SUPERBOOTH 2026: Japanese synth brand Sonicware has announced Deconstruct Minimal, a new hardware groovebox said to be “built on the rhythmic and pitch drift of legendary drum machines”.
Sonicware is perhaps best known for its Liven series, a range of compact digital synths that specialise in lo-fi sounds and ambient textures. According to the company, Minimal marks the first entry in a new range designed to sit alongside the Liven instruments.
“While the Liven series focuses on sound itself — making it easy to create music tailored to each sound engine — the deconstruct series focuses on musical structure, analyzing and reconstructing it to enable deeper musical expression.”
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Described as being ‘designed to create hypnotic minimal grooves’, Deconstruct Minimal is a 10-track groovebox featuring a drum machine accompanied by a virtual analogue bass synth and sampler capabilities.
The sequencer tracks are designed for creative drum programming, equipped with per-track accents, sub-steps, randomised velocity, swing and phrase rotation. Rather than channeling the sound of vintage drum machines, Minimal instead aims to recapture the ‘groove DNA’ of classic hardware by replicating the grooves of vintage machines, along with their subtle drifts in rhythm and pitch drift.
The drum sounds themselves are mostly sample-based, but Minimal uses synthesis for its BD1 and SD tracks. The instrument comes stocked with 16 drum kits, divided into 10 banks, totalling 130 sounds.
Alongside the drum tracks Minimal also features a ‘Sonic Expansion Sampler’, which is described as a ‘drum machine–integrated 4-track sampler with a 4-bar loop track’.
Tracks 7-9 are one-shot sampler tracks that can load 2 or 4 second mono samples (48kHz/16-bit) with repitch to tempo functionality. Track 10 is a dedicated loop sampler, supporting stereo samples of up-to 8 seconds (48kHz/16-bit) with added time stretching.
Minimal’s Elastic Bass Synth is a newly-developed analogue-modelled engine with front panel controls for filter cutoff, resonance, envelope and decay – giving it a distinctly 303-style flavour.
According to Sonicware, the bass synth also offers “extensive sound shaping possibilities” via additional waveforms, a sub-bass and dedicated overdrive, plus real-time control over glide time and curve, decay curve, and gate time.
The groovebox also packs in a range of effects including a sweepable filter, phaser, distortion, reverb and more.
Minimal has a built-in speaker and can be powered by batteries or a 9v power supply, although the latter needs to be purchased separately.
Minimal is available to order now, priced at £359/$399/€399. The first 1000 units are available for a specially discounted price of £269/$299/€299.
Head to the Sonicware site to find out more.
