Alessandro Cortini Mixtape Features Buchla Modular Synthesizer Favorites

Synthesist Alessandro Cortini, who’s released a series of solo albums and performed with NIN, has shared a mix, embedded above, that features his favorite Buchla modular synthesizer compositions.

The mix includes are a wide-ranging selection of electronic tracks, emphasizing tracks that explore the creative sound design possibilities of Buchla synths.

It’s part of Self-Titled Magazine’s Needle Exchange series.

Here’s what Cortini has to say about the tracks:

  • Morton Subotnick – Until Spring (Side Two) – This piece is really representative of most things that made me fall in love with music created on Buchla Electric Music Boxes: the organic yet unfamiliar tones, spatial movement, and timbral variety, which are masterfully combined by Subotnick here.
  • Charles Cohen – Buchla Music Easel improv – Charles Cohen is very dear to me, since he’s proof there can be a direct connection between the heart and electronic instruments. His way of playing the Music Easel is unique and inimitable, and always different while being familiar at the same time.
  • Sarah Davachi – St. Georges – Sarah has the ability of turning any instrument into a soothing, warm, welcoming blanket of sound that is always pleasant and comforting. This particular piece is for Buchla 200 and EMS VCS3 .
  • Suzanne Ciani – Live Buchla Concert 1975 – Suzanne’s music is a great example of how varied music composed on Buchla instruments can be. Her melodic approach was definitely one of the confirmations I needed that I wasn’t getting into an instrument that appealed to the abstract/atonal for the most part, but that it could be melodic and “song” based if one wanted it to be.
  • Warner Jepson – The Big Purr / Bugs At Large / Blood Knot – My friend Mitchell Brown at KXLU released an incredible double CD with a lot of unreleased works by Warner Jepson, a lot of which were done on the Buchla 100. I much prefer Warner’s use of the instrument compared to Morton Subotnick’s. (Mort’s 200 works are my favorite though!) I feel Warner Jepson really pushed the 100 to its limits.
  • Benge – Chime Five – Ben Edwards, a.k.a. Benge, is one of the few lucky musicians who had a chance to record with a Buchla 700, one of Don’s first (and last) integrated instruments. The results are beautiful and make me wish he had more time with it.
  • The Electric Weasel Ensemble – Music of the Spheres – Allen Strange and Don Buchla plus other musicians, making sounds exclusively with Buchla Music Easels. Nothing more to add…

See the Self-Titled site for more from Cortini!

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