Comprised of two expansive, sidelong pieces composed entirely on the Serge Modular synthesizer, The Dip signals a subtle yet significant shift in the Berlin-based artist and composer Thomas Ankersmit's trajectory, imbuing the hyper-physical, psychoacoustic intensities of his live performances with introspective, atmospheric, and even melodic elements.
The Dip marks Thomas Ankersmit's debut with the Students of Decay label and sixth album to date.
Primarily known for a site-responsive approach to sound, often realized in the moment of performance, Ankersmit's turn toward the studio in the last few years has opened up a new dimension within his practice. It is in this quiet rupture that The Dip emerged, a study in internality and suspended states, rich with cinematic undercurrents and ghostly spatial suggestion. Here, electricity itself feels transfigured – becoming supple, even organic – within an environment shaped entirely by analog signals.
Over the past two decades, Ankersmit has established himself as one of the foremost practitioners of the Serge, the notoriously idiosyncratic and expressive instrument that has remained central to his work. On The Dip, he harnesses its potential not for brute force or disorientation, but for spaciousness, resonance, and lyrical abstraction. Without resorting to additional processing or effects, he draws out tones that feel simultaneously raw and refined, articulated and blurred – intricate structures that seem to breathe and evolve of their own volition.
The result is a kind of auditory hallucination, a "cinema for the ears," wherein impressions, emotional arcs, and imagined topographies unfold. Each side of The Dip plays like a single gesture unfolding in time—a spatial narrative constructed through vibration, density, and the movement of air.
The Dip follows acclaimed works on PAN, Touch, and Shelter Press, and reaffirms Thomas Ankersmit's position as one of the most focused and probing voices in contemporary experimental music. Quietly radical and meticulously constructed, it is less a departure than a deepening—a descent into a more private sonic world, where the boundaries between perception, memory, and pure signal dissolve.
Thomas Ankersmit (born 1979 in Leiden, Netherlands, lives and works in Amsterdam and Berlin) is an
electronic musician and composer. He plays the Serge Modular synthesizer, both live and in the studio, and collaborates with artists like
Phill Niblock,
Kevin Drumm, and
Valerio Tricoli. His music combines intricate sonic detail and raw electric power, with an extremely physical and spatial experience of sound. Acoustic phenomena such as infrasound and otoacoustic emissions (sounds emanating from inside the head, generated by the ears themselves) play a central role in his work, as does a deliberate misuse of the equipment.
His work has been presented at Hamburger Bahnhof and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Kunsthalle, Basel; Tate Modern, London;
Serralves Museum, Porto; MoMA PS1, New York; and at festivals for experimental and contemporary music all over the world. He's also lectured at universities like Harvard, Stanford, CalArts, and Goldsmiths. Ankersmit's music is released on the PAN,
Touch,
Shelter Press and
Students Of Decay labels.
