"Dragonfly Drifting Through Wasteland" - 6 HOURS of Ambient Modular Synth (Moog Mother-32 + DFAM)

"Dragonfly Drifting Through Wasteland" by NICU. A semi-unattended live ambient performance mainly based around two Moog Mother-32 analog synthesizers and a DFAM.

This semi-generative ambient modular piece was built and altered over the course of an entire day; this recording documents the second half of that day, after the main patch had already been set up - but many changes are still left to come in this performance.

Over six hours, the piece travels far beyond its origins across major landscape shifts, a gradually-evolving ambient drift throughout the journey, influenced by both human performer and generative self-playing behavior of the analog synths themselves.

The dark, gritty, yet beautiful textures - especially in the second half of the piece - evoke a fragile solitary dragonfly slowly floating across a half-deliberate, half-windblown path through wasted lands and industrial fields, out alone beyond the brittle edges, wandering into darker and darker fields filled with half-obscured shadows and horizonless twilight.

If you enjoy the music, please consider subscribing to the channel. It means a lot, and there will be more new music coming soon :)

This is a piece about gradual evolution, not of particular "moments." However, here are timestamps for several of my favorite regions of the piece if you want to explore:

0:00:00 - Amid Motes of Dust
1:26:02 - Hovering Over Oil Drums
2:13:30 - The Chemical Fields
2:31:52 - Swaying Power Lines
2:52:29 - Lone Tree
5:09:51 - Is There A Moon?
5:33:05 - At The Periphery

No specific patch notes, since I didn't think about recording anything about the setup, but the connections are made and remade so many times that I'm not even sure which "patch" I would write notes about.

---- PRIMARY GEAR USED ----

Synth Bass + Leads + Arps: 2x Moog Mother-32s
Synth Percussion / Bells & Gongs / Noise & Additional Sounds: Moog DFAM
Master Clock: Roland TR-8S
Mixer: Allen & Heath Zed-14
Delay: Erica Synths Zen Delay
Reverb: Eventide Space

Additional Eurorack Modules Used:
Noise Engineering Horologic Solum (Clock Divider to separate timings of events)
Mutable Instruments Veils (Quad VCA to control the modulation of various parameters)
Instruo Ochd (LFO bank for unsynched drift & vibrato)
Instruo Athru (Analog Wavefolder for strange distortions)
Instruo Ceis (ADSR Envelope Generator for soundshaping & additional event timings)
Intellijel Steppy (Step Sequencer for additional event timings & triggers)
Expert Sleepers Super Disting EX Plus Alpha (multitool, used here for tuning and on Algorithm F-7 "Shift Register Random Triggers" to control a bit of the drums)

The NICU project is dedicated to my baby daughter Luna, who fought through hell to be alive and with us.

If you want to support us both, just "Like" this video and Subscribe to the channel for more. It makes a big difference to me.

#moog #ambientmusic #darkambient #synthesizer