Tulpa
About
Tulpa is created by Anna Martinova, a Latvia born dutch resident and electronic music composer. Tulpa audio stories are night-dance oriented psychedelic techno improvisations. Tulpa has released minimal improvisations (Tulpa - Raw) on Detroit Underground (USA).
Anna is Kyma Pacarana community member and released 2 Sample banks she created in Pacarana: Kyma Inspirations Era 1 and 2. She performs in clubs and venues all over the world both as Tulpa and Dusha (where she performs with her voice). She has toured Mexico and Japan in addition to performances at the far distant Chill Out Planet Festival (Russia), Parvati Peaking Festival (India), Modem Festival (Croatia), Drops Festival (Slovenia), Solstice Festival (The Netherlands).
The personal record of Martinova so far is 8 hours DJ set and 4 hours through live Modular improvisation.
Martinova discovered modular synthesis when she started to perform live. In 2017 Martinova established the Modular Moon | Modular Synthesis School initiative that functions as a synthesis school and a platform for Sonic exploration in Amsterdam. The project is supported by the modular community and organises workshops, performances as well as running a school curriculum promoting sound synthesis.
Gear
Hardware: Various from a complex modular system.
Releases
Checks Cashed
Checks Cashed is played live with a modular synthesis system. It is a dark progressive trance-like experience; a reflection of the coming tide of resistance. Minimal techno orientated, the album is an experimental format, modular audio search. Name of the album came out of its cover.
The photo is a historical event of Vietnam veterans being on strike, ca. 1970.
REVIEW
As an artist, Anna Martinova is nothing but generous. Between her two main musical projects, her school of modular synthesis, sample packs, and regular live performing, it seems like her musical journey is one of giving. After her odyssean release earlier this year on Detroit Underground, Dissolution of Ego (as Dusha) she brings it back to a raw, improvised tech mood on Checks Cashed on TruthTable.
Checks Cashed consists of four tracks described as minimal techno improvisations on a modular system. This is very much accurate. In all of the tracks you can feel the live twiddling and adjusting of parameters. In the opener, “Dear,” you hear (and therefore see) Tulpa’s finger playing with the tape-like delay and the bitcrusher essential to the sound of that track.
The necessarily limited nature of a modular system (compared to a computer, at least) gives to these tracks a hard-hitting but stripped-down feeling. This is especially heard on “Bahia,” which does not use any of the effects or pads of the other pieces. “Bahia” is just a fourteen-minute minimal techno set, all perc-y, filter-y, with only some vocal sample manipulation intervening in the latter half of the track. On the contrary, the next piece, “Checks Cashed,” brings more melodic fluidity and liquid lines, with a fun polymeter of 7 over 4. Overall, the last two tracks bring in more atmosphere, reverb and ambient-like sounds, whereas the first two tracks bask in their sonic sparsity.
Gesamkunstwerk this isn’t, and it doesn’t try to be. Recommended if you’re in the mood for a journey continuously laid out by hand and machine, no smoke or mirrors.
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