jeffrey koepper

“Jeffrey Koepper Do machines have a soul? Synthesizers do, as our beloved Robert Moog tried to explain in his 2004 documentary. The circuit boards and overall design of the devices he conceived are infused with just as much of his spirit as is imagined a violin crafted by Stradivarius. Another commonality between these two kinds of instruments is that they both need a human being to animate them - a process that usually reveals more about the player than the builder. Music realized by the Electronic Musician Jeffrey Koepper always carries a unique psychological charge, along with a distinctive personal truth. Few among his ranks possess his technical acumen, which certainly stimulates and informs Koepper's many substantial releases. On MantraSequent (67'18") sound is handled like an object. Shaving off frequencies, joining tones, sculpting textures, compressing atmospheres, and ordering notes into repeating trails of echoes this album is the result of a set of choices made by Koepper - which he hopes will turn abstractions into sonic moods and feelings. Once we fall under the spell of MantraSequent, it becomes easy to forget the impressive list of vintage gear which was used to make it. Capturing the cosmic mystery associated with this genre, Koepper deploys pulsing sequencers, sustaining synth-string chords and spiraling spacey effects in an expressive soundtrack for interplanetary leaps. In a swirl of held harmonies the listener is pulled toward a hard chill, and offered an absorbing space of repose - while further along, deeper pieces generate the mystery-machine character of the Berlin-School. Others may struggle to understand what it was like back then (the 1970s), but the powerful grip of the past has always aided Koepper well in the present. The Now, which is always racing ahead of us, through this music, can be caught. In silence we may feel the tick of the clock, but the moments found within each of the nine tracks on MantraSequent carry an opportunity to honor the maelstrom of the mind - and all its dimensional potential.” - Chuck Van Zyl

“American composer and synthesist Koepper has been honing his craft over a period of about 15 years and nine previous releases, strongly influenced by the Berlin School sequenced electronics of pioneers like Klaus Schulze, Jean Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Steve Roach, Neuronium, Vangelis, Michael Garrison, and others. Like many of those earlier explorers of this style, his technological preferences lie in the early analog boards that produce a warmer tone and powerful purity when compared with their more modern digital antecedents. The sequenced interlocking tones and rhythms work within pulsating circuits, rich textural flows and lush meditative soundscapes, where slow evolving changes are the order of the day. The album consists of none tracks, but they are all carefully crossfaded and for the program’s 67 minute duration, the sound never really goes away for even an instant – these are nine movements of slowly unfolding changes over the entirety of the cycle, that change direction when one ends and another begins. In the liner notes, Koepper has meticulously documented the synths, sequences and other equipment used to create the particular section, though he’s not giving away any secrets for listeners who can instantly recognize the sound of the real deal. While the music presented here operates in the shadows of those who have gone before him, meaning that this stle isn’t really as groundbreaking as it was in 1973, there is still plenty of territory within it remaining to be explored, and Koepper is carrying that torch forward with vigilance. MantraSequent is yet another magnificent listening experience.” - Peter Thelen

“As the title already suggest, "MantraSequent" is a series of Mantra-like meditative compositions that flow into each other creating a long sonic sculpture that lives and breathes. This time around, AnalogueJeff found core inspiration in rhythmic chants and analog sequences as well as spiritual places and their special atmospheres. The clockwork of the revolving earth creates many rhythms that we humans are either aware or unaware of in our daily existence. It’s these poly-rhythmic sequential melodies that always kept inspiring during the creative process of shaping and optimizing the final outcome. Well, the music features a continuous, lovely pulsating, minimal-flavored and shapeshifting flow of sounds with various hypnotizing hooks and dynamic levels to keep the listeners interest along an always present emotive current. Simply check out "Mandala" or the ethereal swirls of "Aurora" and "Spectre" to get a proper feel of the album’s impact and intrinsic magical vibes. Rest me to say I concur fully on the label’s line "MantraSequent" keeps analog music alive in the 21st century.” - Bert Strolenberg

