For those in the world of modular synths and in the varying global communities around makers, content creation and user spaces both Metamyther and POB are likely not new names to you. POB has been holding events, creating music, performances and videos for years now and in more recent years joined the team at Noise Engineering. Metamyther came into the scene as part of NYMS (the New York Modular Society) and also makes videos, music and performs with modular gear.
Metamyther & POB have got together to create a collaboration split EP that consists of 6 tracks in total, with 3 tracks from each artist. Interweaving from one artist to the other and back across the running order and here I wanted to ask them some questions about the process and learn more about them and their work.
I’d first of all like to thank the DivKid Discord community made up of DivKid Patreon supporters. On our Discord server we have a ‘Question Of The Day’ and we used that to generate questions about this collaboration EP from the community. As many of those questions overlapped and some were more relevant to the process than others they have been collated and used to influence the questions here, rather than used and quoted directly. Thanks to all that asked questions and influenced this interview.
Patrick (POB) and Tristan (Metamyther) welcome to this little interview and thank you for doing this with us. As you both exist as solo artists I’d like to first ask – what led you to collaborate like this? And how are you pitching this, what is it you’ve created?
Metamyther: Patrick and I found ourselves in close quarters at expos and were on the same lineup for a pre-Knobcon show one year. Seeing both of us perform, we shared a mutual respect for each other’s styles, which got the germ of the collaborative idea started. I thought releasing something together would make it a bit more special. From our respective positions it’s nice to give each other exposure rather than going it alone. If you’re into one of our musical styles, there’s a strong chance you’ll be into the other.
We’re pitching it as a Split EP, an idea I had from the electronic music scene from the 90s, where these collaborations would sometimes happen. One day I came across the term “antinomy,” which is defined as a contradiction between two forces, which we felt fit the project. Even the album cover features two abstract forces, so as a split album it very much shows the types of artists we are to the uninitiated.
POB: I’d say it really started with a drive to a church in Chicago. A couple of Knobcons ago, we shared a ride to a pre-Knobcon synth rehearsal at a historic church in the city (thanks Anton!). During that drive, we had a deeper conversation and had plenty of time to catch up. I remember performing at a NYMS event not too long before that. That was probably our first time meeting up. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch and usually hang whenever we’re at the same events.
When he brought up the idea of collaborating, I was genuinely excited. I’ve always enjoyed his performances and releases, so getting the chance to work together felt like something I’d jump on.
I wasn’t sure which direction I’d go with the three tracks at first. I had considered shorter pieces, but I’d been doing longer one-night patch jams recently, and those felt more expressive. I liked the idea of giving the music more room to evolve, so I leaned into that approach for this release.
As an extension of the first question, what specifically appeals to you most about the other person’s approach and work that made this feel like it was worth pursuing? Some split EPs seem to connect like a “double A side” single or just handfuls of tracks from one artist and another, possibly only connected by “we’re both ambient synth artists” as a theme. Does it run deeper than that? Or was it as simple as connecting two sounds you felt would compliment one another?
Metamyther: I’ve had such respect for Patrick’s work over the years. To me he is perfectly positioned creating all of Noise Engineering’s demos, a company of which I am a devoted user. It just felt like our sounds would make sense together, that the album would feel cohesive even coming from two different viewpoints.
POB: We both share a cinematic quality in our music, but we approach it differently, which makes it interesting. I’ve also been leaning more into ambient cinematic work in my own rehearsals, so this felt like a natural way to explore that further.
Beyond that, I just really enjoy Tristan’s work. There’s intention in what he does that makes this feel like more than just pairing two artists together. It felt like something cohesive from the start.
At what point did you decide to interweave the tracks from one artist to the next, rather than say have 3 Metamyther tracks followed by 3 from POB?
Metamyther: This was near the end of the process. It was a way to keep things a bit more egalitarian but also, this idea of constantly resetting after each track makes listening a bit more exciting, like you never know what’s around the corner.
POB: Hearing Tristan’s tracks intertwined with mine felt really cohesive when listening through. It created more of a continuous experience rather than two separate halves.
How do you feel you approach this project differently to a solo single, EP or performance piece? How much discussion happened around the collaboration aspect of it?
Metamyther: We decided this was first and foremost an extracurricular activity, so I didn’t want to put any undue pressure on the project, allowing the time it took for the tracks to be created. We set something like 3-5 months for each person to create 3 tracks, lightly checking in with each other every now and again, but we were really pretty untethered from each other.
