The Evolving Riddle V2 by Benge

video upload by Memetune Studio

"New album out now:



This track was made on a Crumar DS2 from 1978

As one’s life winds its way through the corridors of infinite time and space, I find myself relocated and reset, so to speak, in a place many miles and many moons from the West Country—my former domain—in one of the shires just north of our splendid capital

And I find myself once again following my musical instincts down yet more labyrinthine sonic rabbit holes and through yet more labyrinthine electronic circuit boards

On this outing I decided to try my hand at live sound-on-sound improvisational looping, a method of composition I find particularly rewarding when using relatively unwieldy modular synthesiser systems. The act of looping provides a convenient way of setting down short compositions in real time, allowing simple melodic studies to be created, riddles, if you will, to be solved whilst sitting at the instrument’s console and engaging with the various dials and switches

The core device used on this recording is what I call the Concrete Box - an assortment of Eurorack modules I put together consisting of four loopers, two delays, two digital reverbs, two compressors and various mixers and utility units. Using this box of tricks I was able to run sounds around upon themselves, creating the pieces you hear on this album

Not all tracks were made this way, some took a more conventional path, namely those which made use of polyphonic keyboard synthesisers (the Ensoniq Fizmo, the Crumar DS2) where I simply recorded a few layers of sound one upon the other

And on one track I made use of a rather special device called the Tempera, alongside a regular acoustic piano. The device is able to take stereo recordings and resynthesise them using granular synthesis. You are then able to layer them and manipulate the sound in a great variety of ways. Practical applications of granular synthesis have been around since the mid 1990s, but it is only now, it seems, that dedicated hardware units are beginning to appear on the market, and they seem to be taking hold as an extremely interesting synthesis path

And so it is that these riddles I have been working on have been neatly packaged up for you in this second volume, itself a kind of evolution of the idea presented in the first of the series last year. And who knows where I will find myself in another year’s time - hopefully still diving down sonic rabbit holes and exploring labyrinthine electronic circuits

Synthesisers and recording equipment used on this album:

ARP 2500
Buchla 100
Buchla 200 (cloned)
Roland System 100
Crumar DS2
Ensoniq Fizmo
Tempera Granular System
Yamaha G1 Piano
Eurorack ‘Concrete Box’
Dynacord VRS23 Vertical Reverberation System

The various track titles depict the main instrument used on each track

Released August 7th 2026

Written, recorded and mixed by Benge (B.D.Edwards) at Memetune Studios, England

Design and video work by Benge, made at the Memetune Video Lab

(c)+(p) 2026 Memetune Recordings (Memesongs) all rights reserved"