Euro maker Make Noise recently celebrated its 10-year anniversary.
This video captures a panel discussion from the event on Saturday, June 16th, 2018, on Performing and Composing with Modular Synthesizers .
The discussion features Tyondai Braxton, Richard Devine, Bana Haffar, and Moe Espinosa (Hypox1a/DrumCell), and is moderated by Make Noise founder Tony Rolando.
Awesome talk and insights from some truly inspiring guests !
Never understood the love for Devine. His music is dull and all sounds very sterile to my ears. So many great artists using Eurorack and he is def not one of them..
Do not discount the possibility that it is your ears at fault.
Divine is respected because his work explores the edges and pushes the boundaries.
This doesn’t always sound ‘musical’ to everybody, but he’s sort of a synthesists’ synthesist, because his work explores sound way beyond the usual leads and pads.
You’ll note that he’s wearing a Subotnick t-shirt, which should tell you something. A lot of people would consider Subotnick’s music unlistenable, precisely because he thinks that electronic music should be something that challenges the assumptions of traditional music.
I don’t always like all his stuff — sometimes he’s like Venetian Snares in a blender — but some of his work is really good IMHO.
For the purposes of the panel discussion he definitely has the relevant experience with live performance. Kind of a shame they didn’t have time to ever get into talking about composition, but then that could take several days of discussion…
Honestly, hardcore synth music like Divine and Subotnick and even people like Aphex Twin or Autechre is an occasional listen for me – almost like stretching my ears out a bit so I don’t gravitate to the same old things.