“Accomplished US-synthesist Jeffrey Koepper, also known as Analogue Jeff, recalls "Terrelektra" was conceived as a far away planet of sound where the tracks all merge together like an electronic atmospheric journey through this world. In the process of creating the music for the 70-minute recording with analogue gear only and being invited to play at the Dutch E-Day 2016 festival, the thought of Europe was a constant presence and an influence. It led eventually to an inspired and rich sounding aural canvas where atmospheres swell up like the tides and reveal rhythmic sequencer pieces with interlocking patterns that constantly evolve and ebb and flow with the tides of this world. Once again, Mr Koepper’s layering of vintage textures is exquisite and expert all through the album, with this mesmerizing Berlin School vibe shining through deep atmospherics. On the other hand, a tantalizing and lively sequencer feast presents itself on "Interlogic", the most dynamic piece on "Terrelektra". Aficionados of Jeffrey’s music shouldn’t hesitate any longer and get it right away. Well done, Jeffrey.” - bert strolenberg

“While mainstream musicians spend all their time readying their image, waiting for someone to notice them, synthesist Jeffrey Koepper has been spending his most productive years working on becoming himself. With mind and instruments working at cross-purposes, the primary function of his album Terrelektra (71"35") seems to be to fascinate the listener. Teeming with vintage gear this album is dense and energetic and in love with the sonics of electronics. With precision, verve and color Koepper realizes nine tracks of sequencer expressions meant for forward thinking and serene contemplation. Pleasurable to consume, Terrelektra wraps the listener in a private cloud of sound. Being meditative does not mean being vague - as layers of synths collude, and patterns of echoing notes energetically spin away in steady mechanized accuracy. Koepper's motoring rhythms cycle, move and add rows - heard individually as a basic pulse, when listened to collectively these notes congeal into an epic kinetic mode of cerebral transport. Also present on Terrelektra are regions full of slow motion synthetic chords. Gently breathing through filtering and processing, these zones offer a welcome dreamy stillness between Koepper's more rhythmic adventures. One of the great things about Electronic Music is that it sometimes produces sparks. Throughout Terrelektra, Koepper effectively acts as both technician and musician - as he harnesses electricity, to produce colors which we cannot see. - Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END   16 June 2016 ” - Chuck Van Zyl

“After a hiatus of a couple of years, accomplished synthesist Jeffery Koepper returns with "Konnektions". It’s an inspired release maintaining his connection to the pure emotional impact of pure analog sound firmly while putting Steve Roach at the helm regarding final assembly, enhancements and mastering to meet ends there as well properly.Mr Koepper recalls he really "konnekted" with the spirit of emotion and music (hence the title) during the creative process. Still only applying his beloved collection of vintage analog synths, drum machines and analog sequencers the album’s music is fine example of true musicianship while pulling the very heart and soul out of the vintage gear. It resulted in eight warm, emotive and captivating textural landscapes alongside sequencer-based sections evolving naturally and what the artist refers to as an organic flowing feel, blooming into moods that reveal somber peacefulness as well as epic hopefulness. An atmospheric, harmonic and spacious perfume is spread by each composition, sometimes leaning to the pleasant minimalist/hypnotic. The combo "Oracle", "Pantheon" is a proper example of the latter. Sequencer aficionados though get their full treat on the exciting, more dynamic-spiced "Astral Mechanika", "Mercury Circuit" and album closer "Belief", all fascinating cosmic journeys where a lot of mesmerizing things are happening. Vintage electronic music without solos always has had a special charm for me, delivering a different but still most pleasing sense of fulfillment. The expertly composed and profoundly interconnected music making up the 71-minute "Konnektions" proves that for 100%. This cracking recording simply deserves both thumbs up!” - bert strolenberg

“It is so odd to hear its seasoned veterans tell us that, "There is no future in Rock n' Roll, only recycled past." Thankfully, the kind of work Jeffrey Koepper adventures in harbors not-yet-exhausted possibilities. On Konnektions (71'28") he dives in, dedicating deep energy to setting and getting his new musical mood just right. Its eight tracks, realized using slabs of old synthesizers and tone-tool modular contraptions, gradually dazzle us. As each piece opens, we become primed to expect complexity - and find every one presenting its own entrancing deployment of echoing sequencer variations. Spiraling through time the rows of motoring notes act to gradually mesmerize the listener. Patterns advance, recede, lengthen and contract through their octaves in a tripping mechanical choreography. These intriguing variations provide Konnektions with a unique feel - somewhere between the academics of Minimalism and the expansiveness of Spacemusic. Koepper's intricately pulsing ornamentation becomes somewhat softened through the addition of ethereal electronic harmonies. While dramatic chords offer a spacey coolness to the mighty pulse, this tightened structure brings our minds to the verge of revelation. Pop music works best if you do not listen too closely. Koepper's music is the opposite, asking the listener to reflect on the ways and power of sound. While our hearts alight with the longing to be swept away, our thoughts turn to the concept and the sensation of sound. Some are out there just hoping to be discovered, while others seem like strange new things waiting to be invented. With every new album release Koepper, and his cult of sonics, venture into the challenging realm of technology and creative impulse - in a questing, ever-roving engagement with Electronic Music.” - Chuck Van Zyl

