Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 FEATURE
Mod­ulisme 074

3 Year Itch Birth­day Ses­sion v.2

Cover Art­work : Ross Healy / Con­cep­tion - Lay­out : Philippe Petit

Session Modulisme # 74 - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 - TOP

3 Year Itch Birth­day Ses­sion v.2

I am Philippe Petit and I would like to in­vite you to cel­e­brate the third an­niver­sary of this plat­form I had ini­ti­ated in Sep­tem­ber 2019 be­cause back then I couldn’t find any place gath­er­ing and of­fer­ing music made using ana­log mod­u­lar in­stru­ments as well as pro­vid­ing some valu­able in­for­ma­tions. Most al­leys were show­ing tu­to­ri­als, demos, show­ing sys­tems off with­out wor­ry­ing too much about com­pos­ing…
My pri­or­ity being the music it­self I craved for a change and it proved a great idea since my labor of love has ex­ceeded all my ex­pec­ta­tions of­fer­ing al­ready al­most 200 hours of free lis­ten­ing.
Stay­ing gen­er­ous seemed im­por­tant to cel­e­brate a birth­day and so this gath­er­ing is bro­ken down into six vol­umes, each being about 2 hours long, and an op­por­tu­nity to in­vite back some fa­mil­iar faces but also to in­tro­duce some who wouldn’t make a full ses­sion but whose ap­proach I like.
Allow me to in­sist that Mod­ulisme deals with ana­log Mod­u­lar and those synths need be present but could be mar­ried with any other in­stru­ment/sources: voice, acoustic, sam­pling, and other field-​recordings… I aim at de­vel­op­ing a plat­form sup­port­ing left­field Elec­tronic music and draw at­ten­tion upon the com­posers who make it strong, cham­pi­oning the use of elec­tric­ity to sus­tain a sound pro­duced with a mu­si­cal in­tent, BUT what mat­ters is the com­po­si­tion it­self, the re­search/cre­ation process, its in­ter­pre­ta­tion/re­sult and not the tools to achieve what com­posers may have in mind.

For me it is cru­cial to trans­mit and share my pas­sions so I chose to com­bine the in­for­ma­tive as­pect of a mag­a­zine with the shar­ing spirit of a sound li­brary where the lis­tener comes to dis­cover mu­si­cal sur­prises for free. Hav­ing run the Pan­de­mo­nium Rdz. and BiP_HOp Musique la­bels for 25 years, I no longer wanted to have to make a busi­ness out of it while still of­fer­ing music un­re­leased else­where and many of you have sup­ported this idea as we have passed 700 000 lis­tens so please keep vis­it­ing U R MOST wel­come !!!

01. Suzanne Ciani – Paris Awaits (08:42)

Speak­ing Buchla ob­vi­ously comes to mind the pi­o­neer­ing lady Queen grac­ing us with a boucy and tin­gling gem:

« From time to time I ex­per­i­ment with ex­pand­ing the vo­cab­u­lary of my per­for­mance tech­nique. This is a record­ing that I made ex­per­i­men­tally in my stu­dio. »

Suzanne Ciani is a grad­u­ate of Welles­ley Col­lege and holds a Mas­ters in Music Com­po­si­tion from the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley.
Pi­o­neer of the Buchla World she worked along­side Don Buchla back in the early days and since then her work has been fea­tured in count­less com­mer­cials, video games, and fea­ture films. Suzanne has pro­vided the voice and sounds for Bally’s ground­break­ing “Xenon” pin­ball ma­chine, cre­ated Coca-​Cola’s pop-​and-pour sound, de­signed logos for For­tune 500 com­pa­nies, and carved out a niche as one of the most cre­atively suc­cess­ful fe­male com­posers in the world.
Over the course of her 40+ year ca­reer, she’s re­leased 16 solo al­bums, in­clud­ing “Seven Waves,” “The Ve­loc­ity of Love,” and most re­cently, her come­back quadra­phonic Buchla mod­u­lar synth per­for­mance record­ing “LIVE Quadra­phonic.”

