It started with a walk in the woods just before my day began to travel among the wires. Down this path, you will find temptation where gods and monsters live. Those who dwell beyond the horizon are the engineers of wicked dreams who toil at building fire within the mind. This is no German fairytale taken from the pages of the Brothers Grimm; it is the electronic reality where people from around the globe embarked on a temporary emigration to the woods of Berlin to attend Superbooth 2019.

Superbooth is super chaos. The first few hours were relatively chill, the afternoon a bit unhinged, but Saturday has been promised to slide into a madhouse. There are a lot of recognizable personalities on hand, more than a few I’ve had the opportunity to speak with. Learning anything at all about Eurorack, I think, is likely impossible. This event has more to do with networking with people you may only know from afar. At some point in the middle of the day, it becomes a spectacle of noise.

Having walked my brains out yesterday I’m afraid my mind is as flat as my feet were yesterday after my walk. This creates a blogging problem because I’m now saturated with a million impressions to the point of being overwhelmed. Some of the conversations verged on the amazing, while simply listening to the creators and manufacturers of the tools of this industry could offer delightful insights.

By the end of the day when I finally got around to jotting some notes about the event, I’d already been talking, exploring, and learning over 12 hours. With that much information acquired, I have no idea where to begin or what to share. Add to that, I’m hungry, a bit cold, and have a 50-minute walk back to my Airbnb. So, while I’d love to continue to sit here on the grounds of Superbooth 2019 with this buzz of people surrounding me and writing, I think I’m going to have to give in to some other basic necessities and get moving. What a day.

Had to say hi to Scott Jaeger at Industrial Music Electronics right away, and it happened to be while the founder of Make Noise, Tony Rolando, was making the rounds, so I felt compelled to ask these two veterans if they could give me a second for a photo. Happy is good.

I thought I saw someone I met last month at Synthplex. At first glance and in profile, I thought it might be Dave Rossum of Rossum Electro-Music, so I walked right up and said hello in an overly friendly way before recognizing that this was, in fact, Dieter Doepfer. Dieter is the person who conceived of the Eurorack format, thus revitalizing modular synthesizers back in 1996. Today, Eurorack is a fast-growing global phenomenon.

This is Mark Verbos of Verbos Electronics. Had a great chat with him about electronic music, where he got his start in the music industry back in the 1990s. Tongue-in-cheek, I lamented his overly brief postcard-sized user manuals but had to admit that back when I started and was frustrated by the lack of documentation, what I really wanted/needed, were lessons in the fundamentals of synthesis, which nobody’s user manual was going to be able to offer me.

I had to go find this guy early. He is Elos Eloi of Winter Modular and the creator of the Eloquencer, which is a Eurorack sequencer. I was his first customer after waiting patiently for months and the completion of the module. I’m also starting to notice a trend here about how these creators of such intrinsically magical tools are some seriously nice people.

Out of a doorway and into my arms, Ross Lamond spotted me first and offered a hug as my smile grew larger, recognizing who this was. Ross and I have conversed more than a few times over the past couple of years, and in many ways, I feel like we are distant brothers separated by a continent, but not in the spirit of perspective. Ross is bowing out of the world of Eurorack and exploring options. The guy has been a fixture in the world of Eurorack, building custom racks for some of the most famous composers and musicians around our planet.

Uhhh, yeah, well, maybe Baseck is just jet-lagged? I know you might be thinking I got him mid-blink or something, nope all three photos I took of him and Peter Edwards of Bastl, founder of Casper Electronics, had this dude looking mighty stoned. I’m not saying he’s wrecked, but if looks are not deceiving, then one might believe he’s been puffing on the chronic. As for Peter, it was as great seeing him again today as it was meeting him back at Moogfest in 2016 where I bought his bitRanger self-contained synth voice. At the moment I bought it, I was certain that other than the Moog Mother 32 I’d just acquired, this would be all the synth gear I would ever own. Little did I know that within 24 hours, I would have eaten those thoughts.

Met blue-haired Vladimir Pantelic of VPME. A puff of bright blue atop his head actually works as a beacon due to his towering stature of nearly 3 meters in height. Okay, I joke about his height, but the guy is seriously tall. Then, all of a sudden, it dawns on me why his first seriously popular Eurorack module, seen above on the left and called the Euclidean Circles, is the brightest module on the market: the light needs to reach heights most of us will never know. His new module, the Quad Drum Voice, has me reconsidering my drum setup, and to be honest, there wasn’t much to think about. Upon getting home, I will put up for sale about 90hp of modules, and I will be able to reduce that footprint down to 22hp with the same functionality.

Yoni Newman and Philip Mease of Rabid Elephant are being interviewed by DivKid Ben for an upcoming video on DivKid’s YouTube channel. First of all, DivKid is a key figure in the lives of many, many people just starting out in the world of Eurorack due to his inimitable presentation style and all-around great skills in exploring modules that feel alien to first-time users.

Philip is the engineering mind behind the Natural Gate, which is a dual lowpass gate. The magic behind Philip’s design is that it doesn’t use vactrols, and yet it has an incredibly smooth roll-off. The lowpass gate module was first invented by synth pioneer Don Buchla back in the early 1970s; Phil’s design represents a milestone in the creation of what is better known as an LPG.

Meng Qi is a module and instrument designer who has earned a reputation for the unique designs and playability of the music tools he creates. I’ve tried finding a break in the crowd around him to talk shop, but he remains just out of arm’s reach. Hopefully, before the days of Superbooth come to an end, I’ll have had the opportunity to say hello.

Moritz Scharf founded the company Endorphin.es, and if someday I can afford the width and cost of his luxurious modules, I just might find his Furthrrrr Generator Dual VCO Waveshaper taking up residence in my rack. There are a lot of crews keeping these developers busy with interviews. When Superbooth got started back in 2016, I think DivKid might have been the only person covering the tiny trade show. Today, there are dozens of people from the press, and the event has mushroomed.

Endorphin.es new sequencer. I don’t really want to know about it because do I really need a fifth sequencer? I know there are those who would recommend that one own ALL the sequencers. And, of course, those guys over at ADDAC would just love for me to buy a second MONSTER frame because who doesn’t need another 1,379hp of modules?

This is Jessica Kert, who is one-half of the live modular act ZV_K. She was our 7:00 p.m. entertainment provider at Seaside. I met her a couple of days ago at SchneidersLaden.

The crew of FucKETy BuCkEty includes Marco Haas giving the English salute, Ken MacBeth masturbating a pencil, and the gray beardy guy on Ken’s left. The Red Beard Man-Wolf dude with a beer is Bart Wolff and is not a member of FucKETy BuCkEty. And the others? That’s Wowa Cwejman looking off to the right, while I have no idea about the rest.

So, that was my first day at Superbooth 2019 in Berlin, Germany. Pretty spectacular, really. This photo was taken of the Spree River, which I have to cross on my hour walk to and from FEZ, where the trade show is happening.