As you can see, the Reliq sequencer is one deep product with a feature set that clearly can’t be completely covered without spending extensive time with the unit to unearth everything that it’s capable of. In that regard, we reached out to Kyriakos Charalampides, founder of Reliq, to learn more about the sequencer and its development.
FutureMusic: It looks like the Reliq concept grew organically from its original idea…
Charalampides: The first prototype was built purely for ourselves, but when friends and colleagues started visiting our studios, they got really curious. That’s when the project slowly grew — we started experimenting with early hardware ideas together with Michele, and then Zois, who had experience in design and user experience, joined in. Later Giuliano brought his programming experience, and finally Simon from Sim’n Tonic, who was already seasoned technically, started helping more and more with the deeper technical aspects. From there it kept evolving naturally, with each of us shaping it from our own perspective as musicians.
At the beginning of the pandemic we decided to see if we could actually turn it into a production device. It took almost five years from that point — but here we are.
FutureMusic: You said it was developed by a small, independent team of musicians, but it appears to be a very complicated and advanced unit. Are these aforementioned musicians also engineers and programmers? If not, how did the project come together?
Charalampides: For sure, Reliq is a very complex piece of technology. We’re all musicians, but we’d been dabbling in engineering, programming, and industrial design for years — building small DIY instruments, writing our own software synths, experimenting, and learning by doing.
When we committed to Reliq, we had to learn fast, and adapt even faster. That initial naivety actually helped — we kept finding creative ways to solve problems that more experienced engineers and advisors warned would be really challenging.
We’ve learned a huge amount along the way and became much stronger technically. Nowadays, we spend most of our time as engineers and designers, and only occasionally as musicians.
FutureMusic: What was the hardest part of developing the Reliq?
Charalampides: There were challenges at every stage — technical design, software, and UI decisions — but the whole team agrees that the hardest part was the first production run.
Manufacturing is always unpredictable, and in recent years it’s become even more so. Getting every single detail exactly as we designed it required endless effort. We spent an enormous amount of time making sure every component and process met our standards — it truly felt like a never-ending story.
