“Been taking some time out of writing music to develop a new instrument/live performance system, which I debuted in Hiroshima earlier this month,” is how Luke Sanger updated me on his latest activity, which should tell you all you need to know about the kind of career the techno‑adjacent artist has enjoyed up to now. Sanger’s unique approach to electronic music has rightfully earned him plaudits across the globe, performing in venues from churches and art galleries to Berlin’s iconic Berghain club.
On his entry into modular
The first time I’d actually got my hands on a modular synth was at my mate Luke Abbott’s house. He had some Eurorack cases and talked me through it all. Of all the modules he had, the Make Noise ones really got my attention. WTF did those mad‑looking arrows and weird hieroglyphic‑like designs mean? Some time after this, Make Noise announced the Shared System and did some releases of artists making records solely with it. I started to read everything I could on the modules and obsessively listened to the records and other demos that people started to post online.
On his go‑to modules
When it comes to Eurorack in particular, the Shared System is really where my experience solely lies. I’ve tried branching out and building another small system, but just keep coming back to the Shared System. I really know it, inside out. So to the Eurorack enthusiasts reading this, I’m sorry to disappoint with my rather outdated and pedestrian selection! But my go‑to modules would be the DPO, Optomix and Wogglebug. DPO is an amazing‑sounding oscillator which still surprises me after a decade of using it. The wavefolder is so fucking cool, and something about the combination of that, the wave shape and angle, and the internal vactrols just gives this mad kind of wooden sound to it — tight and sturdy, but also incredibly colourful. Optomix pairs great with it — I like the fact that they’re all kind of unique. My current Optomix has one vactrol that rings out much longer than the other, which is quite useful and you can play it to your advantage when designing a patch. The Wogglebug is a weird one. I actually didn’t realise it had audio outputs until, maybe, three years of owning it. Oh, the shame!
On debuting his new instrument in Hiroshima
I played live in Hiroshima in April and debuted a new prototype of an instrument I’ve been developing for a few years. I’ve been slowly iterating a script on the Monome Norns music computer, along with their grid and arc. I’d done some test runs with it alongside the Shared System at a couple of gigs previously (including the Electronic Sound room at SynthEast Festival), but Hiroshima was the first outing where it was the main instrument.
The show was a success and I came home with lots of ideas to improve it, including the slightly unhinged plan of porting the whole thing fully over to a laptop running [synthesis and algorithmic composition platform] SuperCollider. Currently I’m at a point where I’ve taken all my experience composing and performing with grooveboxes and the like, and sort of made a mashup of all my favourite features. I’ve got a Machinedrum‑like drum engine, a Morphagene‑esque granular looper, a clone of Eventide’s Blackhole, one mono and one polysynth with pattern sequencers, parameter locks, motion sequencing, OP‑1‑style tape effects... So, although it’s not hardware modular per se; while a hardware modular synth limits you to pre‑built physical modules, SuperCollider lets you program your own custom modules from scratch, allowing for infinite combinations. Also, it’s totally free.
On the culture of modular
On one side, the ‘culture’ of modular could be considered a mindset, which can influence the way you work with any piece of equipment. Since learning how to construct sounds and signal paths with various patching techniques, I find I approach other more ‘bread and butter’ musical processes in the same manner; be that routing signal paths in a DAW, coding in SuperCollider or stringing up a guitar effects chain.
One thing that attracted me early on to Eurorack in particular was the innovation and open sharing of knowledge with open‑source designs, for example Èmilie Gillet sharing all the code and schematics for nearly all Mutable Instruments modules under open licences; allowing the community to create firmware variations and hardware clones was so damn cool. I don’t think she gets the credit she deserves at all, especially considering that companies now essentially sell commercial products based on her designs.
On the flip side, the nature of bespoke equipment and small‑run manufacturing means these things are expensive and out of reach financially for most people. So the demographic of users is — and always has been — people of a certain age or income. It will never be ‘the next punk’, put it that way! I think it’s worth taking that into consideration if you are an artist using modular synths as a means of branding and identification. Know your niche, I guess.