Alexeï Borisov & friends

Born in Moscow on De­cem­ber 7, 1960, Alexeï Borisov started his con­tro­ver­sial per­form­ing ca­reer (as a gui­tarist) in Cen­ter the first new-​wave group in Rus­sia, in 1980. Next year, he formed the Prospekt mod-​band (with Dmitry Mat­senov), and re-​modeled it in 1985 as the shift­ing Notch­noi Prospekt with then-​partner Ivan Sokolovsky. He started to pay at­ten­tion to ex­per­i­men­tal im­pro­vised elec­tronic music of dif­fer­ent types, work­ing with syn­the­siz­ers and not only. Since 1992 he per­forms solo as well as in some projects, bands, in­ter­na­tional col­lab­o­ra­tions (F.R.U.I.T.S., Gos­plan Trio, Astma, Fake Cats Project, Anton Nikkila, Rad­i­cal Muzak Septet and many more…). Since 2003 Borisov cu­rates in­ter­na­tional fes­ti­val of ex­per­i­men­tal music “Noise and Fury” at the DOM Cul­tural Cen­tre in Moscow (www.dom.com.ru).

Among his other col­lab­o­ra­tions are the joint projects with KK Null (Japan), Jan­dek (USA), Jef­frey Surak (USA), Ilpo Vaisa­nen (Fin­land), Kurt Lied­wart (Rus­sia), Olga Nosova (as Astma duo) (Rus­sia/Ger­many), Katya Rekk (Rus­sia), Sergey Letov (Rus­sia), Vlad Makarov (Rus­sia), Sergei Kostyrko (Rus­sia), Ilia Be­lorukov (Rus­sia), Dave Phillips (Switzer­land), Joke Lanz and Jonas Kocher (as Rad­i­cal Muzak Septet) (Switzer­land), Franz Po­massl (Aus­tria), Mia Zabelka (Aus­tria), Thomas Buck­ner (USA), Ben­jamin Skep­per (Aus­tralia), Anton Mobin (France), Je­lena Glazova (Latvia), Igor Lev­shin (Fake Cats Project) and many more.

How were you first ac­quainted to Mod­u­lar Syn­the­sis?

My first ex­pe­ri­ence in mod­u­lar syn­the­sis was Korg MS-20 in the 80s. This pow­er­ful semi-​modular de­vice I used not only as a syn­the­sizer, but as well as an ef­fect proces­sor for my gui­tar

When did that hap­pen? When did you buy your first sys­tem?

The only one mod­u­lar sys­tem I have now is Kas­tle Micro Mod­u­lar pro­duced by Bastl In­stru­ments from Brno, Czech Re­pub­lic.
Un­for­tu­nately I don’t have enough money to buy and com­pile real big mod­u­lar sys­tem. At the same time I work a lot with dif­fer­ent mu­si­cians, spe­cial­iz­ing in mod­u­lar sys­tem music.

What was the ef­fect of that dis­cov­ery on your com­po­si­tional process?
On your ex­is­tence?

I like in gen­eral the idea or con­cept of pro­duc­ing music with mod­u­lar syn­the­siz­ers – it gives you an op­por­tu­nity to im­pro­vise a lot, to play some­thing ab­stract or rhyth­mi­cal, or to cre­ate music com­po­si­tions, which could be re­pro­duced in the stu­dio or on stage. At the same time mod­u­lars are good (flex­i­ble) in com­bi­na­tion with dif­fer­ent elec­tronic de­vises and music in­stru­ments in gen­eral.

Quite often mod­u­lar­ists are in need for more, their hunger for new mod­ules is never sat­is­fied? How do you ex­plain that?

I think that every elec­tronic mu­si­cian is look­ing for new in­stru­ments, de­vices, pro­grams and, of course, mod­ules or patches. I guess that the idea of cre­at­ing new sound or music never heard be­fore, could stim­u­late the con­stant process of search­ing for new de­vices or sound sources.

Would you please de­scribe the sys­tem you used to cre­ate the music for us?

Mostly I use DIY de­vices (in gen­eral I have 10 dif­fer­ent sound ob­jects) pro­duced by some Russ­ian en­gi­neers: Moscow based Dmitry Mo­ro­zov (VTOL), for ex­am­ple, or Ed­uard Sra­pi­onov (Papa Srapa) from Ros­tov on Don. Plus Bastl Kas­tle and Dude (micro mixer), Poket op­er­a­tors by Teenage En­gi­neer­ing (sub, rhythm, fac­tory). And I use a lot of micro dic­ta­phones and cas­sette play­ers. Also I have in my col­lec­tion Roland TB 303, SH1, TR 626, Korg Super Per­cus­sion, some gui­tar ped­als etc…

What would be the sys­tem you are dream­ing of?

I don’t know yet. May be I pre­fer to have some­thing com­pact and very ef­fec­tive at the same time.

Are you feel­ing close to some other con­tem­po­rary Mod­u­lar­ists?