http://sevwave.com/

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Suzanne Ciani

02. Lau Nau – De­capoda (02:30)

Often I am think­ing that I’d be ex­tremely happy if more ladies may con­tribute their music to the plat­form so here we go, lis­ten­ing to Laura Naukkari­nen who stays in Buchla ter­ri­tory with a music com­posed on the glo­ri­ous vin­tage sys­tem 200 at Elek­tron­Musik­Stu­dio in Stock­holm.
A Finnish com­poser and per­former who works with ana­logue syn­the­siz­ers, acoustic sounds, voice and field record­ings. Her com­po­si­tions com­prise a range of solo al­bums, multi chan­nel sound in­stal­la­tions and scores for films and per­form­ing arts.

De­capoda was recorded in 2018 at EMS in Stock­holm with the Buchla 200. It’s part of a larger col­lec­tion of com­po­si­tions that are in­spired by the vari­a­tion of the plank­ton bio­mass in the Baltic Sea de­pend­ing, for ex­am­ple, on the en­ter­ing saline pulses from the North Sea, the oxy­gen lev­els and the tem­per­a­ture of the water. The rest of these record­ings will be re­leased on the up­com­ing Lau Nau album “5 x 4” in the first half of 2023.

https://lau­nau.com/

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Lau Nau

03. The Sonny Downs Quar­tet – Dawn Break­fast (05:22)

The Sonny Downs Quar­tet writes mi­cro­tonal music for Buchla mod­u­lar syn­the­sizer.
The quar­tet is guided by lu­mi­nar­ies that have come be­fore such as Ray­mond Scott, Jean-​Jacques Per­rey and Ger­shon Kings­ley, who showed us that elec­tronic ex­plo­rations can be in­fused with a sense of won­der and hu­mour.

« Dawn Break­fast » em­ploys the just in­to­na­tion scale 7/6, 5/4, 4/3, 3/2, 5/3, 11/6. The pre­set man­ager is used to up­date the note val­ues, step­ping through a num­ber of pleas­ant modes that this scale of­fers.

https://mod­ulisme.info/ses­sion/22

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 The Sonny Downs Quartet

04. Rafael Ti­m­o­ner – Buch-​La-La-Loop (05:08)

Since 1985 Rafael Ti­m­o­ner has been show­ing his works reg­u­larly in solo and group ex­hi­bi­tions in dif­fer­ent cities, also par­tic­i­pat­ing in nu­mer­ous In­ter­na­tional Art Fairs around the world. He has dif­fer­ent sculp­tures in pub­lic spaces, and his art works are shown in nu­mer­ous pub­lic and pri­vate col­lec­tions in Spain, Eu­rope and the U.S. The con­cepts of “space and time” have been the main source of in­spi­ra­tion through­out his ca­reer, hav­ing spent years to study any­thing re­lated to it. When it comes to paint­ing or sculp­ture these con­cepts can only be de­picted vi­su­ally, whereas with video (in mo­tion) and sound, space and time ac­quire a more phys­i­cal and real pres­ence, be­com­ing the cen­ter of the ac­tion. After a pe­riod of learn­ing and se­lect­ing the tools to de­velop his cre­ative processes, he has fo­cused on ex­plor­ing mod­u­lar syn­the­sis tech­niques, hav­ing built dif­fer­ent Eu­ro­rack sys­tems for this pur­pose (Sput­nik Mod­u­lar, Serge R*S and Euro Buchla 100).

I re­cently re­designed my eu­ro­rack sys­tem based on the Buchla 100 sys­tem, cur­rently com­posed mostly of mod­ules from “Tokyo Tape Music Cen­ter” and a few oth­ers. My re­cent in­ter­est is the ex­plo­ration of sounds pro­duced by “Cross Mod­u­la­tion” be­tween os­cil­la­tors. 144 and 156 ex­per­i­ment­ing with the cre­ation of “loops” with the mod­ules 140 and 123. Even though they are sounds that we can con­sider clas­sics, I find that the pos­si­bil­i­ties are al­most in­fi­nite and, from a per­sonal per­spec­tive, there is still a lot to ex­plore.
The track for the third an­niver­sary of “Mod­ulisme” re­sponds to these con­cerns.
With­out a doubt for me the CM/FM is ex­cit­ing and al­ways sur­pris­ing, a chal­lenge when you es­cape from the es­tab­lished rules and go into the ex­plo­ration of new un­known ter­ri­to­ries that are im­pos­si­ble to imag­ine pre­vi­ously, this is the purely ex­per­i­men­tal, the most pleas­ant… with wild and amaz­ing tones, nu­ances, tex­tures and sounds that are re­vealed along the way, and it is through those places where I have been trav­el­ing lately, fully en­joy­ing the trip.

