Thom adjusting his modular synthesizer with his left hand, adjusting his Electro-Harmonix 45000 looper (mainly used for vocals) with his right hand, and singing during the live debut of Last I heard (...He was Circling the Drain) (karindgr).
Aside from the massive new display for Tarik’s visuals, the setup used for the new ANIMA DJ tour is mostly identical to the setup for last year’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes DJ tour. One notable change is that Thom has replaced his Make Noise Skiff eurorack case with a Tiptop Audio Mantis eurorack case.
The TipTop Audio Mantis has twice as much space as the Skiff, meaning that Thom is using a larger modular setup for this tour. This is not especially surprising after Thom brought a Make Noise Black & Gold Shared System Plus for performances of songs from the Suspiria soundtrack late last year and earlier this year (he also used it on the soundtrack itself). But compared to the Black & Gold Shared System’s 7U eurorack case, the Mantis case is half as heavy and bit smaller while also offering 208hp of rack space for modules (if you ignoring the Make Noise’s 1U row). This makes the Mantis a bit better suited for touring use. It also suggests that Thom is using a mix of modules from other manufacturers in addition to Make Noise, as he did on past DJ tours.
On last year’s tour, Thom used his Make Noise skiff for The Axe. There isn’t much footage of the tour yet, so Thom may use the expanded system for other songs as well. Fragmentary footage of Has Ended shows Thom walking over to his desk to mute and un-mute an unstable, semi-random synthesizer sequence. Combining a Make Noise Wogglebug with an WMD Arpitecht (both part of Thom’s old skiff) could easily generate semi-random sequences like that, making the modular a likely option.
Update + Correction (Jul 6, 2019)
Official footage from Thom’s recent performance at the ‘Down The Rabbit Hole’ music festival gave us a better view of his TipTip Mantis eurorack case. From the flashing lights on the lower row of the modular, we can see that Thom is likely using a Make Noise Tempi.
Additionally, footage from Has Ended (see the above screenshot) shows that Thom is using the arpeggiator on his Sequential Prophet-6 for the unstable-sounding synthesizer sequence. The “semi-random” note changes are actually controlled by Thom changing the chord that he’s holding on the keyboard.