I tried to show a range of the kinds of styles and arrangements I’m interested in. “Open Arms of Apocalypse” is the kind of anthemic track I might begin a set with, a brutal statement. “Desert Living” vacillates between heavily melodic passages and then these more open textural sections, and the last track features my friend Greg Technology on the trumpet, which very much connects to my love of jazz. As far as this last one in particular, it was difficult for me to find the aural language in which to place Greg; it was too easy to get into Twin Peaks territory, which I wanted to avoid as that terrain is just too well-trodden.
This last track in particular for me had the most unusual approach, in that it started with recording Greg – usually when I hire a musician the arrangement is locked and they just play their parts. Over the past few years I have been exploring pentatonic Ethiopian scales and instructed Greg to try a bunch of different approaches using the Anchihoye scale. His first notes of the track are actually just the scale. I had no idea how I would use the audio later; we were just experimenting. It was only months later that I understood how to use his parts and constructed the whole song around him.
POB: We took our time with it and didn’t put pressure on ourselves with deadlines. Most of my previous collaborations were live performances, so this was a different experience. It pushed me to think in new ways, especially working with longer pieces but fewer tracks overall.
Did you feel you learnt anything from the other person throughout the process? If so, how do you see that affecting your approach to music in the future?
Metamyther: Patrick is so easygoing and took everything in stride; I never felt pressure from him that I needed to go faster or that we needed to wrap things up. Being in this collaboration with him just made me want to make the tracks as good as they could possibly be since I have such respect for what he does.
POB: I really enjoyed hearing about Tristan’s mastering process. I haven’t worked with external mastering engineers before. I’ve mostly been self-teaching and developing my own approach, especially through helping with recordings here at DC events.
Once you were both active in the composition and production stages of the music, what efforts were made to create a sonic cohesion across the release? Were you actively discussing and sharing throughout or with an approach in mind working solo to see how things fit together when tracks were finished?
Metamyther: Aside from sending over some initial ideas, there wasn’t a lot of communication actually, we just kind of did our thing in isolation. I kind of enjoyed the idea of not knowing what he was going to make; it became more of a big reveal at the end.
POB: We didn’t overthink cohesion too much. It was more about trusting the process and letting the listener create their own arc through the interwoven tracks.
How do you both approach composing and producing music? I’ve always found it interesting that even in artists that can sound similar the process can be vastly different. Talk us through going from idea (when does that happen, is it through active play, external influence, ideas just enter your head?) to sketching out those initial sounds and parts.
Metamyther: I typically begin with low stakes, by fiddling around on a synth, just having fun making sounds I like and saving them for the future. It’s important to name everything with my initials to denote it’s a sound I created as I am not very interested in using someone else’s presets. When things are going really well a sound will pull me in and I will want to make a song with it immediately.
If I’m on the modular, a machine basically devoid of presets, song ideas can come out of exploring a new module, a patching idea, or just getting a basic groove going. Due to the ephemeral nature of Eurorack, I record as soon as possible so I capture the idea. Because I am constantly pulling cables and reconfiguring the setup, I have pretty much one session to capture all the material. I work through a lot of iterations and possibilities with a patch, capturing much more than I might need, say for a 5 minute track at least 15 minutes. Since every Metamyther track is written in 3 movements, I need enough material to get me all the way to the finish line of the third movement.
The three tracks on this album are about antagonistic forces operating within a macro and micro framework. “Open Arms of Apocalypse” is the most zoomed out, cosmic level, about an impending dread that is beyond any one human’s conception or control. “Desert Living” is about my feeling of increasingly living in an intellectual desert, the sense that one’s brain is becoming starved due to the society one lives within. The desert is an actual character, personified as those textures, made by the Vhikk X. Lastly, “Dissent of Imagination” is the interior, personal level, a place where ideas are strangled. Here, the trumpet is the personification of the imagination as a character that exists within the remaining, quite antagonistic, arrangement.
Using a narrative framework or personifying musical elements reinforces the tracks by creating additional structural layers for listeners to latch onto in much the same way that melody and rhythm do. It helps to connect the pieces and tell a story.
POB: My composing usually starts with intention around revisiting modules I haven’t used in a while. Sometimes a module gets close to that “should I sell this?” moment, and I’ll patch it one more time, only to discover something new. That tends to push me out of my usual habits.