https://mod­ulisme.info/ses­sion/49

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Rafael Timoner

05. Philippe Petit – Strange Tin­gling Sen­sa­tions… Can U Take Per­cepto ? (05:36)
BUCHLA 200 / SERGE (73/75 Home­built pan­els + TKB + Siegfried) / EMS Syn­thi A
Mas­tered to Tape on Revox A77

In hom­mage to The Tin­gler by William Cas­tle, who in his time was the king of the gim­mick, and the movie re­mains most well known for a gim­mick called “Per­cepto!” : a vi­brat­ing de­vice, in some of the the­ater chairs, which the on­screen ac­tion ac­ti­vated.
I am hop­ing to pro­voke strange tin­gling sen­sa­tions in you.

This com­po­si­tion took place in sev­eral steps, firstly I chose to play my Buchla sys­tem and the Syn­thi A.
A cou­ple of months later I was lis­ten­ing to 2 great LPs: Fall Moun­tain « Early Fall » and « Voice Of Amer­ica » from Fred Frith / Bob Os­tertag / Phil Minton ; two great ex­am­ples of the mad­ness with which Bob could make his Serge synth sound… So happy to re­turn and get in­spired I added some dif­fer­ent fla­vors from the Serge Res­o­nant EQ fil­tered feed­backs and Buchla 296 Spec­tral Proces­sor and worked to make them co­ex­ist for many more tin­gling sen­sa­tions !

https://www.philippepetit.info

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Philippe Petit

06. Cray – 4 Mari (09:20)

Ross Healy has been heav­ily in­volved with elec­tronic music since the mid 90’s. Re­leas­ing record­ings for la­bels in Aus­tralia, Ger­many, France, United King­dom, Ire­land and the U.S under many dif­fer­ent names (This Dig­i­tal Ocean, Am­ne­sia,Siko Spunji, Roland Ober­heim, Ryou Oon­ishi, 56k, Oskar T Oram and Cray) cov­er­ing many styles of elec­tronic music.
Ross is also the found­ing mem­ber of VIC­MOD, co-​owner of VIC­MOD Records and a mem­ber of the VIC­MOD En­sem­ble.

« 4Mari » was recorded with var­i­ous syn­the­siz­ers.

https://mod­ulisme.info/ses­sion/68

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Cray

07. Juhani Sil­vola – Dat­a­combs (07:16)

Juhani Sil­vola is a ver­sa­tile Finnish/Nor­we­gian com­poser, mu­si­cian and pro­ducer with a mas­ters de­gree in elec­troa­coustic com­po­si­tion from the Nor­we­gian Acad­emy of Music, where he stud­ied with Natasha Bar­rett.
In ad­di­tion to being an un­com­pro­mis­ing contemporary-​music com­poser cre­at­ing works where the tra­di­tional per­former is ir­rel­e­vant, he is also a highly re­garded in­stru­men­tal­ist play­ing folk music & ex­per­i­men­tal jazz/rock/im­prov on acoustic & elec­tric gui­tars. He has re­leased five crit­i­cally ac­claimed solo al­bums, three suc­cess­ful and forward-​thinking folk music al­bums with the vi­o­lin­ist Sarah-​Jane Sum­mers, toured with Nils Pet­ter Molvær, Su­sanna Wallumrød and Frode Haltli, and pro­duced/mixed al­bums for bands such as High­asakite and Mokri.

