The story behind Pallas’s custom-built modular synthesizer

Berlin’s E-Werk carries the memory of an earlier industrial life: a former power plant whose halls now hold concerts, club nights and immersive light. At Pallas, the temporary electronic music festival and club experience, that inherited architecture was treated as part of the sound rather than a neutral container. The custom-built modular synthesizer installed in the main hall gave the room a new centre of gravity, joining live performance with the physical presence of a machine that could be seen working.

The instrument was built as a shared performance system, not a sealed display or a conventional keyboard rig. Its oscillators, filters, envelopes, mixers and effects could be connected and reconnected through patch cables, allowing a set to change from one moment to the next. Berlin labels and crews could approach it with different musical languages, while audiences watched the signal path become visible. Behind that installation is a story of careful listening, practical engineering and the desire to make Pallas’s architecture audible.

A machine shaped by its architecture

At E-Werk, electrical history is unavoidable. The former power plant in Kreuzberg offers hard surfaces, long sightlines and the kind of volume for which the venue is known. Those qualities reward a modular instrument, but they also expose every weakness. Hum from power supplies, unwanted feedback, harsh reflections or an overloaded output can turn an inventive patch into noise. The build brief therefore began with the room: clean signal distribution, dependable grounding and enough headroom for a full club system.

That relationship between source and room shaped the instrument’s sound design. A bare oscillator can sound thin or piercing in a large concrete hall; a controlled signal path can open into something broader once delays, filters and reverberant spaces are introduced. Much of the appeal lies in that negotiation. The modular does not merely feed the PA. It changes character as the room receives it, making the hall part of the instrument and the instrument part of the room. Lighting can trace the same process, revealing cables and control movements without turning the stage into a showroom.

The physical design followed the same logic. This was not a standard configuration behind a decorative cover: the panel, case, signal routing and control layout were planned as one system. Modules were arranged for reach and legibility in a dark environment, while the case became an industrial-looking extension of Pallas’s temporary architecture. Patch leads created moving lines across the panel, a changing graphic score for an audiovisual set. Knobs and switches needed to remain identifiable under moving light, and indicator lights had to be useful rather than decorative.

A signal path built for improvisation

A modular synthesizer differs from a conventional instrument because its route is not fixed. Control voltage tells modules what to do; gates trigger events; audio moves through the patch at the performer’s choice. An oscillator might become a bass source, a feedback tone or the raw material for something percussive. A filter can sharpen a kick, remove a harmonic from a drone or create a moving boundary around a sequence. Sequencing provides timing, but it does not dictate the final result.

The central creative decision was to let that uncertainty remain audible. A sealed preset can protect a polished arrangement, whereas a live patch reveals hesitation, experimentation and repair. At Pallas, those moments became part of the performance rather than problems to hide. A performer could interrupt a regular pattern, bring in an irregular voltage, or leave a resonant tone to swell beneath the beat. The audience was not watching a machine reproduce a finished track; it was witnessing decisions about timbre, rhythm and space as they happened.

That approach placed the build within Berlin’s collaborative club culture. Instead of assigning one producer sole ownership of the system, the instrument was developed to welcome different hands and genres. Useful patches were documented, modules were checked between sets and performers could build on what had come before. The wider culture of individual components and hands-on patching is visible through Chilichillin’s modular ecosystem, which provides an entry point for understanding why interconnected modules can become a creative environment rather than simply a collection of electronic boxes.

From workbench to installation

Turning that concept into hardware required patience at the bench. Modules were tested with their power requirements, input ranges and output levels in mind, because one mismatched connection can alter an entire performance. Designers had to recognise the difference between a fault and a useful irregularity. A faint oscillation might be discarded during testing, then discovered as the texture that gives a drone its life. Calibration, stable power and careful gain staging mattered as much as the ambition of the patch.

