More Ebotronix genius - Buchla, Moog Prodigy etc

"Flame 4 Vox quad jungle"

I don't think Herr Ebotronix sleeps, eats, or has any sort of social life. His productivity amazes! Quality is consistently high too.

Mutable Braids / Make Noise STO meets the Malekko Dual Borg

A sequenced modular jam from TheBuchlaMongo. "Little random Noodle with the Mutable Braids, Make Noise STO, Malekko Dual Borg. Braids is on Channel one in the Manhattan Mix, STO Sub on Channel 2 and the Shape out from the STO on Channel 3. Sequence from Elektron Octatrack, Fx from Eventide Space/Pitchfactor."

"Silent Seas" - ambient drone on 5U modular synth

Another great example of programming a complex synth patch and letting it wend its own unpredictable way. From John L Rice.

"This is an Aleatoric ambient drone created with my large 5U format modular synthesizer. Aleatoric in this case means I setup the patch, turned on the recorder and then walked away for an hour while the synthesizer played 'on its own', creating a semi random piece of music, more or less ;-). This is 25 minutes of that recording. This was done in response to a composition challenge on Muff's modular synth forum (although I cheated and used a reverb plug-in during post processing ;-)"

EMS Synthi E moondrone - more from Ebotronix!

I can't keep up with this guy! He keeps on turning out these many layered soundscapes with synth voices of real quality. Where does he find the time to do all the programming involved?

From Ebotronix.

Carl Oliver - Experiment Thirty Seven

More musique concrète from Carl Oliver, where the modular synth provides its own steampunk sci-fi set, lighting and self-generating soundtrack.

EMS Synthi E, Jupiter 6

The prolific Ebotronix keeps on putting out these intricate improvisations on a huge sound palette. The blue synth is a machine made by British company EMS for the education market in the early '70s. If you're at all familiar with Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Roxy Music, Tangerine Dream, BBC Radiophonic Workshop and others from this period, you'll certainly know the EMS sound.

Experiment Forty

From Carl Oliver.

In Carl's videos, the synths provide their own steampunk sci-fi set, lighting and self-generating soundtrack. Very economical video making!

"Driving the Spaceship" by kv3x

From kv3x. "So I snuck the spaceship out of the garage the other night. Once I got it started, wow, what a ride!"

That ship is quite a character. Gets a bit temperamental after the asteroid shoot!

AsteroidKiller: "Live in the Studio"

From AsteroidKillerMusic. "This is a patch I've been working on over the last days. It's recorded live and nothing is added in post."

The way the arpeggios syncopate randomly keeps the old attention going. Unlike so much of what I rail against in this genre i.e. a 1 bar groove that goes on for 8 minutes with no variation, so doing in one's head. I also appreciate the stereo production - a sense of space in a mix lifts the whole thing out from the steel box, and if you're listening on headphones, out from your sinuses!



See the two keyboards on the left, close to the camera? I once owned both, but sold them for next to nothing when such gizmos were right out of fashion. They fetch 4-figure sums on eBay now. There's many a similar tale told by gentlemen of a certain age who lived through the arrival of digital synths in the early 80s.

"Synths that block out the sun" - number 4

"Cyrusrex + Baseck", from Muff Wiggler.

We may entertain the delusion of free will, but in fact HERE is where it's ALL controlled from.

A Zen Minute

"Mixing the Buddha Machines with the modular..." A dreamy hybrid of Tibetan gong samples and old-school analog synthesis. From kv3x.

"Spiral Waves" by Ebotronix

I've previously posted a few pieces by Ebotronix in my "Synths that block out the sun" series. For this one I'm leaving off the irony and posting on its musical merit alone. I love the way the sound evolves from one moment to the next, unlike so much of this genre where a simplistic groove repeats and repeats ad nauseam.

I'm not sure how he manages that quantity of patch cabling without losing track of what connects to what! As I've remarked before, it's unusual to hear such multilayered arrangements played in real time on this analog technology. That's some mental map you'd need to set it all up and perform it. Bravo Herr Ebotronix!

"I must get one of those" - number 4

We're truly in the golden age of mad wacky instruments. Can't see how you're meant to play/programme this one; unless you're a dachshund.

"Synths that block out the sun" - number 2

Sagittarius A event horizon², from Ebotronix.

I love the bullfrogs in this one. All synthesised naturally - no samples I'd imagine! Again unusual to hear multilayered, real-time arrangements using this kind of technology.

"Synths that block out the sun" - number 1

From Ebotronix. Unusual to hear complete, multilayered arrangements from a modular. Maybe you need this much metal and spaghetti to achieve it?

Form Thirty Four

From Surachai.

Sounds like a cutlery set in a tumble dryer to start with, but the sheer inventiveness wins. Brilliantly mad. Stick with it!

"Mighty Dwarf" just arrived!

I've just taken delivery of one of these:

"It's very nice! What is it?" I hear you say.

Well it's a Kraftzwerg Mk II. The name means Mighty Dwarf and it's come from German 'boutique' manufacturer MFB. It's smaller than you might think from the photo, and some of the annotations on the controls are pretty hard to read for someone of my advanced years.

It's a "semi-modular"synth, i.e. it has a lot of jack sockets you can use to reroute the audio and control signals however you desire, and integrate it with other machines that work in a similar way, if you happen to have any, which I don't. Yet! The flexibility that comes from this is huge, hence the 'Mighty' bit in the name.

It takes some getting used to. I'm new to this open-ended form of synthesis, and so far I've worked out what some of the sockets are for, but by no means all. It'll find its way onto recordings and live loops before long I don't doubt.

Complex atmospherics from modular synth

I suspect there's a bit of Minimoog patched in to provide the bass drones, but another subtle slow-burner nicely shows the intricate atmospheres you can build with these complex instruments.


idea sketch ES 14.59 from Kurt Kurasaki.

Self-playing soundscape

"Lost Horizons"

From ikjoyce.

A continually evolving sound carpet as the modules cycle through their particular functions, each at their own rate, and probably never exactly repeating the overall effect.