The Sine Community had the opportunity to interview Girts Ozolins and the team at Erica Synths in Berlin, Germany.
Get an exclusive insight and learn more about the people behind this Latvian Eurorack manufacturer based in Riga. The Erica Synths team is made of visionaries, engineers, musicians and our most important employee – Tuna the cat.
We get to know the individuals from the company and learn more about their expertise and roles and responsibilities whilst producing these amazing synthesizers.
Ģirts Ozolinš - Self proclaimed visionary at Erica Synths, Ģirts’ began his road to the top by soldering together modules for synthesizers in his bedroom. Less than a decade later, his Riga-based firm Erica Synths has become one of the world’s most admired makers of electronic music equipment, supplying gear to Depeche Mode, The Chemical Brothers and other stars.
Moritz Klein - Erica Synths and Moritz Klein have developed a series of educational DIY kits under the brand name mki x es.EDU with one specific goal in mind: to teach people with little-to-no prior experience how to design analog synthesizer circuits from scratch. What you’ll find in the box is not simply meant to be soldered together and then disappear in your rack. Instead, they want to take you through the circuit design process step by step, explaining every choice they've made and how it impacts the finished module.
Jānis Zaharans - Electrical engineer and embedded system programmer at Erica Synths. Jānis is the brains behind the boards. In his role of digital product design and development for both software and hardware he finds his hail through people using the equipment, enjoying it to make music and creating something people enjoy. Janis is enthusiastic about the current collaborations for example with the Dutch company 112dB, developing the effects in some of the hardware products.
Santa Sanika - Customer relations and sales, Santa handles all the payments, dispatch and keeps the lights on at Erica Synths. Any questions or issues from the retail partners relating to the equipment are addressed to Santa.
Leo Novus - A creator of synthesized sculptures for strobe light halls. He works as a support person and is a resident artist, his responsibility is the satisfaction of Erica Synths customers in the long term.
His music can be described as a delicate balance between contemporary urban distopia and primal shamanic ritual - soundscapes and electric dance improvised from leonine gut instinct through the mnemonic link of modular synthesizers.
KODEK - KODEK is perhaps the most progressive representative of the contemporary underground music scene in Latvia. Creating sounds in atypical genres, he operates with current actualities, usually surprising bystanders with his over-modern attitude to the accepted standards.
Producing in aesthetics of some of the heaviest chiptune, to savory synth funk, to his recent fantastic leap into techno, KODEK embodies the energy and excitement that only comes from truly independent music. With his shows he usually challenges listeners to think outside what is seen as ‘normal’ by the conservative sweep of culture. In his live performances and records KODEK is known to drift far away from the well-known and conventional. From 2005 he has been a regular player both on the local stage & abroad - rocking out dance floors from trendy nightclubs to underground heavy metal events. KODEK is also the winner of the best electronic music album 2012 at the Latvian Music Awards for his album “Flavors From The Future”, his latest release being album Hi-Low Aerobics published on Dirty Deal Audio in 2016. At the moment KODEK works as a team rider for “Erica Synths” being an essential part of the structure.
Elīza Āboltina - It's been a journey for Elīza, in her role she is responsible for marketing and artist relations in which she has succeeded by being heavily involved in setting up the Kontraktor live electronic music festival which FACT mag describes; "Riga really reminds of Berlin, but not the Berlin of 2019. It reminds of the the city back in the early 2000s, when the music scene was fractured, dangerous and urgent. It’s an example of a local scene that’s growing quickly and KONTAKTOR is a festival that is amplifying and elevating its community, as well as exposing it to art from outside their frame of reference."
After all these years, Elīza is still a fan of her colleagues and their work. It's been mad exciting and it doesn't stop and the journey just gets more fast paced. The philosophy of the team and values are about the community and the end goal which is music.
Over the last couple of years Erica Synths has been working hard to create Eurorack modules and desktop instruments that make a difference in your workflow, whether for production in the studio, live performances on stage or educational goals in the classroom. They strive to offer the highest possible quality, aesthetics, sound and function.
In the video Girts answers questions on his background, how he got into the music technology industry and what inspired him to start Erica Synths.
We talk about the production of high-quality and innovative products in the eurorack modular scene, and how Erica Synths goes about designing and developing new products. Examples of these are their famous black panels and the new desktop instruments.
Being a Latvian based company we asked how Girts how this influences the brand and how he sees the company grow in the ever evolving music technology industry.
Girts encourages individuals who like to start their own brand to talk to experienced manufacturers around the world, and if other manufacturers reject you, talk to Girts.
