Hardware Electronic Artists Connect Communities in Seattle’s Live Music Scene

A warm, chattering crowd gathered before a cozy stage inside Harissa Mediterranean Cuisine in Ravenna. The stage floor was draped in a vibrant patterned rug, and in the front was a table piled with gear—headphones, cables, dozens of wires plugged into a maze of buttons and dials; it was a creature of modular synthesizers that made me both excited and anxious just looking at it. 

At 10 p.m., Seattle music project monocot.zip, composed of longtime friends Ryan Tucker and Luke Pendergrass, took to the stage and began their set. When their first notes hit the speakers, the crowd drew closer, because what was happening on stage was something you wanted to watch just as much as dance to. 

monocot.zip working their hardware.

The Evergreen Echo

The two artists worked side by side on separate gear. The songs built slowly up from a bassline as the duo laid melodies and inflections on top of each other. If you were to hear this from the street, you might think that there was a laptop somewhere and that a DJ was blending techno songs together. But rather, monocot.zip were creating songs live using analog synths— generating sine waves, then sending voltage to the sine waves to change the pitch, and using modules to manipulate the sounds. 

There were no prerecorded tracks. Some of the songs featured samples or drum sounds they had brought in, but the vast majority of what we were hearing was improvised and created on the spot. While the artists stayed laser-focused on the modules, their hands busy for the entire hour, the crowd danced to the continuously morphing sounds. Meanwhile, behind monocot.zip were two screens displaying geometric 3-D animations from cyranetic. 

Monocot.zip are new to a growing, dynamic community of artists in Seattle who use modular synths to improvise live electronic music. While it was a pretty standard technique in the ‘90s to play a drum machine and synths over a techno record, using hardware is far from the norm in mainstream electronic music today. Instead, the modular community of Seattle is close-knit, with a DIY, underground, yet inclusive edge. Two staples of the Seattle hardware scene are Modbang and Modularseattle, who both organize free monthly shows with lineups of 4-6 artists per night. Modbang also has a Portland branch, and Vancouver, BC, also has a synth scene.

Pendergrass and Tucker are lifelong lovers of electronic music. Tucker describes listening to Brian Eno with their dad and “spinning and twirling and doing my thing” to a remix CD of “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred as a little kid. Pendergrass spent a “catalyzing few years” in Berlin where he noticed the attitude around electronic music differed from the U.S.’s— rather than being seen as a genre for young people, electronic music was something you could be into forever. “For a long time, I really missed that kind of community and that kind of energy,” Pendergrass says, which ultimately led him to get a drum machine and a synth and start doing it himself. Having witnessed significant developments in electronic music, including dubstep and hyperpop, the duo asked themselves what types of music they weren’t hearing, and have found their niche. What monocot.zip hopes to bring to Seattle is a danceable sound that is still a full-on live music performance. 

hecklifter performing with hardware.

The Evergreen Echo

Monocot.zip’s show was just the beginning of a lineup of modular artists that night. Miloisntreal took over next. Their set, which took place on an ironing board, featured complex and playful drum beats that resulted in much headbanging (from me). This was followed by a trancelike, relentless performance from hecklifter, and finally, the night closed out with a pulsing and magnetic DJ set from Vast Chains that kept people dancing until 2 a.m. Meanwhile, Cyranetic was VJing (video jockeying) the entire 4-hour event, arranging animated visuals live to sync up with the sounds in musical ways.

There is a big crossover between visual effects artists and the synth hardware community. Cyra started making abstract 3-D visuals during the pandemic as a way to accompany the music she was making and posting on Instagram. She quickly realized that she enjoyed making the visuals more than the music, and leaned in. She uses software like Glitch Lab, TouchDesigner, and Blender to make her art. As a longtime fan of the more experimental subgenres of electronic music, when she chanced upon modular synth artists online, she instantly fell in love with the scene. “I just really like the feeling of watching a musician being totally locked in in the present,” she says. She adds that more so than DJ sets, “there’s a ton of energy at hardware shows,” because the audience is automatically engaged in the way they would be if someone was doing a guitar solo: It’s the act of watching the creative process in real time. 

In April, Cyra started VJing for live shows using a software called Resolume, which enables her to sequence and time visuals, use effects, and even layer them on top of each other. Cyra comes from a classical music background and is very attuned to rhythm in her work. She utilizes syncopation to create tension and surprise that keeps the audience engaged. Describing her process as intuitive while still grounded in technical knowledge, she states that she is “trying to dance with the music visually.” 

This intersection of music and visual effects artists is not just because 3-D visuals go so well with dance music and club environments. When a VJ is responding live to a musician who is also improvising, they have to be just as focused and in tune with the music. There is an emphasis on improvisation within the visual community as well. Seattle has a vibrant VJ scene, and Cyra mentions artists such as accuraci, magic3ye, B. Alcalá Roth, and Rojas as being instrumental to welcoming her into it. She has observed that the visual animation community tends to be pretty male-dominated, and that while she’s had to deal with spaces that made her feel ignored, “Seattle has been wonderful in welcoming me and treating me like an equal.” 

Vast Chains performing with animations on screens behind them.

Image by cyranetic

In multiple senses, the synth scene is a built environment. A track you hear at a hardware show is probably not streamable, because it’s being created in real time. You’re there to experience it, connect with people, make friends, and keep coming back. “We don’t just show up for the music,” Tucker said. “We show up because we also like hanging out with each other.” Pendergrass also praised Modularseattle’s and Modbang’s organizing efforts, saying “Spaces where there are communities of practitioners who can share ideas with each other are really important.” He also made a point that the recurring live shows in intimate club environments are crucial to fostering community-building: “They persist, and they form the basis for connecting with your neighbors and your friends, and they’re multi-generational.” 

This leads me to my main takeaway from attending my first hardware show: This community of artists is incredibly friendly and welcoming. As a transplant from New York, I’m used to techno and house events where there’s often a tone of exclusivity and that in order to show up to something, I needed to be dressed a certain way or project a certain nonchalant aura.

That kind of pressure was not present at Harissa in Ravenna. I felt immediately that I could just be myself. People were dancing however the hell they wanted at this show and being unselfconsciously goofy, and I felt immediately at home in this environment. As Tucker concluded, “There is so much talent in this community, so much passion, and so much love for the craft of making live hardware music. And I think we would love to see Seattle be seen as a destination for that.”

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In upcoming hardware music events, Modularseattle’s next show will be Saturday, August 23 at Kubota Garden, with music starting at 4 p.m. Modbang’s next event will be Tuesday, August 26 at 4B’s Bar, starting at 7p.m. and also featuring live visuals from cyranetic. Lastly, cyranetic and monocot.zip are teaming up again on Sunday, August 24, which starts at 7 p.m. at Bad Bar in Capitol Hill.