Music composed on synthesizers in the early years of this technology - the 1960s-1970s - was hampered by a number of limitations. No settings could be memorized, and oscillators (electronic oscillation systems/sound-generating components) had to warm up first to produce stable sounds. Marcus Maeder’s next album and the concerts he is currently performing under the title Drifts focus on the problem of oscillator drift: using a replica of the legendary Moog modular system, Maeder artificially creates oscillator drift through ultra-slow, minimal modulations. The slightly different oscillation frequencies enable the creation of complex soundscapes, characterized by beats and pulses in constant transformation. The oscillators modulate each other - the modular system is understood by Maeder as a sonic ecosystem in which all agents can influence each other; the compositions, as products of the system’s design and the composer’s intuitive interactions with it, thus become a quasi-evolutionary drift.

Drifts is complemented here by fragments from Maeder’s latest album, Crepuscule. This composition deals with the motif of twilight. It occurs at the beginning and end of a day, as well as in human cultures: Nietzsche, in his Twilight of the Idols, referred to the idols of his time, whose downfall he saw coming. Twilight is a period of transition; it occurs cyclically, and thus offers an analogy with periods of social change. With Crepuscule, Marcus Maeder attempts to capture this Zeitgeist and reflect it musically. Fragments of Crepuscule are distributed spatially on the balustrades of the Arcoop building in Carouge - the sound melts into the space, so to speak, and spreads musically through space and time.