion ports on the back mean you can integrate Beacon into distributed mixing setups or route signals behind the panel like a pro. It’s compact, clever, and designed to do more than just tick the LPG box. If you want your dynamics to have attitude – and maybe a bit of filth – Beacon’s got you covered.