The Berlin-based Australian producer shows us around the studio where he made his new album, Escape The Remedies. Stream an exclusive mix from MUUI below.
Roland RE-20
The space machine! It only really does one thing so as long as you’re not wanting a versatile delay this is a nice purchase to have. I feed some sound through it, press record and just play around with the repeat rate and intensity, which creates some nice trippy flutter effects.
I used this a lot on the Escape The Remedies album – its use is quite obvious in tracks like ‘Polkadot Syndrome’ and ‘Desire’. I’ve also used it in the reverb only setting for atmospheric background sounds, sending some pads or strings through it well into the peak level to get out of it a totally mangled sound that with some EQ can fill in a track. I did this in the track ‘Escape The Remedies’.
I also always use this when playing live – you can hear it as the main effect in this recording from earlier this year at Ritter Butzke in Berlin.
Avalon VT747sp Compressor
I usually feed a drum machine or the bassline from the Moog into this and just push everything well into the red. It’s got an EQ also but I usually keep this flat. There’s also a nice sidechain effect where can you select certain frequencies to trigger more or less of the compressor, which I’ll usually play around with a bit for drum tracks.
A past release I used the Avalon quite heavily on is the drum tracks on the Synsyi release, a techno EP on Paranoid Dancer.
I tend to use the Sonnox compressor more than this as in the box can be a lot easier sometimes, but I’m starting to use this more and more.
Dave Smith Prophet 08
This was my second synthesiser I bought after the Virus TI. I had saved up for a synth and did not really know which one to get so I spent a long time trawling the internet to decide what to buy. I don’t really remember why I chose this but it was a great buy. Initially I did not use it much because it was a bit confusing and the small menu was a bit frustrating but over the years spending some time with it and learning more on how to use it and its possibilities I use this a lot now and I love it for basses, pads and leads.
Nothing precise ever comes out of it. Everything is a bit wobbly and dirty, and each sound has a lot of character. This is one machine I can turn on knowing I will get something I can use out of it each time. I’ve done a lot of soundtrack type music with this, a lot of which is unreleased. The bassline and lead line of this track are from the Prophet.
You can hear the Prophet in a lot of these tracks also.
