Modular Profile: SchneidersKeller

Edd Butterworth and Jean‑Marcel Fricke are the joint helmsmen of the recently opened SchneidersKeller (an offshoot of Berlin’s venerable SchneidersLaden) situated on the famous Denmark Street in the heart of central London. Butterworth has long been a pillar of the London scene — not least as part of the much‑missed boutique London Modular. Fricke, meanwhile, cut his teeth working with Andreas Schneider at SchneidersLaden (the organisers of the Superbooth events); though he also has control voltage in his blood, being the son of the late, legendary drum machine and synth designer Manfred Fricke.

On their entry into modular:

Edd Butterworth: I was working in a studio that had a bunch of classic analogue synths and outboard, mostly, Moogs, Korgs, Rolands... Everything was patched into the patchbays, including external inputs into the filters and CV/gate, et cetera. I was fascinated with routing things in and out of the synths and outboard. I got really into setting up these complicated routing scenarios. So when I wanted to buy some of my own gear I wanted that flexibility and decided on Eurorack as the best solution. I spent all the money I had on a Tiptop Happy Ending kit, the Expert Sleepers ES‑5, Intellijel Dixie and Quadra, Doepfer VCA/Mixer and standard VCO and a Malekko Wiard Borg 2 filter. I still have the Borg, the Quadra and the Doepfer VCAs!

Jean‑Marcel Fricke: I was familiar with modular synthesizers through my dad’s work, but I never took a serious interest in them. To me, they mostly sounded like quirky bleeps and bloops without much musical context. That changed when I did an internship at SchneidersLaden in Berlin when I was 18. During that time, I met Mark Verbos of Verbos Electronics. He took me to a gig and played a fully improvised live set using his system and a TR‑909.

I thought, ‘I could do that too!’. I convinced my dad to give me a Tanzbär [drum machine], along with an MFB OSC‑03, MFB Dual LFO, MFB VCF, and ADSR — basically everything I needed to...