This piece marks a de­par­ture of sorts in my cre­ative out­put.
Pre­vi­ously my elec­tronic work has been in elec­troa­coustic con­tem­po­rary music, in­debted to both French and Eng­lish tra­di­tions, as well as to acoustic cham­ber music from the 20th cen­tury. Dat­a­combs, how­ever, traces its lin­eage to dark min­i­mal techno (al­though I’m no genre purist, and this is by no means “cor­rect Techno”).
I re­mem­ber watch­ing an in­ter­view with Ritchie Hawtin, where he talked about re­ally get­ting all the ma­chines hum­ming or singing to­gether. So I hooked up a rig of drum ma­chines, Eu­ro­rack and other synths (no com­puter in­volved), and spent a long time cre­at­ing the sounds and get­ting every ma­chine to sing to­gether. When I felt I had ar­rived at a palette and pat­terns that worked, the track was per­formed live in one take and sub­se­quently short­ened/mixed in the stu­dio (but noth­ing was added to the orig­i­nal record­ing).
The title is bor­rowed from Nick Land.

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Juhani Silvola

08. Kevin Rix – Color Out Of Space (20:08)

Kevin Rix stud­ied or­ches­tral com­po­si­tion and de­cided to move to Los An­ge­les to pur­sue a music ca­reer and started work­ing for Au­dioma­chine, which is a pro­duc­tion com­pany that places music in film and tv trail­ers. Within six months he was a full-​time com­poser of Li­brary music. In par­al­lele he dri­ves a pow­er­ful Buchla 200 ana­log syn­the­sizer and re­leased 3 won­der­ful al­bums under his own name…

Over the sum­mer I was ob­sessed with cos­mic hor­ror sci-​fi movies like The Thing, Color Out of Space, An­ni­hi­la­tion, and In­va­sion of the Body Snatch­ers. I used them as in­spi­ra­tion to cap­ture the com­plex emo­tions of what it might feel like to wit­ness a more evolved alien species en­ve­lope all life on earth. The Buchla is great at evok­ing a kind of beau­ti­ful ter­ror, as the sound of the 200e can be cold, ag­gres­sive, and dis­tant. To me, the West Coast cross mod­u­la­tion and the nat­ural alias­ing from the dig­i­tal os­cil­la­tors over­driv­ing the input and out­put cir­cuits cre­ate a sense of DNA being ripped apart and re­formed into some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent. All thoughts, mem­ory, and trace of our ex­is­tence on this planet ab­sorbed into a new life form.

For this ses­sion, I came up with a patch using a mod­i­fied Buchla Sky­lab. It’s pretty stock ex­cept for a 250e in place of the 251e and iconic 223e. I also al­lowed three extra ca­bles to cre­ate spon­ta­neous ad­di­tional patch­ing and used a Stry­mon Night­sky for re­verb ef­fects. The patch stayed the same all sum­mer as I recorded dif­fer­ent ses­sions. I was in­trigued with how much vari­a­tion could be achieved within one patch.

https://mod­ulisme.info/ses­sion/4/

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Kevin Rix

09. Orugôru (Rémy Tran) – Un­cer­tain walk in the dark for­est (05:04)

At a very young age, Rémy Tran be­came pas­sion­ate about elec­tronic music, which he con­sid­ered more spir­i­tual.
From dig­i­tal to ana­log ma­chines and syn­the­siz­ers in­vaded his life for more than 20 years… An ap­pear­ance on the last album of Clearlight (« Im­pres­sion­ist Sym­phony », with Cyrille Verdeaux, Steve Hillage, Tim Blake, Di­dier Mal­herbe) gave him the de­sire to pro­duce more music and he kept prac­tic­ing his Buchla 200 sys­tem.

