EX.724 Max Richter

"The first time I heard a Moog, it blew my mind." The esteemed neoclassical composer talks about his long standing love of synthesisers and his forthcoming album, In A Landscape. German-born British composer Max Richter has led the vanguard for post-minimalist classical music. His work has soundtracked major film and TV, ballets, runway shows and exhibitions globally. He also gained recognition for Sleep—an eight-and-a-half-hour-long concept album written around the neuroscience of the sleeping brain—which he's performed regularly to crowds of sleeping people, including at Berlin venue Kraftwerk. While Richter has garnered widespread acclaim for his classical compositions, his original source of inspiration was electronic music. In this Exchange, recorded at his home and studio in Oxford, England, he recalled discovering Kraftwerk while watching a travel show as a teenager. He quickly began designing and building his own synthesisers after that, enamoured by the sound of the filter on the Moog, which remains one of his favourite instruments and go-to tools. Richter, who went through rigorous classical training, rejected the genre's orthodoxy, inaccessibility and view of the "composer as master." His work challenges the conventions around this school of music, appealing to a broader audience through his deconstructed compositional style, which he continues to explore in his forthcoming album, In A Landscape, out on September 6th. Listen to the episode in full.