Week 5 - The Modular Cowboy

Some nights feel like a dream you only half-remember—the kind where everything is strange but somehow makes perfect sense. That was The Modular Cowboy.

Ryan Hsu showed up in a cowboy hat and patched into the void with his modular synth rig, and from that moment on, reality bent. Cables became lariats. Time drifted. We floated between vast ambient washes and moments that felt like riding a solar storm bareback.

Kassem Williams brought a jazz touch to the drums—sensitive, responsive, full of breath and restraint. Joseph Dowdy was in full interdimensional translator mode, sculpting sound with soprano, alto, and tenor sax, flute, and effects. Alexander Nelson layered harmonic color and beautiful instability on guitar, and I (John Daniel Ray) kept the ground unstable with bass, synths, and code.

We didn’t talk about where we were going. We just rode into the desert night and let the landscape shape itself around us.

This session is for anyone who’s ever stared into the blinking lights of a modular system and wondered whether it was blinking back.