tafony Unleashes the WMD Kraken: Snare Modelling for the Modular Masses

The WMD Kraken isn’t your typical drum voice. Forget samplers and forget your classic subtractive tricks – this beast is a physical modelling snare module that aims to dump a proper drum kit into your Eurorack. tafony makes it clear from the jump: the Kraken’s mission is realism, but with enough weirdness to keep modular heads happy.

Instead of filter sweeps and envelope decays, you’re messing with imaginary drum heads and rims, shaping a snare that can be as tight as a punk kit or as loose as your laundry day schedule. The Kraken brings a whiff of real drum mechanics to your rack, but don’t expect it to play by any traditional rules.

Kraken’s big party trick? The shell control, smoothly morphing between 32 different drum models – from trash-can thud to piccolo ping, all without a single sample in sight. Each shell model is a different snare personality, and you can CV modulate the lot, twisting the drum’s tone mid-hit like some rave-crazed drummer on a bender.

Forget about traditional synth controls. The Kraken’s parameters let you sculpt the snare’s body, tuning, and material in real time. Everything interacts, meaning one tweak can send the whole thing into new territory. It’s not about stacking envelopes; it’s about warping the snare’s soul on the fly.

Here’s where tafony gets into the nitty-gritty, showing off how the Kraken reacts to wild modulation. Want to LFO the shell or rack controls? Go for it. The results range from subtle pitch bends to full-blown glitchy chaos, especially when you start layering rim and head triggers or flinging random CV at the module’s face.

Sound design on the Kraken isn’t about polite grooves – it’s a toaster-fight of overtones, distortion, decay tweaks and noise models. The three-way switches for rack and model settings open up everything from wavefolded harmonics to pitch-drifting digital weirdness. If you want polite, look elsewhere – this thing begs for abuse.

Kraken does realistic snares with finesse – think tight punk crack or big-room St. Anger thud – but it’s just as happy veering into completely unhinged territory. tafony dials through overtone and snare dampening, showing sounds that flit from organic to absolutely synthetic, sometimes in the same bar.

Whether you’re after a natural drumline or a cartoonish gabber stick, Kraken’s a chameleon. It can blend into almost any style, from DnB to honky tonk, and never sounds generic. Watch the video for the full range – words don’t do justice to the detail you’ll hear when it’s patched into a real groove.