A few years later, a great dis­cus­sion with Philippe Petit about pro­duc­tion, pushed me to launch the com­pi­la­tion “Bi­o­lu­mi­nes­cence” gath­er­ing sev­eral artists play­ing Buchla in­stru­ments and com­pos­ing for the oc­ca­sion. In par­al­lel Philippe had launched Mod­ulisme, giv­ing an ad­di­tional im­pulse to the pro­duc­tion of Bi­o­lu­mi­nes­cence. Then came the sec­ond vol­ume of “Bi­o­lu­mi­nes­cence”, ex­pos­ing this time var­i­ous mod­u­lar sys­tems, ex­cep­tional pieces of syn­the­sizer his­tory such as the Emu Mod­u­lar, Serge, Buchla, Syn­thi A, etc…
This present track for Mod­ulisme is a con­tin­u­a­tion of this need to ex­per­i­ment and reach some new sound hori­zons…

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Orugôru

10. Benge – Micro Moun­tain (07:46)

Ben Ed­wards is a com­poser, pro­ducer and col­lab­o­ra­tor, writ­ing, record­ing, mix­ing and cre­ated his own stu­dio: Meme­tune. I started work­ing with him when he was doing Ten­nis (a duo with Dou­glas Ben­ford from Sprawl Im­print) and re­leased 2 al­bums on BiP_HOp.
Later on I had plea­sure fol­low­ing/sup­port­ing his Ex­pand­ing label and his play­ing more and more beau­ti­ful Vin­tage synths…

I have been fas­ci­nated by mod­u­lar synths for a very long time. To me they rep­re­sent the apex of elec­tronic mu­si­cal ex­pres­sion !
I have never been a ‘key­board player’ type mu­si­cian. I pre­fer music that has been put to­gether in a more me­chan­i­cal way – I like lis­ten­ing to the ma­chines more than the hu­mans. I never both­ered to prac­tice my scales or even think about con­struct­ing music from a “key­board” point of view. Not that I don’t like some music pro­duced by great key­boardists, and great hu­mans, its just that my di­rec­tion of travel has been away from that and more to­wards lis­ten­ing to the ma­chines.
Ob­vi­ously com­put­ers can now recre­ate any­thing that can be done with a mod­u­lar sys­tem, but the dif­fer­ence is for me they can never re­place the ex­pe­ri­ence of being in the pres­ence of a phys­i­cal ob­ject like a mod­u­lar syn­the­siser. We live in the phys­i­cal realm, but too much of life now seems to be ex­pe­ri­enced in the vir­tual realm, its not some­where I want to be spend­ing my cre­ative time. So that is why I am so ob­sessed with mod­u­lar synths, and I think I am just stuck in my ways and am still liv­ing in the phys­i­cal world – I can’t seem to break away from it!

https://mod­ulisme.info/ses­sion/15

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Benge

11. Palle Dahlst­edt – Iron Gait (03:33)

Palle Dahlst­edt (b.1971) is an artist, com­poser, im­pro­viser and re­searcher from Stock­holm, cur­rently liv­ing on an is­land on the west coast of Swe­den. He has stud­ied piano, com­po­si­tion and elec­tronic music (MFA, MA), and has a PhD in evo­lu­tion­ary com­pu­ta­tion for artis­tic cre­ativ­ity.

This piece is part of a se­ries of record­ings made in my moun­tain cabin in Swedish La­p­land (65°N) dur­ing the late au­tumn days of 2021. There, in my great grand­fa­ther’s fish­ing hut, with no elec­tric­ity nor run­ning water, I cook over open fire and get water from a small creek. For my mod­u­lar, here a three-​frame Bug­brand sys­tem, I rely on a small solar cell and a car bat­tery, and record to a portable 4-​track recorder. Dur­ing a hike with my son along the wild river rapids, in a place nowa­days rarely vis­ited by peo­ple, we found the re­mains of old log dri­ving ap­pli­ances – de­cay­ing tim­ber and rusty iron bolts and re­bars used to keep the logs in the rapids. With these, I recorded a set of sounds. The sam­ples drive the piece and the syn­the­sis in a feed­back sys­tem, where im­pulses within the sounds make it move for­ward.

https://mod­ulisme.info/ses­sion/45

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Palle Dahlstedt

12. Ben Carey – Some En­ergy Is Al­ways Lost (4:17)
5-​panel “Kameruka” Serge sys­tem (TKB, Mantra, La Bes­tia II, 73-75 Home­built pan­els)
12U Eu­ro­rack sys­tem (fea­tur­ing the Kosza­lin Fre­quency Shifter)
DIY Plate Re­verb, Franklin Audio Stereo SPR20 Spring Re­verb / Mas­tered to Tape

Ben Carey is a Sydney-​based com­poser, im­pro­viser and ed­u­ca­tor. He makes elec­tronic music using the mod­u­lar syn­the­siser, de­vel­ops in­ter­ac­tive music soft­ware and cre­ates audio-​visual works. Ben’s re­search and prac­tice is con­cerned with mu­si­cal in­ter­ac­tiv­ity, gen­er­a­tiv­ity and the del­i­cate dance be­tween human and ma­chine agen­cies in com­po­si­tion and per­for­mance.

