Thomas Ankersmit
Thomas Ankersmit is a musician and sound artist based in Berlin and Amsterdam, known for his work with the Serge Modular synthesizer.
Thomas Ankersmit is a musician and sound artist based in Berlin and Amsterdam. He plays the Serge Modular synthesizer both live and in the studio and collaborates with artists like Phill Niblock and Valerio Tricoli.
His music is released on the Shelter Press, PAN, and Touch labels and combines intricate sonic detail and raw electric power with a very physical and spatial experience of sound. Acoustic phenomena such as infrasound and otoacoustic emissions (sounds emanating from inside the head generated by the ears themselves) play an important role in his work as does a deliberate creative misuse of the equipment.
Most info combined on DISK Agency’s page: DISK Agency
Video of an improvised live performance on the Serge: YouTube
Images: Google Drive
Instagram: Thomas Ankersmit
Thomas Ankersmit’s main instrument for the past 15+ years has been the Serge Modular analog synthesizer, a very open-ended laboratory for electronic sound, originally developed fifty years ago.
Almost as if trying to scratch an opening in the front panel of the device, he thinks of much of his work as a kind of digging for possibilities, channelling his inspirations through a single, specific instrument. Like many others, Ankersmit finds potential in the limitations of his chosen instrument, trying to give analog synthesizer sounds a physical, almost tangible quality by using the Serge’s many signal processing modules in combination with feedback, random modulation, and physically interfering with the cable connections.
The result of this research for the concert at Sanatorium of Sound will be a combination of live performance on the Serge Modular with sound fragments recorded on the same instrument in his studio, trying to find a sense of gesture and space somewhere inside the electricity - music for analog synthesizer as ensemble or environment perhaps.
Composer commission - completed for the 10th edition of the Sanatorium of Sound festival. Supported by Performing Arts Fund NL