That happened with two tracks on this album. I used my full system instead of my usual smaller case, which gave me a much wider palette. Once I hit a sweet spot in the patch after a couple hours, that’s when it was ready to record and preserve.
The third track came from a demo patch I had built for a module, so the starting point was with a fresh module which brought a different kind of energy.
Now we’re into the actual process of ideas going into the sounds and parts, what gear did you use to make your tracks? How much of the Eurorack systems we see you both with were used to create the tracks? Are they full groove box style music creation machines, individual instrument lines, or sources of inspiration and ideas to apply on say software or other hardware?
Metamyther: My tracks typically have a blend of modular, “traditional” synths, and instrument and especially effect software plugins. Ableton is my canvas where I paint. I’ve spoken about this before on the channel, but recording modular is like “shooting the video,” whereas working in Ableton is “editing the film.” Taking a look at the “Antinomy” projects, the modular primarily did drums and textures, leads were done on the Moog Messenger and Sequential Pro-3, and basses were handled with the Moog Mariana plugin. It happened that way for these tracks, but that is in no way a rigid thing. Certainly, other tracks in my catalog contain modular leads, drums from the Nord Drum or a plugin, and bass from a synth – there’s no single way that a track gets made and it resets every time as I try for new sonic directions each time. I should mention too, the instrument plugin that gets the heaviest use is Generate by Newfangled Audio. This thing uses chaotic generators as its sound sources and really just speaks to me, it is probably the tool I use the most. Desert island level.
Sometimes people will ask me where an element came from, and I will have no idea until I look at the project. When I produce I get into this kind of fugue state where I am trying ideas in a frenzy until something clicks. I may in fact try synths, modular, and plugins all in service of one lead, get layering going with multiple of each, throwing plugins on, just getting all cylinders firing. Getting down the first draft is really just an opening gambit. In the weeks ahead I have trained myself to zoom out of the process and think, “What do I not like in this arrangement? What elements can I replace so that I like what is going on?” I then systematically proceed to do exactly that, usually starting with the kick and working my way through the layers. It’s incredible how either removing one layer, or replacing one layer, the whole thing shifts and often you get this clarity. Other times, tracks are completely reshaped, that by the end I’ve only used one or two elements that I liked and created a completely different arrangement around it.
I work with audio engineer Ghian Wright who mixes and masters all of my tracks. I take the tracks to the furthest of my ability, and then export stems for him. This part of the process is crucial. When he sends me his first mix, the track becomes divorced from myself in some sense. This is the time I am actually hearing the track for the first time. When I listen, I am thinking, “What can I remove?” It has happened more than once where I have painstakingly produced some of these layers, only to delete them at the mixing stage. Sometimes, the song itself will get shorter. Removing even one element frequently gives the track the clarity it needs. Less is more is never more true here.
POB: All three tracks were fully Eurorack. Sequences and transitions were built from scratch. I didn’t sit on the patches for long, most were created over one or two nights, then I rehearsed the arc of the piece.
“Crisis” leaned heavily on Loquelic Iteritas Percido, and I had just picked up Instruō Lion, which I used for mixing.
“Fractured Sunrise” came from patching Variatic Eruption, which added rhythmic tension.
“Lightwave Drive” started with Akemie’s Taiko and evolved into a more minimal, synth-driven piece that I pushed forward as it developed.
Do you have any production tips and tricks you’d like to share? Be it audio processing from recorded modular, software sound layer tricks, EQing a mix of synth layers … what were doing doing to bring the sounds and parts together?
Metamyther: As I’ve talked about a lot on my channel, stem recording is one of the best ways to capture modular recordings, if creating tracks is your goal. I’m glad Eurorack manufacturers have caught up to what is hopefully an enduring trend, with some affordable and small modules that make stem recording easier.
One technique I use a lot is the “Greening method,” which is a fancy term for color-coding stuff that is good to go in green. By the end of the project, the entire Ableton project is a bunch of green blocks. As I work I also label problem areas in red or bits to improve in orange or yellow. Color coding prevents overworking certain parts, playing the song and looking for mistakes that aren’t there, and aids in focusing on what needs attention.
Most of us have a ton of projects sitting on the hard drive that just never really went anywhere. But chances are, you liked the sounds inside the projects. Ableton’s browser allows you to pull in these embryonic projects into whatever you’re working on, and it automatically retimes it to your existing tempo. I do this from time to time, especially when I’m stuck. It is such a gamble if it will work, but this often results in happy accidents. Give this one a try, if nothing else you will be surprised!