This piece was con­structed from var­i­ous record­ings made on my “Kameruka” Serge sys­tem through­out 2022, with some ad­di­tional lay­ers of Eu­ro­rack mod­u­lar added. Lis­ten­ing back to the work, there was some­thing about the chaotic in­ter­play be­tween the ma­te­ri­als that sug­gested fric­tion to me, a process in which some en­ergy is al­ways lost.

https://mod­ulisme.info/ses­sion/20

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Ben Carey
Photo by Matt McGuigan

13. Thomas Dupouy – 294 (03:15)

Thomas Dupouy stud­ied graphic de­sign and sound art in France.
He left to work in Canada and re­dis­cov­ered the “petanque” game and his French­ness.
In Mon­treal he worked for Mon­treal As­sem­bly (gui­tar ef­fects) and Analogix a syn­the­sizer re­pair shop. On his re­turn to France he opened Syn­ththomas in Reims, a work­shop for the de­sign and re­pair of ana­logue syn­the­siz­ers and joined the Sonopopée col­lec­tive, which is a group of artist-​musicians think­ing about in­ter­ac­tiv­ity and new lutheries.

This is a record­ing of a Buchla 194 clone (Band­pass fil­ter) that I mod­i­fied for a client who wanted to be able to drive his fre­quency bands with a se­quencer.
For this patch the Buchla 294 mod­ule processes a Buchla 208 and then passes into a mini “L/R” mod­ule which dis­trib­utes the stereo ran­domly.
Since the cre­ation of Syn­ththomas I see my record­ings as tech­ni­cal doc­u­ments al­low­ing to lis­ten to my re­search, they have no mu­si­cal or aes­thetic pre­ten­sions, I record the ma­chine play­ing.

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Thomas Dupouy

14. Batchas – The jun­gle in my brain [Part 1] (03:10)
15. Batchas – The jun­gle in my brain [Part 2] (03:04)

Recorded Aug. 26, 2018 on Buchla Mod­u­lar Sys­tem.
Batchas started to play elec­tron­ics and ex­per­i­men­tal, in­dus­trial music in 1983 using ana­log ma­chines. The way our world vi­brates al­ways fas­ci­nated him and today he en­joys very much every ephemeral mo­ment spent im­pro­vis­ing on his mod­u­lar sys­tems.

Part 1 be­gins with a 258v being fil­tered by a 291.
The threat­en­ing drone sound comes from the waveta­bles present on the 259e.
I wanted the at­mos­phere to be a bit dark

In Part 2 one can hear pretty well the strong char­ac­ter of the 291 fil­ter, ap­plied to a 258v os­cil­la­tor being mod­u­lated.
In the sec­ond half, a 259e is added to the mix, scan­ning through it’s waveta­bles via CV.
I wanted the at­mos­phere to grow darker, like if you were ven­tur­ing into un­charted hos­tile ter­ri­tory, going through the jun­gle in­side my brain.

