The Tunegirl
The story of Tunegirl, who made her Awakenings debut at 63
On May 17, 2026, Andrea Gill aka The Tunegirl played Awakenings Upclose in Amsterdam. She is 63 years old, performing under the name Tunegirl on a stage that also featured Colin Benders, Dasha Rush, Rødhåd, and Luke Slater. What’s even more surprising is the fact that she still has a regular day job.
Gill is a modular synthesizer artist from Melle, a small town in Lower Saxony, Germany. Her live sets run entirely on hardware — a Eurorack system of 188 modules, no laptop, no pre-arranged sequences. Every performance is improvised in real time through live patching. The sound sits firmly in Detroit-influenced minimal techno and house.
Background
Gill’s relationship with music goes back to the 1970s. She was a fan of AC/DC and Status Quo, learned guitar by ear, and played in a school band. In the early 1980s she worked as a DJ at a local disco, playing disco, funk, and soul records. Her first encounter with synthesizers came through a bandmate’s Yamaha during that period.
By the 1990s she had moved into techno, drawn to the work of Jeff Mills, Robert Hood, Richie Hawtin, Steve Stoll, and K. Hand. She set up a production studio running an Atari computer with Steinberg Cubase, alongside a Roland D-20, a Juno-106, a TR-707, and an Akai S700 sampler. In 1999, she sold the setup and took a ten-year break from music to focus on family.
The return and the shift to modular
Gill returned to music production in 2009, initially working in Propellerhead Reason and Ableton Live. She found the software-based workflow unsatisfying, describing linear track arrangement as a tedious obstacle to creative expression. She started buying hardware again — Elektron units, Korg Volcas, Roland Aira machines — before encountering online videos of techno performed live on Eurorack modular systems.
She had no prior experience with modular synthesis or basic subtractive synthesis. She bought a Eurorack case regardless, spent a year in self-directed study, and built her first functional synthesizer. The modular format solved the problem she had with software: it removed the computer timeline entirely and replaced it with real-time, physical patch generation.
The live setup
Her current system is documented on ModularGrid under the moniker Tunegirl — 188 modules spread across 99 patch configurations, with a 100% positive rating from the community. The setup is designed to run as a complete performance instrument without external computer sequencing. Behringer drum machines handle kick and snare, keeping the heavy transient work outside the rack. Inside the Eurorack, Mutable Instruments Plaits and Rings generate the melodic and mid-range voices, the Intellijel Metropolis handles pitch and sequencing, and Pamela’s PRO Workout drives rhythmic variation and fills.
The approach reflects a deliberate philosophy: a balanced ratio of voices to filters, so each element holds its own space in the mix without blending into noise. The result is a live set that sounds closer to a studio production than most hardware performances.
Superbooth 26 and the Benders collaboration
On May 9, 2026, eight days before the Awakenings show, Gill headlined the closing set of Superbooth 26 on the Strandbühne stage alongside Colin Benders. It was the festival’s 10th anniversary. Benders, a classically trained musician and one of Europe’s most respected live modular performers, formerly led the Kyteman Orchestra. His sets are unplanned and physically intense. Gill’s are structured, deep, and hypnotic. The contrast between the two approaches was a large part of what made the pairing work.
The Awakenings appearance followed a progression that has been building steadily. In March 2026, she performed at Nerdlich XI. The Superbooth slot came in May. Her new EP on Assassin Soldiers Recordings landed the same month. She is now booked for Paradise City in Belgium on June 28, the main Awakenings festival in July, and Awakenings Monegros in Fraga, Spain.
Gill has been part of the modular synthesizer community long before the festival bookings. She participates in ModularGrid forums, helps coordinate meetups at events like Superbooth, and regularly attends the sets of other independent modular artists. During a showcase on the DIY platform Frequency Heaven, she asked viewers to direct any donations to Bat Conservation International rather than herself.
Electronic music has a well-established tendency to treat youth as a prerequisite. Tunegirl is a straightforward counterexample. Gill built her modular practice in her fifties with no background in synthesis, no industry connections, and no shortcut. The Awakenings booking came from the quality of the live sets, the credibility built within the modular community, and a body of recorded work that started gaining traction from 2022 onwards with her remix for Edgar de Ramon on Univack.
She is one of the more technically advanced live modular performers in Europe right now. The fact that she is 63 and still holds a day job is part of the story, but it is not the whole story.
