Modular by Simon Littauer

The first katharsis release of 2025 is the album "Modular" by danish artist and composer Simon Littauer, known for his live performance on modular synthesizers with a very melodic and almost scientific approach to music. The album is a culmination of Littauer’s over 9 year-long journey with eurorack modular synthesizers. All the tracks on the album are recorded as one-takes, with no multi-track recordings or editing. Having spent infinitely many hours trying to master the instrument (even taking lessons in hardware design, coding, and electronic engineering to develop custom modules for his setup), Simon Littauer has played over a hundred live concerts on the system, including performances at Roskilde Festival (DK), By:Larm Festival (NO) and Spot Festival (DK).

On ‘Modular’, Littauer explores euphoric breakbeats on club-ready tracks like ‘Phicet’, ‘Swamp’ and ‘Xenon’, which might remind the listener of the universe of artists like Skee Mask, Richard Devine and Lanark Artefax, while calm and soothing atmospheres are introduced on ambient cuts like ‘Melo’. On ‘Jona’ Littauer is joined by J. Ludvig III - the drummer of Erika de Casier, for an ambient trance journey with live drum breakbeats. Overall, the album is a playful and experimental album that travels through many different genres, but with a consistent melancholic tone, that maintains the listener all the way through the 12 tracks.

Littauer explains, ‘‘My vision was to build a portable modular system on which I could perform, and improvise, while being able to recall sequences, samples, and settings reliably during live concerts, without having to re-patch between tracks. I feel like I can confidently say, that I succeeded with that. The sound and structures of the album are formed by how I configured my modular synthesizer, what made sense in a live performance context as well as other artists I heard during the process of making it. The complexity, impressive sound design, and machine-fluency of Richard Devine, whom I was fortunate enough to have as a teacher in the lead-up to the making of the album. And having followed the eurorack scene for many years - artists like Colin Benders and Catharina Barbieri have influenced my work as well’.

Littauer’s modular system is a 208 hp eurorack setup developed throughout 7 years. It is based around a Vector sequencer by Five12, the ER-301, configured as a live-effects engine and mixing console, two Hector modules from Poly, and two Bitboxes - one containing modulation signals and the other one containing oscillators and drums. One reverb module and a single module for macros and transitions developed by Littauer himself. The entire album is recorded on the ER-301 itself, during live performance.

katharsis is a label focusing on emotionally charged music run by jjjacob