Gonna be n-thing anything modular. Start free: Cardinal / Cardinal FX.

Synthwise there's good free options: Vital of course, but shout out to SurgeXT which looks like a basic synth but with the addition of the alias oscillators and a metric shitton of weird effects it's brilliant.

But that's just a starting point, plenty of paid/borrowed options. I'm partial to Reaktor and Max (or Max4Live), then recording random twiddlings and recording them, editing the results, and feeding the edits to a sampler for further processing. Careful or you might miss this thing called life when you get into it.

 

xoxos Steam (32bit VSTi, jBridge'able). Lovely little obscure gem for weird noises.
https://plugins4free.com/plugin/328/

Edit: Oh, and Aalto from Madrona Labs.

 

Last edited: Aug 8, 2024

Absynth 5

 

One of my all time favourites, especially with the official expansions. Tricky to operate and these days it doesn't play well with HiDPI displays. Still works fine though, and it's also a beast as an effects unit.

Plasmonic by the same creator has the same quirky creative vision and it's more modern, but it does not give me the strangeness vibes Absynth does. Might be worth a shot, unique bastard it is.

 

Is hardware an option?

 

If hardware is part of the deal I love making strange sounds with my Arturia Polybrute.

https://voca.ro/1kn4gr2NzE0V

 

Ahh, hardware...

If you're going that route, can I recommend a nice addition (of course you can feed in from an interface as well) of a cheap, smallish mixer and some FX pedals. Two auxes on an mixer allows for two effect chains with feedback and crossfeedback. This is great for anything you can feed the mixer with, software, hardware, or... nothing. No-input mixing is standard with noise artists, and good fun to boot.

 

I can recommend anything from Madrona Labs. West Coast Synthesis stuff. A little CPU intensive, but very interesting results.

 

How about "Bespoke"? "Bespoke is free, but you can pay for it if you want..."