Laura Misch on the classic synth at the heart of her sound

As the iconic synth gets a fresh lick of paint from designer Swifty, songwriter-producer Laura Misch describes her enduring love for Novation’s Bass Station II.

Ask any musician – there’s no substitute for an instrument you know inside out. Watching one of her spellbinding performances, most folk would be forgiven for thinking of Laura Misch as a saxophonist first and foremost, but equally central to her expansive sound is the Novation Bass Station II. It’s a synth that has underpinned Misch’s work for more than a decade, featuring on all her recordings since her debut EP Playground in 2018 and accompanying her on stage across a dizzying array of venues and festivals. Her delicate, exploratory music pivots around a mesmerising blend of singing, saxophone and synthesis, and the Bass Station II has fulfilled the latter role since she was first searching for an anchor to the sound she was developing. 

“The first instrumentals I was making were mainly saxophone improvisations over drum loops,” Misch explains. “I was interested in using the saxophone as a polyphonic instrument, but I play alto sax, so it quickly became apparent that I was lacking a bass to bring some low-end to the music. I was drawn to the Bass Station because of the variety of textures you can paint with it, and the way you can shape and elongate, sustain or arpeggiate the sound. In a physical way, it was a very freeing instrument for me to combine and duet with as a saxophone player.”

Misch’s approach to the saxophone relishes the possibilities offered by technology, with layering, looping and processing allowing her to build up dense sound worlds far beyond the reach of the raw instrument. It’s a practice she’s applied to very specific creative scenarios, not least when she created an ambient ‘cloud bath’ in The Old Waiting Room, a disused railway station in South London. With a constant sensitivity to the physical, environmental dimension of her music and where it’s experienced, the Bass Station II offers the ideal weighty counterpoint to airy, blissful blooms of reverb-soaked melody. 

“Over the years of playing the Bass Station it’s become an essential part of my live show,” Misch says. “I just feel its sounds balance so well with the saxophone reverb clouds I build up through looping. It’s like earth and sky. I find playing the saxophone super physical – it’s breath-led, I’m resonating the sound in my skull, and my lungs, arms and hands are very engaged, but I find there’s not so much connection with my feet. Playing the Bass Station, on the other hand, is completely grounding. When I’m on stages with giant subs underneath, it can be quite literally earth-shattering, sonically and tectonically.”

The Bass Station II is no stranger to this kind of vibrational disruption. In its original incarnation, the Bass Station arrived in 1993 as affordable synths were feeding into the DIY spirit of the post-rave dance music boom, and it was instantly adopted by a frankly head-spinning cast list of 90s pioneers from Massive Attack to Nine Inch Nails and Underworld. 20 years later, Novation revisited the synth as analogue gear was making a comeback, adding extra features to make the equally adored Bass Station II. More recently, they’ve collaborated with Aphex Twin to make the uniquely tweaked AFX Station, which pushes the sound-mangling potential of the Bass Station II even further. 

Continuing the legacy of Novation’s enduring synth as it pulses through its third decade, a brand new Swifty Edition casts the Bass Station II in a whole new light. The distinctive white-blue colourway has been designed by Swifty – a.k.a. Ian Swift – a legendary figure in the graphic identity of 90s alternative music. Swift created the visual branding for such seminal labels as Mo’ Wax, Talkin’ Loud, Far Out and Acid Jazz, not to mention Straight No Chaser magazine and the title sequence for Channel 4 comedy Peep Show. The funked-up, bustling movement of Swift’s design on this special edition of the Bass Station II is a natural continuation of the style he cemented on the acid jazz and downtempo scene in the 90s, all crooked angles and jerky arrows bringing a loose and lively energy to the faceplate of the synth. It’s a far cry from the functional, linear conventions that dominate in the synth world. 

“I know nothing about synths and music production – it’s a keyboard with knobs on it as far as I’m concerned,” Swift admits with a grin. “I was given free rein, and in a funny kind of way it works ’cause I just looked at it as a piece of design rather than having any preconceptions of what it should be. I re-designed everything from the font upwards. Although I’ve semi-retired the Swifty label, this felt like something that taps into the legacy of my design work. It’s ended up as one of the best collaborations I’ve ever done.” 

As well as bringing his signature aesthetic to the Bass Station II, Swift was also invited to collaborate further by live-painting a mural for Novation at the 2025 edition of leading synth expo Superbooth. Over two days amongst the bustle of the convention, he merged custom cutouts and stencils with fresh coats of blue and orange to detail the long and winding history of Novation since its roots as cult British synth company EDP.

Between Novation’s legacy and the broader story of electronic music production, the Bass Station II has cemented its reputation as an iconic synth thanks to its balance of simplicity and adaptability. That’s precisely why Misch continues to explore it in different ways for every successive project she comes to. 

“I wasn’t aware of the Bass Station’s legacy when I first got one,” she admits, “but it has been a core part of my palette for almost 10 years now. I’ve been curious about other similar synths, but there is something really solid about the Bass Station II which has kept me returning to it. I think it’s a very intuitive synth, which means it’s super accessible for people like me who don’t want to get too lost in a synth rabbit hole of endless exploration, but also want to evolve their sounds over the years.” 

Beyond the technical architecture of the instrument, the look and feel of a synth can have a huge impact on the way an artist interacts with it. As the Swifty Edition hits the streets a new era is dawning that may well lead to newbies and seasoned users alike approaching the Bass Station II from all kinds of different angles. More than 30 years since it first started sending seismic waveforms through electronic music, the only constant with this enduring piece of music tech is that you can never predict how someone might use it next.