blanket forts is Mike Esposito, a Chicago, IL based experimental/electronic musician.

Esposito began his musical career as a classical pianist, but was bitten by the electronic music bug during the summer of 1995, which he spent in London. After soaking in the sounds of the jungle underground, as well as live performances by Autechre and other abstract techno pioneers, he returned to his hometown of Boston with a mission. Joining forces in 1996 with Boston's Toneburst Collective, he began a dual career as a jungle DJ and live electronica performer.

By 1999 Esposito had adopted the solo moniker esp for production and performance, injecting his jungle and IDM-influenced beats with a sample-heavy and noisy production style. He also continued to DJ in the Boston area, honing his self-described "manic illbient" style in clubs and on the airwaves, until his 2004 move to Chicago.

In 2007, after frustrations with a increasing downturn in musical output, Esposito stripped his studio down from a wide range of hardware and software to a setup comprised of two Clavia Nord Modular synthesizers and a 5-input mixer. This simplification was the beginning of blanket forts.

blanket forts, as described by Esposito, is in part an attempt to research and develop new rules for composition and performance using modular synthesis. He uses no software other than the Modular Editor to create his music, and records every piece live to to one stereo channel, with no edits. With no outboard effects or sequencers in use, his music is generated and performed solely with the two Modulars.

Esposito maintains that, despite this setup, he is not a Nord purist, or even a modular synthesis purist. Rather, blanket forts is a way for him to pursue his personal philosophy of limitations: "I've realized that for me it's often hard to know where to start making music if my studio is too big and I have too many options at hand. But if I limit myself to a specific set of gear and try to learn it as much as possible, I will usually find myself producing more and more satisfying material. I'm not at all married to the Nord Modular per se; it just happens to be a fascinating piece of equipment for me right now, with the perfect combination of limitations and room to explore."

Indeed, Esposito's output has increased dramatically since launching the blanket forts project in the fall of 2007. The blanket forts discography so far includes the seven-track album "Anhedonia" (which runs continuously as one piece), two singles, "jacked in" and "Cigarettes and Gatorade" (the latter of which clocks in at 22:44), the maxi-single “techne,” a collection of four remixes of the title track, and the mini-album "Akathisia," a collection of seven tracks. Several more tracks were released in 2010 and 2011, and more is always in the works. The entire discography is available for download at blanketforts.bandcamp.com. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.