Modular synthesizers aren’t just instruments. They can be a way of life, with practitioners getting deeper into the circuits, erecting walls of patch bays and cords, and transforming them anew each time they plug another module into the rack. Thomas Ankersmit plays a Serge, which was originally devised in the early 1970s by CalArts professor Serge Tcherepnin. It’s the way to go if you want to make music out of imagination and electricity.
But for Ankersmit, a Dutchman who lives in Berlin, the gear is never an end in itself. When he first came on the scene a quarter century ago as a young associate of Phill Niblock and Kevin Drumm, he toted a saxophone, which he used to blast long notes at the walls. The sound of space, not the thing that sounded it, was the point. When he switched to synthesizers, that interest in the physical qualities of sounds remained. You don’t just hear an Ankersmit record, you feel it.
The Dip is Ankersmit’s first album in a few years, and its two nameless, side-long tracks feel like a representation of a journey. It begins in a purely electric space as high flickers emerge from a plush carpet of low pitches that are more felt than heard. It’s a bit like listening in to the alternate dimension posited by David Lynch in the last season of Twin Peaks, except that there’s no evil, just whirring, crackling, bumping activity. As The Dip’s first side progresses, long tones evoke a sense of place while distant reports create the experience of events.
Flip the record over, and the action is initially more discontinuous, as static bursts and dissolves. But long tones start to waver in the background and tails of fuzz crisscross like comet trails. Dancing patterns flash on like lights, and a thickly textured, organ-like sound draws a reluctant melody into the audiosphere. Are we experiencing the birth of music according to Tom A? Maybe. Or you can make up your own story. After all, with a Serge, the possibilities are endless. [Students Of Decay]
—Bill Meyer
