Live session
Nene H
Nene H is a Turkish-Azerbaijani producer, DJ, and live artist based in Berlin. Her work moves between dance floors, long-form improvisation, composition, and performances that remain open to change. Across these different settings, instinct and precision continually meet.
Image by Julien Tell
In May of 2026, we met her at ikii in Berlin to record a live session built around the modular system at the center of her current practice.
Today, we release the session alongside her second contribution to Sounds, the aptly named modular sample pack. One presents the instrument in motion. The other freezes its output into raw material for someone else to reshape.
An instrument with its own personality
On stage, Nene H works entirely with hardware. There is no computer, timecode, or material prepared in advance. The modular system is not simply a collection of sound sources, but an instrument she has shaped through years of playing.
“My live set is 100% hardware, no computer, no timecode, nothing pre-recorded, so this system is the thing I have spent the most time with out of anything I own. It has its own personality by now.”
The live session at ikii offers a view into that relationship. Rather than following a fixed arrangement, the performance is shaped through the system as it moves, with patterns generated, captured, and transformed in the moment.
The pack comes from the same familiarity. “It’s 74 samples from my modular system, the actual one I play live with, not something I built for the occasion,” she explains.
Captured during a single day in the studio, the pack documents the system as it sounded in that moment.
“There is no big concept on top of it,” she says. “It’s an instrument I know well, recorded honestly, and then given away.”
Inside the system
The voices came from a Make Noise DPO, Synthesis Technology Cloud Terrarium, Erica Synths Bass VCO, and Noise Engineering Basimilus. These were summed through an Intellijel Mixup and sequenced using a T1 and Make Noise René 2.
René’s grid-based sequencing plays an important role in the character of the material. Rather than moving through a sequence as a straight line from beginning to end, it can travel around the grid in different directions. Patterns emerge in orders that would be difficult to arrive at by writing every step individually.
The resulting sounds carry structure without feeling fixed. Sequences wander, interrupt themselves, and find shapes somewhere between intention and accident.
Everything was recorded dry.
“No golden master, no S4 processing, nothing on top,” Nene H says. “I wanted people to get the system itself and do their own thing to it.”
For anyone interested in recreating or adapting the setup, Nene H has also shared her patch notes.
One system, several forms
Her forthcoming EP, Seltsame Fabeln, was built in part from recordings of the system. Its presence in the sessions is direct enough that individual channels are named after the modules that produced them.
The same exchange runs through her live process. She records the system, samples it, and plays the material again. Synthesis, recording, sampling, and performance become parts of a continuous cycle.
The live session, EP, and pack each capture a different point in that process. One stays in the moment, one becomes a finished record, and one remains deliberately unresolved.
Nene H describes the pack as “raw, buzzy, a bit lost, glassy.” There is nastiness in it, but also melancholia.
“I think people will be able to hear it from the samples,” she says. “It’s just the known effort to not make it sound like sounds you can make with any synth. I want it to be raw and different.”
When asked how she hopes other musicians will use the sounds, her answer is even more direct:
“Disrespect them.”
About Nene H
Nene H is a Turkish-Azerbaijani producer, DJ, and live artist based in Berlin. A conservatory-trained pianist, her work moves between club music, improvisation, composition, and collaborative performance.
Her catalog spans Standard Deviation, Intrepid Skin, Live From Earth, Incienso, and UMAY. Her albums include Ali علي and Second Skin. Her forthcoming EP, Seltsame Fabeln, arrives October 16, 2026 on UMAY, led by the single “War das ein Traum.”
Her previous contribution to Sounds, prepared piano & improvised structures, explored another instrument central to her practice.