Safety shaped the final installation too. A wall of synthesis modules can produce unexpectedly high levels when several resonant voices accumulate, particularly through feedback paths or effects returns. The system therefore needed clear monitoring, controlled output and an easy way to bypass or re-route a problematic section. Those details are easy to overlook in photographs, but they determine whether a machine remains playable in a crowded venue. The goal was controlled unpredictability, not risk disguised as excitement.

Load-in brought its own problems. The instrument had to be transported, supported, connected to the venue’s power and tuned against the house system without becoming a bottleneck for the wider festival programme. Technicians checked the patch points, signal chain and emergency paths before performers arrived. E-Werk’s industrial character did not make the work simpler; it made precision more valuable. Once the case was fixed in position, the custom build stopped looking like a portable rig and began to behave like part of the building.

Artists take control of the patch

The modular wall gave Pallas’s live programme a flexible centre. Techno sets, ambient explorations, percussive experiments and drone performances could meet on the same system without sharing a single preset. Berlin’s labels and crews often programme across boundaries, and the instrument encouraged that overlap. It could hold a steady pulse, then strip it away for a passage of exposed circuitry and shadowed ambience. The wall was also a meeting point for the festival’s wider cultural identity, extending into digital art through the Pallas Orbit exhibition.

Australian club-goers will recognise several echoes of that relationship between performer and room. Melbourne’s inner-north studios and small warehouse venues have long offered space for music that resists easy classification, while Sydney’s post-lockout club culture has made late-night programming more closely tied to licensed, tightly managed venues. In both cities, experimental electronic music often gains its strongest advocates through word of mouth, shared gear and intimate audiences who understand that a live set can change direction without losing its value.

Australian touring conditions add a further layer. A producer arriving from Brisbane may have crossed thousands of kilometres with gear exposed to summer heat and busy loading areas before reaching the stage. A shared instrument reduces some of the burden of carrying a complete live rig, although it does not replace a dependable sound system. More importantly, it creates a common language between a touring performer and the local crowd, even when the modular wall was assembled far from the artist’s home studio.

Temporary festival, durable instrument

Pallas presents itself as a temporary electronic music festival and club experience, yet the custom build introduces a different time scale. The case, modules and patch structure can remain in use across the programme, changing purpose without being reduced to waste after one night. That suits Pallas’s commitment to CO₂-neutral event operations and environmental responsibility. It does not make electronic equipment impact-free, but reuse, careful freight planning and repair extend the practical life of the hardware rather than treating each performance as a disposable product.

The local market gives that idea another dimension for Australian listeners. Australian modular enthusiasts regularly buy, trade and assemble components through specialist retailers, online dealers and second-hand exchanges, with a lively culture of smaller builders around Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Berlin’s 230-volt, 50-hertz mains is compatible with Australian mains voltage, but plug formats, safety certification, freight and the price of imported Eurorack parts still differ. The instrument therefore crosses a border along with a set of practical economies, even when its circuitry is intended to stay in the hall.

Customisation was also a response to those material conditions. Building around existing, serviceable modules can reduce the need for entirely new enclosures, while a documented patch library makes the installation easier to maintain. The most sustainable stage object is rarely the one with the most hidden innovation; it is often the object that can be repaired quickly, adapted by a new performer and carried forward when the festival closes. Here, the ambition lies in continuity: one instrument learning from one night and meeting the next.

The sound that remains

Seen up close, the instrument is a dense collection of electrical decisions: where a signal travels, which control shapes it and how much of that process the crowd can perceive. Seen from the floor, it is something simpler and more human. A performer hesitates, searches for a better connection and discovers a sound in front of the audience. The machine makes collaboration tangible, turning label showcases, club sets and architectural lighting into a shared act.

What should stay with visitors is the sense that Pallas built more than a stage feature. The instrument became the main hall’s memory of the festival: a temporary structure designed to make live electronic music more visible, more responsive and more collective. Its lasting achievement is not technical complexity for its own sake, but the proof that a room, an instrument and the people moving between them can become one composition.