Würm Bank

One year after 2018's only release, it had become the same time of the year again: RPM Challenge time.

And it had become a time of Eurorack synth goofage.

Würm Bank


The Würm rises from the Starnbergersee near Starnberg, and joins the Amper near Dachau. Along its path, it flows through the small town of Gauting, home to Doepfer, the company of Dieter Doepfer, and birthplace of Eurorack.

What Mr. Doepfer has achieved is not a weak competitor to East Cost and West Coast modular synths, but rather the mightiest modular synth ecosystem in world history. It's pretty reasonable then to give this school its own name, also named after a body of water: Würm Bank.

This album is a hommage to Mr. Doepfer, and to the wonderful synth ecosystem he has blessed us with.

Performed on the Spielsachen setup, centered around a Doepfer Monsterbase A-100 system and using analogue components exclusively, the album is also a playground of what you might end up with when playing with pattern sequencers, random generators and a big bunch of synth building blocks.

There's one note played with about twelve oscillators for Eskultur and similarily ambient textures for nagelalt, this time with lots of Source of Uncertainty action. Both Requirements Engineering for Proctologists and Irgendwas mit Paradox have analogue step sequencer run their course while knobs are twisted. There's an almost cheesy synth-pop vibe for Malchus, and beatless Hindemith-acid for the long Taxonomieproblem. The album ends in a odd meters and a madman's nod to MPB in Ein Blueswaffenstillstand.

The production approach was usually composition - patch assembly - recording to twotrack (although steps one and two got swapped sometimes), and the essence of beauty was sometimes distilled from multiple tracks. As an example, here's a recording of a single unprocessed "Taxonomieproblem" take.

  • Würm photo cc-by-sa-30 Gras-Ober

Further Information


Background info on the blog. And on twitter.

How to get it


The album is available as a digital album download from bandcamp via the player on the left, or directly here.

Download includes a nifty booklet, and lossless versions (FLAC) are in full 24/48 audiophile glory.

The price was set to something nonzero. Most probably it won't stay that way. Not that it changes anything.

 

Credits & Acknowledgements


The Würm pic in the booklet was taken by Wolfgang Zeidler and provided to the Public Domain, for which I'd like to thank this artist.

Apart from that, "everything Straschill".

Not a picutre of the artist. This time, the alternative is the inside of the booklet. In the late 80s, we wrote track lists onto J-cards. Then came matrix prints on J-cards. Then laser printers on CD booklets, and hand-scanned photos. Then colour printers. Then digital cameras. Today, we take photos with expensive primes of pieces of paper with hand-written tracklists on them.