“ Listening to this Jeffrey Koepper's new opus is a little like making a long upward pilgrimage towards heavens! Connecting the human emotions, the spiritual feelings with the analog machines. That's the main spirit behind this mosaic of sounds which starts to unfold with the warm rays of "After Glow" which irradiate of its floating arcs filled of cracklings. Larvas of synth untie their sonic ink, establishing a parameter of lyricism which infiltrate our ears with such a sweetness. Oh...that it feels good to take up with the music of Jeffrey Koepper! Because everything coming from this American musician/synthesist is weaved in a kind of sonic poetry. A fine movement of sequences shapes a structure of ambient rhythm. One would say a group of turbulent keys which make shine their crystalline tones by cavorting, by skipping, by getting entangled and by spinning with synchronized capers, and others more random, in a tight weaved schema where every forgery-step is fast returned in the magnetism of the movement. This is a sonic universe, a sonic poetry of a rare delicacy that a discreet bass line propels for the beginning of an astral procession. Quietly, "After Glow" establishes the parameters of “Konnektions”.It's been a while since Jeffrey Koepper has gave us some new music to throw between our ears. Since Arctisonia in fact, which dates in 2011. The man played around and did other things among which having some jam-sessions with friends. And this long wait will result in a wonderful album where each track follows a processional tangent filled with ambient electronic rhythms which are weaved in the subtleties of the analog equipments. Our buddy Jeffrey uses here the Synthesizers.com Modular, that Steve Roach had so silky toyed with in his masterpiece Skeleton Keys. And that's the reference point of “Konnektions”. Everything is built, blown and rendered in analog tones. The result is an album where the sound background is incredibly rich and warm. The minimalist structures are constantly nuanced by a depth in the ambient textures where the allegorical singings of the synths are used as springboard to rhythms which undo the strands of their sequence patterns with effects of echo which are transformed at times into real vertiginous spirals. Assembled and mixed by Steve Roach (his imprints are everywhere) in the Timehouse studios, “Konnektions” is to Jeffrey Koepper what Skeleton Keys is to his good friend Steve Roach. The rhythms, always very poetized, are wrapped up in rich electronic textures with a lot of soundscapes to the opposite contrasts. This connection between the souls and the machines is like a slow procession in cosmos with patterns of rhythms which are quiet and violent, passive and energetic. In fact, they adopt the visions as much of its author as the ears which absorb them with delight."Oracle" hangs onto the last notes of "After Glow", here the 8 tracks of this opus merge in a long mosaic of 71 minutes, with an ambient phase where are shouting these stars which shine with their thousand sound chants. Voices of astral nymphs are joining this sound choir where also flow tears of synth. The bass is shaping some kind of dramatic impetus that will feed the ambiguity of our feelings throughout this delicious processions cosmographical which is “Konnektions”. The introduction of "Pantheon" roams like a beast lying in wait. Sonic hoops pile up and the bass line snores while that, far off, a more musical synth line unwinds the carpet where will parade hopping keys and their glass reflections. The movement remains rather celestial, even if a bass line draws incomplete arcs which form a passive structure of rhythm where are dancing some keys weakened by their crystalline appearances. I hear some Michael Stearns here. Kind of this pastoral procession in Chronos? We are approaching the jewel! After a delicious ambient introduction, where our senses float along the multiple synth layers, the gravitational rhythm of "Trance Electric", the signature of Roach here is omnipresent, makes hear bass sequences which skip in the steps of a long ascending spiral. It's the kind of rhythmic structure which makes dance our hemispheres with these nuances which degrade in the snags of the synchronicity. This is splendid and intensely exhilarating to the ears. And little by little we are heading to what we can easily compared this section of “Konnektions” to Roach's Empetus and lastly to Skeleton Keys. Behind the sonic filaments which deform, the keys make one thousand capers which split the rhythm of "Astral Mechanika" into a long stationary rhythmic skeleton which is forged by kicks, by spasms and by fitful jerks. It's the beginning of a trance monument. The head shakes softly and our fingers are on fire due to drumming of this static storm which risks to stun you. Minimalist, the structure remains not less generous with the additions of multicolored threads, striking strata and electronic chirping which push the violent and passive rhythm of "Astral Mechanika" into long caresses of sound braids and of intrusive bass waves. And trapped like a rebel which refuses the abdication, the movement escapes in order to contract its violence even more which oscillates this time with more serene synth pads. We always stay in the field of static rhythm with "Mercury Circuit" and its  multiple kicks which draw a strange cosmic rodeo. The movements, I would say rather the jolts, of the sequences leave no fraction of a second of freedom for the atmospheres which stand back, while drawing a beautiful cosmic soundscape. We are in the heart of a sequences tempest since 35 minutes and "Among Stars" moderates a little this storm of ambient rhythms which torments “Konnektions” since "Trance Electric" with a structure of rhythm as much boiling as "Mercury Circuit", except that the elements which surround it (astral pads, dark waves, slow circular larvas of synth and other effects of sound camouflage) wrap it up in a clearly more ethereal phase. While we imagine that "Belief" is going to end this last Jeffrey Koepper's album by an ambient finale, it's rather a delicate structure of rhythm which infiltrates our ears by a dance of sequences, and their shadows in tints as much fictionalized than iridescent, which skip in an effect of echo (you know these kinds of sound cannons that Roach built in Traveler and Empetus?), rooting even more this perception than we have literally here a pure jewel of analog EM between the ears. Yes sirs; “Konnektions” is to Jeffrey Koepper what Skeleton Keys is to Steve Roach; an album of a rare intensity which aims to be undoubtedly an inescapable in the chessboard of modern EM.Sylvain Lupari (October 9th, 2015) gutsofdarkness.com & synthsequences.blogspot.ca” - Sylvain Lupari

