On this first of August, it’s all about vibe and intuition. I started diving back into the five tracks for the upcoming EP, Le Ciel des 33, and its opening song. I ran into a minor issue because I had inverted the keys between the first and second tracks. Two days ago, playing by feel, I tried transposing the sonic textures of the second track onto the first. In the end, right at the very end of the session, I found a guitar part that seamlessly fits the first song.

I essentially went back to basics using my Doepfer photophasing and the Cascade module—which I was initially planning to remove since there are often very long, sustained VCOs. But since I have a small integrated keyboard in the rack, it actually makes sense to use Cascade as a clock.

I have three paper folders set up:

• The first contains all the concepts and ideas, naturally inspired by the sutra I was gifted in Vietnam.
• The second covers music theory—tonics, dominants, tempo, and other elements drawing from several ancient musical traditions.
• The third holds the lyrics, making sure they tie directly back to the correct passages of the sutra.

I purposely didn’t re-read the sutra itself. Having studied it extensively on location in Vietnam, I let those ideas mature inside me, and that growth will shine through on this 5-track release. I’m sticking to relatively concise formats for this new project; playing from the heart feels much more intense and meaningful over a tighter selection of songs.

I’ve also been diving back into the field recordings and samples I took in Portugal and Vietnam. Working with these samples requires meticulous precision. I realized my old iPhone 12 Pro—nothing fancy, but pristine—does a great job. Once converted to WAV files, you can just set a cursor in Ableton to build loops and unlock completely unexpected tones and textures. There’s very little processing needed on these location recordings. You can slice them, lock them to a tempo, narrow the loop, or trigger a one-shot sample that fits right into the modular rig to create rhythmic patterns far more interesting than standard drums. Drumming was never my strong suit, but experimenting with a clear mind certainly is.

What’s brilliant is building this sound bank. I already have a library saved in my Erica Synths module, and today I worked on revisiting those tracks, re-slicing them to extract new textures and tools to anchor the rhythm—even if the other instruments don’t strictly follow it. The goal is to preserve that raw analog purity.

There’s another folder with the latest samples. The work done previously directly feeds into these new recordings, which are then refined and routed back, creating a living sound bank with infinite possibilities. You could work for 72 hours straight and still discover new layers—not to chase perfection, but to explore, preserve, and enrich the sound.

In this project, everything is routed through the modular setup. It’s not a massive rack, but finding its identity was a long process built without any rigid rules.

For this post, I really want to highlight these samples. I’ve captured pagoda ceremonies, rain, traditional ensembles, birds (lots of birds), rain again, and stones clacking together. It’s not a massive list—maybe 50 sounds—but multiplied through modular routing, the possibilities expand exponentially. That’s at the core of this project, zi iacchos. The guitar blends seamlessly into it, though I still have significant work ahead for the vocals and lyrics.

The lyrics mirror the instrumentation: fewer words, but strong, evocative imagery that wraps around the music. I’m excited about the vocal tracking since I have a preamp module with a mic input, allowing me to sing directly over the rack and feed right into the mixer.

ZI