Mordax Systems

Founded by Brandon Fessler and Taylor Gehrts, Mordax is the culmination of the two’s life-long exploration into music and sound.

Since 1999 Brandon and Taylor have been producing and performing electronic music with a number of collaborative and solo projects, working in a variety of styles and playing clubs, festivals, and art spaces around the globe. Current music projects are Mori for electro-acoustic and ambient compositions, Fessler + Gehrts for their dub-techno output, and Arohan, Taylor’s solo techno and house project.

Brandon and Taylor first become interested in circuitry out of necessity, repairing their aging analog synthesizers, and then moved to making small circuits to aid in music production. The two had been creating custom digital tools in the Native Instruments program Reaktor since 2001, but had always found the use of the computer in performance to be less inspiring than using dedicated hardware, though the power and freedom of custom design in Reaktor kept them coming back to the computer over the years.

As they continued to experiment with building circuits, they eventually began working with digital electronics and microcontrollers, realizing that with these methods they could finally get their Reaktor creations “out of the box”, infusing them with analog circuits and making custom systems as dedicated hardware. From this revelation Mordax was born, with the aim to create new, expressive tools for sound design and music performance, and share these tools with the electronic music community.