“Jeffrey Koepper - ARCTISONIA (CD) This is the 7th album since 2003 that Jeffrey Koepper has produced and it encapsulates all he has done into one stunning musical package. From his earliest ETHEREA, an ambient opus of sublime majestic beauty, to SEQUENTARIA that sequential rattled the walls with its multi-timbered sequences and his Live recording RADIATE, which did just that in terms of melody and movement, Jeffrey has done it all very well. Now, ARTISONIA combines it all into one multi-sonic electronic wonderland of tracks. The opener, "Arctic Sunrise", is a shimmering hymn to the dawn of day,  "Ilulissat" and "Snow Sequence" quicken the pulse with their melody and running sequences, "Glacial" and "Greenland" are impressionist soundscapes extraordinaire, filled with their diverse yet complementary undulating layers of melody and ambient tone colors. I'll leave "Avalanche" to your imagination and let you sample the albums other track sampled here for yourself. At this stage I'd have to say Jeffrey is the best America EM artist going. He creates, produces and performs all of the music himself, and his originality clearly shows! For More INFO: JeffreyKoepper.com” - archie patterson

“JEFFREY KOEPPER: Arctisonia (CD on Air Space Records) This release from 2011 offers 73 minutes of frigid electronic music. Delicate auralscapes consist of a plethora of synthesizers producing electronics of a frigid nature. The general mood is one of relaxation. The electronics are crafted to sedate as they mesmerize, with melodic structures of gentle definition tempered by gurgling enhancements. Chords are established, coaxed into infinite sustains, then tinkered with to produce fragile variations in tandem with auxiliary harmonics. Keyboards are utilized to embellish these soundscapes with more melodic characteristics. Riffs are handled in similar fashion to the background tones: patterns are generated and allowed to gradually evolve through variations of tender definition. One track ("Avalanche") is nearly 21 minutes long. This extended duration affords the sonic components ample opportunities to evolve and accrete into a luscious composition of rather spry keyboard riffs with an undercurrent of tenuous (almost ominous) tonalities. Rhythms play only an incidental role in this music, and those that are present are understated and relegated to vantages deep within the sparse mix. These tunes concentrate on a flowing nature that would only be disrupted by locomotion. While this music bears a wintry flourish, the compositions bear evidence of meticulous craftiness as the tunes unfurl, maturing from simple repetitive structures into lush specimens of interweaving cycles.” - matt howarth