Recursive Field Instruments

How this started

A synth in a record shop

In 2012, my friend Trevor called me about a small music shop in Lyon that was hosting a demo of a compact analogue synthesiser from a well liked Grenoble builder.

I had played different kinds of synths before, made music in a few bands and messed around with software quite a lot, but I'd never watched someone patch and tweak a sound into existence in real time. I spent the walk home doing sums about what the thing cost, already thinking about what I'd make if I were ever let near one.

A few years later, I was living in Aarhus, Denmark, working with my friend Emil on a Black Metal/Doom collab at his personal studio, surrounded by DIY distortion units and other esoteric Scandinavian gear. There was a little Doepfer unit sitting there, which he very kindly lent me for a couple of months.

I spent hours messing around with it, then decided to clone it in NI Reaktor. I couldn't afford anything like it at the time, but I could at least build my own version in software. That was my way into Eurorack.

Years later, after a job in Glasgow's tech world and a few more interactions with the experimental music scene (and enough money to build the system I wanted…), I had in front of me for the first time a form of expression that felt natural, immediate and infinite. That and spiraling into the coil of online communities filled with individuals that seemed to spawn one crazy idea after another every minute, eventually, it became difficult to avoid the conclusion that I would have to make something myself.

Why Recursive Field Instruments

An idea I keep coming back to

I've never been entirely convinced that we invent ideas. Sometimes something just pops up and fades away. Sometimes the same idea comes back years later in a slightly different form and you feel like it's the right time. Recursive Field Instruments grew out of that exact feeling.

I kept collecting ideas for sounds or control schemes that nothing quite did, or that belonged to some piece of unobtainium hardware. Eventually, the only way to find out if they were any good was to build them.

The name is a nod to patterns that fold into themselves, sounds resurfacing in different shapes, and mostly the very common "What would happen if I plugged things this way instead of that way?".

Behind it

Just me, for now

I've often been told that I do things in unconventional ways (sometimes as a criticism), but that's more or less how I start a project. What if I approached a broken piece of code like a broken wooden table? Not by looking up how to fix it, but by imagining a new kind of leg that would let it rotate in all directions. It's mostly trial and error, and my (sometimes broken) sense of logic. Unless these are fascinating and out of reach for me at the time, I'm not very motivated by recreating things the way they already exist, mostly because other people do that better than I would.

Recursive Field Instruments is currently just me: designing, coding, building and testing everything myself in Lyon, with feedback from my very patient partner and two cats, and the ModWiggler/VCV Rack communities.

Pleroma is a firmware release for existing hardware. What's next leans further into software: a recreation of a hardware sequencer I've been chasing for years, as a VCV Rack plugin, and another instrument built around a synthesis idea I've wanted to explore for a long time.

Get in touch

If you're into modular systems or just want to talk about strange ways of making sound, or if you had the chance to use any of the releases, Say hi! I'd love to hear what you're doing with it.
Adrien Tibi