https://mod­ulisme.info/ses­sion/19

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Batchas

16. Gen­shi – Un­ti­tled 19072022 (10:08)

Orig­i­nally from South­ern Cal­i­for­nia and cur­rently in Port­land Ore­gon, Film & TV Com­poser, Sound De­signer, Multi-​instrumentalist, and Mod­u­lar Synth Artist Craig An­thony Perkins began as a Drum­mer at the age of 4 (his Fa­ther was a Drum­mer and started him young) a Gui­tarist by the age of 8, and learned Bass, Synths and sev­eral other in­stru­ments by age 13.
With his own in­de­pen­dent record label, Craig re­leases music in a va­ri­ety of gen­res under dif­fer­ent project names, in­clud­ing gen­shi, jido-​genshi, Sci­ence Pa­trol, cell:burn, and Star­Dot­Star among oth­ers… Craig also reg­u­larly per­forms around town with his Eu­ro­rack Mod­u­lar sys­tem in his “Ex­per­i­men­tal Cin­e­matic Am­bi­ent” style under the name gen­shi, as well as with his retro Elec­tro Syn­th­pop project Sci­ence Pa­trol.
He is also known for his synth demos on his YouTube Chan­nel “Gen­shi Media Group”.
As a Film and TV Com­poser, he has scored a va­ri­ety of indie short films, in­clud­ing a few he Di­rected him­self (one of which won the 2012 iPhone Film Fes­ti­val for best An­i­ma­tion and Grand Prize Best Over­all Film) and more re­cently scored his first three fea­ture films, in­clud­ing the cult hit “Zom­bie Tidal Wave” for the SyFy Chan­nel, star­ring and Ex­ec­u­tive Pro­duced by Ian Zier­ing (who per­son­ally hired Craig for the job) and Writ­ten and Di­rected by the team who brought you all of those Shark­nado movies!

http://www.ze­ro­gen­shi.com/

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 Genshi

17. Fax – Dio­rama (05:10)

Rubén Alonso Tamayo has been a pro­lific elec­tronic mu­si­cian for more than 20 years.
From min­i­mal techno to con­tem­pla­tive land­scapes, the work of FAX is dis­tin­guished by its rich sound de­sign and de­tailed mu­si­cian­ship. His music has been re­leased all around the globe on la­bels such as Traum, Level (DE), SEM (FR), Sta­tic Dis­cos (MX) among many oth­ers.
As an art di­rec­tor has de­signed music sleeves for The Leaf Label (UK) and Khoi Khoi (FR).

Dio­rama it’s an aquatic piece per­formed mainly using my small desk­top mod­u­lar sys­tem (Cell 90 case) as the per­cu­sive skele­ton.
The tex­ture and grit­ti­ness of the main base was com­ple­mented with some har­monic pads, a sim­ple bassline and some processed field record­ings here and there. When mix­ing I re­al­ized it was turn­ing on a weird waltz of some sort, that ca­dence is com­ple­mented with some ran­dom notes that pops through­out the mix.
Dio­rama may seem like an sta­tic piece of music but when lis­ten on de­tail you’ll find move­ment, nu­ances and sonic de­tails shap­ing up all over.

http://www.fax­musik.com/

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 FAX
Photo by Ali­cia Tsuchiya

18. James Collins – Cries of Syn­thetic De­spair (06:15)

James Collins cre­ates elec­tronic music for his own en­joy­ment and per­haps oth­ers’ who stum­ble across his work.
He has been fas­ci­nated by elec­tronic music since the late 1960s when he dis­cov­ered Switched on Bach, Sil­ver Ap­ples of the Moon and ear­lier works such as Poème Électronique.
James re­mains rooted in the early ana­log world of the late 60s and early 70s where the sounds were raw, elec­tric, and amaz­ing. He ap­proaches the music im­pro­vi­sa­tion­ally, work­ing with the in­stru­ment to find the sound and record­ing in one live, sin­gle track take, at­tempt­ing to cap­ture the ephemeral.

My stu­dio cur­rently con­sists of a large Serge pa­per­face sys­tem from THC/73-75 and Ran­dom*Source aug­mented by three cus­tom 4U pan­els built by Loud­est Warn­ing, an 18HP Buchla 100 clone sys­tem from La67, a Buchla Music Easel, a Stroh mod­u­lar sys­tem, and a few other bits. “Cries of Syn­thetic De­spair” is an ex­plo­ration of a com­plex, self-​evolving patch using slowly shift­ing in­ter­twined se­quences, asyn­chro­nous clocks, and chaotic LFOs. Mul­ti­ple con­trast­ing voices emerge from the drones, and slowly find their way around the sound field. A dark place is evoked.
The piece calls for head­phones or good speak­ers for the full range of sound.

Session Modulisme - 3 Year Itch Birthday Session v.2 James Collins