Yesterday I stayed at Romain’s place with Boyan, had dinner there and then we jammed on his modular system for hours on end. While I talked about our shared first steps into the DJing world, and will try to do more refined archeological research to unearth the tracks of that time, I would like to focus this article on his newly found passion: modular synthesis.

I say “newly found”, but by now it’s not so new. He discovered the practice in 2018, after going to the Dutch Modular Festival in Rotterdam. At the time, he was looking for something to spice up his DJ sets, add more live elements to it to make it more of a hybrid, interactive performance. After taking part in the workshops of the festival, he did what he does best: watch hours on end of modular synthesis videos on YouTube. Upon finding Colin Benders’s channel, it became clear he had found his path: one could improvise on such a system, one could just go on and jam for hours, and Colin Benders set himself apart from most other modular peepz whomst usually remain in ambient territories. He was pumping out every day some amazing improved live performances.

Colin Benders - 150 BPM 2h techno session

I was still sharing my flat with him at the time, and we started receiving packages after packages, first a couple euroracks from London Modular, then the first modules: an Intellijel Atlantis for the voice, the Acidlab M303 for the sweet acid bassline, and Noise Engineering Basimilus Iteritas Alter for a fat kick. We used an external controller; the beatstep pro, to sequence the whole thing. I remember being so excited to get something out of it at the time that I did what I never do: post it on instagram ahah (private account so friends only sorry).

Crazy how the current setup is different, the only thing that remains is the M303. One day we will go over it, with hopefully a nice video demo! For now, you can enjoy one of my favorite session posted by Romain on his instagram account:

Before signing off; I would like to share a truly touching piece Romain and Adelle created for their newborn. They managed to get a hold of the stethoscopic recording of the baby’s heart pumping in Adelle’s belly, Romain played it out, slowed it down, and then synthesized drowsy, oceanic ambient layers on top, with Adelle messing with the filters through a theremin. They would listen to this track when going to bed, to ease themselves to sleep.

x_cutkiller_x · loulouby by obust

PS: if you are interested in getting into modular synthesis, I asked for Romain’s picks on channels to follow:

Be aware of the existence of VCV eurorack simulator software too, if you are interested but don’t want to throw money at this before testing it, this may be a good entryway!