KnobCon 2021 Recap
NYMS to SoCal Coast to Coast Modular Crew from left to right: Atograph, saddleuptherobots, Dysonant, Trovarsi, Stujay, Space Racer, me rocking an EMS shirt, Anton Riehl, synthetek and Nasty Nachos after an amazing hour long set Saturday night at KnobCon by Trovarsi & Nasty Nachos (picture courtesy of Dysonant)
Last weekend in Schaumburg, Illinois was a blast. I arrived Thursday night, and met up with Trovarsi, Space Racer, synthetek, Abe Mora, Dani Mari aka PRIMITIVEHEART, and Jade Wii aka DAWLess Jammin and her cousin for dinner. After dinner, we met up with Corry Banks from ModBap and sat around in the hotel lobby talking about modular synths and making music until close to 2am. It was great.
The next day, we met up in the lobby midmorning with the addition of some of the NYMS crew, Dysonant and Atograph, to our ranks, along with Ricky Tinez, and headed over to the mall across from the hotel for some donuts and coffee and so Corry & Trovarsi could buy some new kicks. Dysonant, Atograph, and I broke off from the mall group and went to go grab some lunch and met up with DeathParadeMarch.
After lunch, we were all sort of just hanging meeting up with new people as they arrived for the event which didn’t officially open registration until 4pm with the opening ceremony kicking off at 7. At 3pm, Trovarsi texted me asking if I wanted to perform that night and I was like “Yes, but I didn’t bring any of my normal gear. I have no idea what I’ll do.'' This was followed by me talking to everyone about “I have no idea what I’m going to do” until about 4pm when Jim Coker from Five12 told me that I needed to set up in the big tent at 5. I ran up to my hotel room, grabbed my Akai Force and the 42HP 4ms Pod that I brought with me including my Natural Gate, my Brenso, my Ochd, and an OR SWITCH that was free-floating out of the case, and quickly came up with an idea for a 7-10 minute set. I then went down, set up my gear and had my first live performance in front of actual people in actual meatspace and somehow managed not to totally screw it up. It was a blast. Multiple people came up to me afterwards and said they really enjoyed my performance and asked if I had music online.
Right before my performance I met Anton and Stujay in real life for the first time ever. We went out to dinner with the larger SoCal Modular crew and had a great time. When we got back from dinner, I hooked back up with the NYMS crew including saddleuptherobots, who I met for the first time IRL. This whole weekend was great because in Dallas, if there is a modular scene, I haven’t found it yet, so I’ve been tightly connected with both the NY and SoCal scenes and all weekend I was bouncing back and forth between the two groups and also all hanging together in one big synth nerd mob from time to time.
Saturday morning, I hit the Knobcon floor and checked out all the exhibitors, bought a modbap / 4ms Pod off of Corry, and then participated in a build your own module workshop, building an EasyEi8t Step Sequencer from Modular for the Masses. My soldering skills are shit, so I picked one of the easier mostly-assembled kits to build and managed to walk away with a working unit.
Saturday night was a set of amazing shows with Jim Coker, Dysonant, and Trovarsi & Nasty Nachos sets being highlights. Check out my Instagram for lots of videos of that night.
On Sunday, things were winding down, and for whatever weird reason, my hotel room was HUGE with a bunch of empty space, so all of us met up there with a fold out table and all our gear and had a 4 hour jam session that was amazing.
Monday was mostly a travel day with me spending a lot of time with Atograph, Death Parade March, and especially Stujay. It was a great trip.
I can’t wait to meet up with more synth peeps again!
