For five days, from August 29 to September 2, Moscow hosted the fifth international festival of "inventive music and musical inventions", where it was possible to listen to performances by musicians from different parts of the world, have a look at some hardware, take part in discussions and workshops, and adopt experience of musicians and engineers, attending lectures.

Black Corporation, famous for their Deckard's Dream and Kijimi, have visited this event and brought their new synth called Xerxes with them. Xerxes is nothing more than a remake of an Italian instrument Elka Synthex produced from 1981 up to 1985.

We will remind you that previous instruments of the company were also created under inspiration from the past. For instance, the Deckard's Dream, presented in 2017, was a clone of Yamaha CS80 - an instrument, which took part in recording the Blade Runner's soundtrack. The Kijimi, which was announced earlier this year, recreates a rather rare French synthesizer RSF Polykobol, which was produced in the early 80's.

Elka Synthex is an 8-voice polyphonic analog synthesizer, where there are 2 oscillators for each voice with the possibility of synchronization, various types of modulation (ring, PWM, cross modulation), individual envelopes. In addition, the instrument features a multimode resonant filter and a sequencer.

Judging by the photos, Xerxes took over all the elements of the Synthex sound engine, however, being a rack-based version, was not endowed with a keyboard and sequencer. It's impossible for the time being to hear what it sounds like and there is no detailed information about the synth, however, Black Corporation promised to shed some light on this topic.