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…

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