Drifts by Marcus Maeder

Music composition in the early years of synthesizer technology - in the 1960s/1970s - was still hampered by a number of limitations: No settings could be stored and the oscillators had to warm up first in order to produce stable sounds. Marcus Maeder's new release and his current concerts under the title "Drifts" make a virtue out of the problem of oscillator drift: using a replica of the legendary Moog modular system IIIp, Maeder artificially creates oscillator drift through minimal and ultra-slow modulations. With the only slightly different oscillation frequency of a large number of oscillators, complex soundscapes are created that are characterized by beatings and constantly transforming pulsations. The oscillators modulate each other - the modular system is understood by Maeder as a sonic ecosystem in which all agents can influence each other; the compositions as products of the system design and the composer's intuitive/improvisational interactions with it thus become a quasi-evolutionary drift.

Marcus Maeder is a sound artist, researcher and composer.

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