I am in touch (worked with or col­lab­o­rat­ing from time to time) with such peo­ple as Stephan Tcherep­nin, An­thony Pa­t­eras, Eliad Wag­ner, Sergey Kostyrko, Kurt Lied­wart, Brin­staar, Nikita Oleinik, Ilya Be­lorukov.
I heard music of many con­tem­po­rary Mod­u­lar­ists, among them I could men­tion such peo­ple as Keith Fuller­ton Whit­man, Pita, Maria Teri­aeva, Phillipe Petit and many oth­ers.

Which pi­o­neers in Mod­u­lar­ism in­flu­enced you and why?

My first im­pres­sion of mod­u­lar sys­tem was the leg­endary photo of Klaus Schulze in front of huge mod­u­lar syn­the­sizer. As I re­mem­ber it was Roland, but I could be mis­taken… (he could use dif­fer­ent mod­u­lar sys­tems, I guess. Moog as well…) Some time later I man­aged to lis­ten to some o his works. In the So­viet Union we did not know much about ex­per­i­men­tal elec­tron­ics or any sound re­search taken place at some West­ern stu­dios or in­sti­tu­tions. Only in the sec­ond half of the 80s we started to get more in­for­ma­tion about elec­tronic music or ex­per­i­men­tal music in gen­eral. I dis­cov­ered music of some pi­o­neers of elec­tronic or mod­u­lar music/sound art such as Eliane Ra­digue or Pauline Oliv­eros.

Any ad­vice you could share for those will­ing to start or de­velop their “Mod­ulisme” ?

I think, that first of all it’s bet­ter to un­der­stand what kind of music (or sound) you would like to pro­duce – noise, melodic, am­bi­ent or may be techno? Or some­thing in be­tween? And after that it would be rea­son­able to talk to any spe­cial­ist….

For this con­tri­bu­tion to Mod­ulisme, Borisov gen­er­ously as­sem­bled sev­eral col­lab­o­ra­tions with other very tal­ented mod­u­lar­ists:

Sergei Kostyrko – sound artist, sci­en­tist and spe­cial­ist in mod­u­lar sys­tems.
He often plays solo, as well as tak­ing part at dif­fer­ent in­ter­na­tional col­lab­o­ra­tions. He is co-​founder of the Spina cas­sette label.
F5BA66 was recorded dur­ing one of three stu­dio ses­sions, arranged by Sergey in Pe­ters­burg dur­ing 2015-2016.

Phil Dur­rant is Lon­don based elec­tronic mu­si­cian/multi-​instrumentalist, ac­tive par­tic­i­pant of local elec­tronic/ex­per­i­men­tal/im­pro­vised scene as well as par­tic­i­pant of many in­ter­na­tional projects, con­certs and fes­ti­vals. The track was recorded live at his home stu­dio in Lon­don.

Katya Rekk rep­re­sents new gen­er­a­tion of Moscow elec­tronic/ex­per­i­men­tal/im­prov scene. She per­forms in a duo with Alexei Borisov and also is a mem­ber of techno/ex­per­i­men­tal duo REKK/KU­TO­BOY. This track was recorded in 2017 dur­ing Scan­di­na­vian tour of Berisov/Rekk duo. An­ders Enge is Stock­holm based elec­tronic pro­ducer/mod­u­lar synth player and event or­ga­nizer at DKTUS stu­dio/art space.

Misha “Mox” Sal­nikov orig­i­nally from Moscow, but now lives in Lon­don and is an ac­tive par­tic­i­pant of local ex­per­i­men­tal elec­tronic scene. The track was recorded live in 2018 at his home stu­dio in col­lab­o­ra­tion with his son Alexan­der.

Irakli Sanadi­radze – Geor­gian drum­mer/per­cus­sion­ist, cur­rently lives in Tbil­isi. Dur­ing his fre­quent vis­its to Moscow he has ac­tively per­formed with dif­fer­ent free jazz/im­pro­vised/ex­per­i­men­tal projects, tak­ing part at dif­fer­ent events and record­ing ses­sions. The joint track was recorded live at the re­hearsal stu­dio in Moscow to multi track recorder and mixed by well known sound pro­ducer An­drey Proko­fyev.

Al­berto Nov­ello – sound artist/elec­tronic mu­si­cian/pro­fes­sor from Tri­este, Italy. Mem­ber of JesterN project. The track is a re­sult of sound ex­change process. The basic sounds pro­duced by orig­i­nal sound ob­jects and elec­tronic de­vices.

Live in Ljubl­jana (Ment fes­ti­val 2018/Kapel­ica Gallery) in col­lab­o­ra­tion with cellF: an ar­ti­fi­cial brain mod­u­lar sys­tem from Aus­tralia, in­vented by Guy Ban-​Ary. My sig­nal was com­ing to the sys­tem, and the brain re­acted to my sounds via mod­u­lars. But the mod­u­lars it­self could be tuned by op­er­a­tor as well…