Karlheinz Essl & Otto Wanke

Los Modulinos

Live at BMCA, Vienna
Nachtstück Records 2025

Liner Notes | Tracklist | Bios | Credits | Download

Released: 1 Dec 2025

Performed and recorded live at BMCA Storage (Vienna) on Feb 11, 2025

Karlheinz Essl: modular electronics

Otto Wanke: modular electronics

Nachtstück Records 2025

Liner Notes

Karlheinz Essl and Otto Wanke started their musical collaboration as performers only recently at a concert in Brno (CZ), although they have known each other for many years - Otto was a student of Karlheinz at the University of Mucis and Performing Arts Vienna (mdw) and graduated there in 2018. Each of them plays his own self-configured electronic instrument based on various non-standard analog synthesizer modules. Using non-linear analog feedback loops, they create ever-changing and modulating sounds that constantly shift into new, often unpredictable musical contexts.

Their improvisational musical interaction involves spontaneous communication between themselves and their electronic devices. They see their music as an ever-changing process that constantly creates new situations. Essl and Wanke embrace the surprising possibilities that arise when noise, sound spectra and chaotic systems merge into immersive soundscapes. These are sometimes projected through a multi-channel loudspeaker system, giving their musical dialogue a distinct spatial dimension and immersing the audience in a vivid world of sound.

Tracklist

Bios

Otto Wanke (b. 1989) is a composer and performer of electroacoustic music. His work combines instrumental writing with electronics as well as with interactive media or visual art. He studied electroacoustic and instrumental composition at the mdw and MUK with Karlheinz Essl and Wolfgang Liebhart. He completed his doctorate also at the mdw with Gesine Schröder and Martin Supper. Since 2020 he teaches electroacoustic composition at the Janáček Academy of Music in Brno. He has worked with ensembles and orchestras including PHACE, OENM, Black Pencil Ensemble, Grafenegg Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Radio Philharmonie or SOV Symphony Orchestra Vorarlberg. His works have been premiered at Wien Modern, Acht Brücken and Carinthian Summer, and he has collaborated with institutions such as the National Opera in Warsaw and the ZKM in Karlsruhe.

Otto Wanke

Karlheinz Essl (b. 1960) is an Austrian composer, performer, improviser, software developer, media artist and composition teacher. He studied composition in Vienna with Friedrich Cerha and completed his musicology studies with a doctorate on Anton Webern. Composer-in-residence at the Darmstadt Summer School (1990-94) and at IRCAM in Paris (1991-93). From 1995-2006 he taught algorithmic composition at the Bruckner University in Linz. Since 2007 he has been a Professor of Composition and Electroacoustic Music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Between 1992 and 2016 he was music curator at the Essl Museum in Klosterneuburg.

His work with computers and a long-term preoccupation with the poetics of serial music have been formative influences on his compositional thinking. During the 1990s he carried out various projects for the Internet and became increasingly involved in improvisation. In 1997 Karlheinz Essl was a featured composer at the Salzburg Festival.

In addition to writing instrumental music, Karlheinz Essl also works in the areas of electronic music, interactive real-time compositions and sound installations. He develops software environments for algorithmic composition and live electronics.

As a performer and improviser he plays his own computer-based composition environments as well as instruments such as toy piano, electric guitar, modular synthesizers and analog electronics.

Karlheinz Essl

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Credits

Recorded, edited and mastered by Otto Wanke

Album cover designed by Andrew Levine, based on a photo by Sawyer Sutton from Pexels.

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Updated: 1 Dec 2025