Earlier this year, I had the privilege of being interviewed by Alexandre de Charrin, aka Le Code, for his podcast Ambient Discovery.

The interview is still available online, and it was during our conversation that Alexandre pointed out to me that the sounds I was able to produce were surprisingly far removed from the “blip and blop” sounds he instinctively associated with Eurorack modular systems.

As he puts it himself: “It almost doesn’t sound like modular at all.”

An elegant way, if ever there was one, of referring to the countless modular demos found online, which often resemble highly experimental and inaccessible hardcore "musique concrète".
Experimental sounds, sometimes extreme, that are the polar opposite of what you can hear on his beautiful label Mare Nostrum, where you can discover finely crafted, luminous, and atmospheric ambient productions.

Blips and blops? Not just that...

Let’s be honest, opinions on Alexandre are pretty mixed, even within electronic music communities, where modular systems tend to quickly devolve into either “scientific” demos of sound features with questionable aesthetics or, conversely, just playing random plucks through heavy reverb in front of potted plants. I’m exaggerating a bit… but not that much.

It’s clear that directly comparing the raw sound output of a Eurorack to even the simplest preset of a hardware synthesizer like UDO’s DMNO or even software like Pigment or Zebra3 (which cost a fraction of the price of a single module) immediately settles the debate in terms of efficiency in sound design, if only on the subject of polyphonic complexity, which quickly becomes a nightmare with a modular system.

But the approach is not the same.

Behind the blips and blops or beneath the veneer of ease of a generative patch, what matters most, in my view, is the intention put into crafting the path of all these signals.
It is this intention, combined with the ability to listen to the synthesizer as a living instrument, that opens up unexpected creative doors and leads to the famous “Happy Accidents”, those moments of total surprise that fuel the modularist’s inspiration.

As I often say, the modular synthesizer is the only instrument that you build as you compose. And it’s when “it doesn’t sound as expected” that the creative magic begins—provided you’re in a receptive state of mind and aware of every variation.

That’s probably why watching a YouTube demo of a module has very little to do with what’s actually possible in a live setting, where every action on the instrument can subtly or drastically alter the balance of a patch.

Hainbach - First Date with the Syntesla Decahertz - Synthfest France 2026

Attempt at an Atmospheric Soundscape on the Modular #1: FAIL.

Anyway, after the interview, I decided to take a few hours to record a short piece, starting from scratch, with the synthesizer completely unpatched.
Goal: to achieve a result similar to what you might find in Mare Nostrum, which obviously isn’t the aesthetic I usually pursue, but the idea was to show Alexandre that with a modular synth, you can do anything! And that blips and blops aren’t inevitable!

There really is no instrument more versatile than a modular synth.
After all, “blip and blop” or “Ring into Clouds” are just facets—perhaps overrepresented ones—among the infinite possibilities.

The entire approach to the patch was therefore dictated by this desire to achieve a dreamlike, luminous, and restful atmosphere… in the “Mare Nostrum” style.

And while I had no ambition whatsoever to produce something as elegant and precise as Alexandre’s work or that of the artists he produces on his label, I at least hoped to recreate that kind of atmosphere.