Playground magazine

You are playing at this year's Sonar Festival. What can we expect of your show? You’re playing with Ango, right?

The live show is one of the more ambitious things I’ve taken on… I decided early on I didn’t want to use a laptop live and reverse-engineered it from there. So it’s the two of us, two drum machines, too many synthesizers and effect pedals. It’s fun!

I've read you like to bring a lot of your studio gear onto the stage. Is it going to be like this or have you prepared a more “simplified” version of the live set for when you're touring?

For better or for worse, I am bringing a lot of my own stuff, yeah. I don’t want to compromise the presentation of my stuff. We blew up two power supplies when we played Fabric in London in the fall, but we have since fixed that problem (hopefully). I don’t NEED to do this live set, it’s something I want to do, so if I’m going to go through the pain of rehearsing for weeks and all this stuff, I’m not going to simplify it or compromise it anytime soon.

Can you briefly explain the configuration of your studio nowadays? Do you only use hardware or also software?

It’s a mix of the two. Every song I make starts on hardware, just because it’s easier and more fun to ‘play’ music as opposed to ‘program’ it, I guess. As you spend more time with the equipment you have, it sinks into your pores and just becomes second nature.

Do you consider yourself a vintage gear freak? What is your favourite piece of equipment in your studio right now? On the other hand, is there any “object of desire” you still haven't been able to get?

I don’t know if I’d go as far as a ‘freak’. I used to be, kind of. I do love synthesizers and musical instruments in general, they are all fascinating, but they only get really interesting once you know them well and know your way around them, so I’ve mostly stopped buying gear in order to just get more and more comfortable with what I have. My favourite thing in the studio is a close tie between my Roland TB-303 and a Eurorack modular synthesizer that I put together a couple years ago; the two are almost constantly on and manage to creep their way into my tracks more often than they probably should. As far as an object of desire goes, one day I will have a Yamaha CS-80, one day.

What are your immediate future plans? Music and non-music wise.

Getting ready for this European live tour, working in the studio and figuring out a way to become drinking buddies with celebrity holograms.