In an era where nearly any conceivable music can be mouse-clicked into existence there are fewer and fewer limitations on modern music makers. A lack of limiting parameters can be freeing or paralyzing, and living in a world of plugins and emulators can, at very least, prevent the proverbial skin from seeing the sun. 

Thomas Wincek has come out of the box, and while rediscovering the outside world, he has built a dam. It is a dam that channels the flow of notes and sends them cascading, unrelenting, washing over you form surprising directions. He has harnessed the power of forgotten tools and forced them, through patience, vision and force of will, to do his beautiful bidding. 

Wincek has composed, recorded and toured the world with bands including Volcano Choir, All Tiny Creatures, Emotional Joystick, Collections of Colonies of Bees and Field Report. He is composing and performing under his own name for this new project.

Wincek describes the general aesthetic of this new work as "a synthesized, improvised, solo version of minimalist orchestral music." The music is completely generated live: there are no prerecorded loops or triggering, and no computers. The work is based around the sounds of synthesizers from the early 1990’s, a Kurzweil K2000 and a Korg Wavestation, both obsolete and long out of production. 

"They also have a very clinical, digital sound that lends itself to layering many percussive sounds. These synths were heard in many many songs, movies and TV show themes in the 1990s. It's very evocative to me, as these were the first synths I ever started experimenting with when I was in my early teens," Wincek said.

The synthesizers are then run into a generative sequencer where parameters are adjusted and Wincek essentially opens and closes the gates of the dam and locks of the river, in real time, funneling sounds through this obsolete infrastructure. These tools are primitive by today’s standards, but the limitations are a fundamental part of this process-music. 

This projected willfully and expertly embraces dated technology, but it doesn’t fetishize it. Wincek’s relationship with the tools and sounds of this period comes from a place of love, in fact, first love. There is a deep, resonant, emotional element within this work. There is vertigo. There is immense power. There is the thrilling anesthetic of constant movement. It is much like standing on the edge of Niagara Falls and feeling the spray in the air, while the dam keeper quietly and expertly monitors the flood.

- Christopher M. Porterfield


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