Why did Zurich's synth scene go quiet?
For most of the 2010s, the Zurich Modular Festival was the anchor event for Switzerland's hardware synth heads, the one weekend a year when modular builders, boutique manufacturers and touring performers all showed up in the same room. It folded around 2018-2019, and nothing replaced it. Zurich kept its club scene and its share of Swiss producers, but the dedicated synth-and-gear circuit that Berlin (Superbooth), London and increasingly Utrecht kept building went quiet here. A gap that long matters: distributors stop budgeting a Zurich stop, manufacturers stop flying reps in, and a scene that isn't fed in person shrinks.
What's actually happening at Dynamo this weekend?
LoopNBeat, the local music collective behind MODULA 26, is filling that gap with a two-day expo at Dynamo (Wasserwerkstrasse 21) on July 17 and 18. More than 20 exhibitors are on the floor, among them 1010music, ASM, Bitwig, Dnipro Modular, Endorphin.es, Koma Elektronik, Moog, Novation, Oberheim, Polyend, Sequential and Teenage Engineering, the kind of lineup that used to define the old festival. Alongside the exhibition hall, the event runs hands-on workshops on ASM's synths, the Morphor Echon 6, Polyend's gear and the Sequential Four, plus soldering and MIDI-controller sessions, before the room turns into a club running until 4am both nights.
Who's playing, and why does the lineup matter?
Live sets come from Julia Bondar, Die Trepanation, Passpartout Duo and others, spread across stages that move from techno through ambient into more experimental territory, a booking spread that mirrors the gear on the floor rather than chasing a single genre. Tickets run CHF 25 for one day or CHF 39 for both, with a student rate, deliberately priced for the hobbyists and bedroom producers the old festival used to pull in as much as the industry crowd.