POB: I’ve been mixing in the rack ever since the beginning of modular synthesis, and as of late I’m seeing the value of multitracking into Ableton. Between mults, Xer Mixa, and ES-9, I finally feel like I have better control. I say this because these tracks were not multitracked out – I had built my multitrack setup after these were finished – and I had to be creative at times to get the right mix. There’s nothing worse than realizing one voice is too loud after recording, especially when it’s influenced by the environment you were in at the time. Multitracking gives me more flexibility and confidence, and I’ve been enjoying taking on mastering myself.
As tracks were complete or coming into their final shape what discussion did you have around track listing and how things might sit together sonically, did it “as if by magic” just sit right or were tweaks made to the productions to better balance not just your own tracks against each other but against the other artists tracks too?
Metamyther: Patrick and I both came up with our desired track order so those were simply placed alternating onto the album. We did use different engineers but I believe the album still feels pretty cohesive as it is tied together with our similar sonic taste.
POB: We both liked the idea of alternating tracks. I’m glad Tristan opens the album. Since he initiated the project, it felt right for him to set the tone.
How did you plan the release? It came up in the DivKid QOTD questions from the community about how hard it is to release anything and to try and get noticed, what are you promotional / release plans for the EP?
Metamyther: We’re all aware of the state of the music industry and have really chosen to adhere close to our community for this release as they are our audience. At Knobcon, Patrick and I will have a taped conversation for my channel where we’ll discuss the album, so look forward to that later this year.
POB: We considered aligning the release with synth events, but that can get lost among product launches and announcements. We decided to let it stand on its own and keep it close with our community. I really appreciate the chance to talk about it here. Hopefully it encourages others to explore collaborations like this.
As we close out the questions and interview, is there anything you’d like to talk about that we haven’t yet? What’s coming up for you both?
Metamyther: Patrick and I hope you appreciate this unique collaborative moment of entering into a creative pact to create music of which we’re both proud. Music is one way we can communicate to each other in an activity that often feels very isolated. Recently, some Youtubers have spoken about not creating music on their channel, which to me loses the plot of why we got into this activity. In some sense, as music has become their profession, I can see from their perspective that something they initially loved has, over time, become tainted. While their livelihood is predicated on selling gear, consumerism is not the point. I want to encourage you to start or continue creating music – there is power in sharing your singular voice with others, especially if you are a weirdo like me!
The last track of an album I began three years ago is now with Ghian, so I’m excited to complete that and move onto other musical projects. This album features me singing on it, and it’s taken that long for me to learn how to use my voice competently. Next, I’ll be working on an instrumental album of industrial IDM called “Codexicon” and a concept album surrounding insects called “Imago.” Lastly, I’ll be performing at Knobcon this year. And of course, I’ll be posting more videos on the channel.
I’d like to thank Ben for coming to us for this interview. It means the world to us to have this opportunity.
POB: Things are going really well with Noise Engineering. It’s been great seeing recent releases out in the world. I recently met up with Tyler Lyle from The Midnight backstage in DC. We patched and demoed a few things in the green room before the show. I love to see artists fully embracing Eurorack while also playing to packed rooms.
The DC Modular Society has also been busy with regular shows and jams. We just announced Sonic Frontiers on May 23rd here in DC, with a maker panel, community showcases, and performances to close out the night.
I’ve also picked up a flugelhorn and have been practicing regularly, working to get back to the level I was at years ago. I’ve started blending it with Eurorack, and I’ll just leave it at that until later this year.
I’m sure when something else unexpected happens, I’ll be ready for it.
I’m really grateful to be part of this project with Metamyther. I’ve been a fan of his work for a while, so collaborating like this has been a thrill. Thanks to Ben for the opportunity to share it, and it’s always great seeing you when you’re in the States.
Thanks to POB & Metamyther for taking the time to answer my questions and thanks again to the DivKid Discord community for submitting their questions to influence the interview too.
Make sure to check out the album on Bandcamp.
If you like these interviews, let us know, we’re easy to find on all the DivKid pages around the web and if you’d like to get involved with the community (thanks to POB & Metamyther for continuing to be a great part of that too) head to https://www.patreon.com/DivKid to support.
