Hainbach: crafting soundscapes from forgotten relics

Today, the Spotlight shines On Berlin-based electronic music composer and performer Hainbach.

I have come to view Hainbach as much an archeologist or audio specimen collector as he is a musician. While he makes beautiful music and soundscapes, they are often showcase pieces for the devices he works on, which include not only vintage and rare modular synthesizers but also tape machines, test equipment, and other industrial machinery. A particular highlight of his work is his YouTube channel, where Hainbach brings experimental music techniques and the history of electronic music to a wider audience, frequently displaying how he gets usable sounds from these forgotten devices. We have included a link to that in the show notes.

He is a fun and creative human, someone I am grateful to have spent some time with.

(all musical excerpts heard in the interview are taken from Hainbach's The One Who Runs Away Is the Ghost soundtrack)

Dig Deeper

• Visit Hainbach at hainbachmusik.com and on his excellent YouTube Channel
• Purchase Hainbach's music on Qobuz or Bandcamp, and listen on your favorite streaming platform
• Follow Hainbach on Patreon, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter (X)
• Meet the German Producer Making Music With Salvaged Nuclear Lab Equipment
• Sonoscopia – Platform for Experimental Music - Porto
• Raymond Scott Electronium
• The cosmic messenger: How Karlheinz Stockhausen shaped contemporary electronic music
• The Surprising Musicality of a Telephone Line Simulator (Axel Line Simulator)
• Hainbach - Landfill Totems
• German Institute for Standardization: German Technology and DIN-Norm
• VERMONA – synth-manufacturer with a long tradition
• See the incredible and nearly forgotten Subharchord synthesizer in action
• TONTO: The 50-Year Saga of the Synth Heard on Stevie Wonder Classics
• Space Oddity: the weird history of the Soviet ANS synthesizer
• The Oramics Machine: A Relic From The Roots Of Electronic Music
• Daphne Oram – Electronic music pioneer
• The EMS Synthi 100 and ten innovative records it helped define
• AudioThing: “Made with Hainbach” Plugins
• Using a Soviet wire recorder as a ghostly space echo
• What is granular synthesis?
• A guide to Iannis Xenakis's music
• Shock (2023 movie)
• Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly final duel - music by Ennio Morricone
• Why is this 90s home keyboard still so valuable?
• How Hainbach tackled 'the Dark Souls of synthesis'

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