The film is available to watch on YouTube here: youtu.be/5tLMbzVSlYc

'Organic Matter' was a modular synth piece that I began writing in 2018 while in Banff, but ended up soundtracking this film loop that played at the Hatcher Graduate Library on the campus of the University of Michigan for like a year. A lot of the sounds in this piece were written on a battery-powered Make Noise Shared System on the side of Mount Norquay in Banff National Park on September 25th, 2018.

I believe I was one of the first people to really undertake the notion of taking a modular synth fully off-grid and even had to hike with it and create a power system that could handle the wattage. I had to do a bunch of tests on how long my Goal Zero battery pack would last with different iterations of the system and my 100w lithium pack would power my whole Shared System for like 2.5hrs. More than enough time to create a ton of sounds I could edit back at my studio in Banff...

Photos that I took of the setup went a bit viral after getting picked up by FACT and another music site (Future Music? Can't remember now nor be bothered to look it up) and that photo probably got more attention than all the previous years or art combined. Synths very, very much outside! (Not just in your backyard or local park, lol) Who would have thought?! Me! That's who! And it was hard work!

At the time, I was quite annoyed that all that people wanted to know was "How did you power it? Tell me." and were completely ambivalent about the art made with the machine or all of the planning and effort it took for me to get there. They just wanted the easiest shortcut to the solution to emulate what I had done for their own clout/social media nonsense. How irritating. I usually blurted out some B.S. answer because of that annoyance. It seemed to me that they ceased giving a rip about the music due to crazed gear focus/obsession and that main trait was the reason I sold all of my Eurorack during COVID and began plotting a fully Buchla future.

Not all sounds in this were created on that mountainside, but a lot were and it was a ton of fun to do. I hope you enjoy listening to this again, as I have been enjoying it too...

That film is available to watch on YouTube here: youtu.be/5tLMbzVSlYc