Meat Beat Manifesto

"We've got an RY30, but we never use it to program beats. We might use the bass drum off it, or the tambourines, but that's all - just to add to a loop, to beef it up. "

""We always over-compress the drums, to get that kind of sucking effect, and we use this really simple 1-dial unit, the dbx 118. That's brilliant, it's just up/down, fast/slow. If you over-compress it gives such a warmth. I've used it right across a few mixes - including a Shamen remix. Micky Mann, who does our sound, has also worked with The Shamen, and they picked up on the same effect. The rate of compression we've always used, and still do, really appealed to him, and it's just this dbx - such a good unit, it kills anything."

"Then I added synth from the studio’s Roland JX-3P. And the vocal hiccup sound was a bit of trapped audio in the Neve AMS. Every ’80s studio seemed to have one."

"This was the first single. It’s all about being paranoid. The drum machine was the [Roland TR] 606, I think. I’d use the percussion and distort it. It was a sound that would fill out the track."

"“There’s so much new stuff, you can’t keep up with it all. All the software, it’s impossible. So, I’m definitely more of a vintage person, but I’ve been using logic since it came out, and I’m pretty good at using that program with some Elektron things like the Machine Drum and Analog Four."

"This one is based around the Kawai R-100 drum machine, triggering the gate. It’s basically all Kawai, and me doing stuff through the noise gate, and the odd sample here and there, with my vocals and some sax."

"Out of the studio and on to the stage, the emphasis falls on sampling. A fully-expanded Akai S1000 does most of the hard work (Dangers calls it "the brain") in conjunction with a pair of Octapads. Additionally there's a Korg M1, a Yamaha RX5 for certain drum duties, and a Roland MC500 MkII sequencer."

"Out of the studio and on to the stage, the emphasis falls on sampling. A fully-expanded Akai S1000 does most of the hard work (Dangers calls it "the brain") in conjunction with a pair of Octapads. Additionally there's a Korg M1, a Yamaha RX5 for certain drum duties, and a Roland MC500 MkII sequencer."

"Out of the studio and on to the stage, the emphasis falls on sampling. A fully-expanded Akai S1000 does most of the hard work (Dangers calls it "the brain") in conjunction with a pair of Octapads. Additionally there's a Korg M1, a Yamaha RX5 for certain drum duties, and a Roland MC500 MkII sequencer."

"We bought the first 12-bit Emax, and you can go down so low on it, the quality is like a photocopy. It gives it that graininess, a quality you can get from no other sampler. You can go down all the way on the Akai, and the quality is nowhere near as grainy as the Emax. So photocopying, imaging and repetition - it's the same as looping a sample. And you're taking it from a commercially available source."

Can be clearly seen at 4:26 in the video. All the synths you can see are from Jack Dangers' personal collection.

Appears from 4:55 in the video. This particular System 100m was originally owned by the Human League.

Visible from 4:04 in the video.

“Because it’s based around Ableton Live, all the music is on different tracks, so you can mute things like that or send them to effects."

"Yeah, it’s the equipment we use as well, like the EMS, the Synthi ATS and the Synthi 100 has a sound which I suppose gives a British sound because it was in the year that British synthesizer / modular manufacturers back then would just support bands to use their gear through the years."

"There’s so much new stuff, you can’t keep up with it all. All the software, it’s impossible. So, I’m definitely more of a vintage person, but I’ve been using Logic since it came out, and I’m pretty good at using that program with some Elektron things like the Machine Drum and Analog Four."

"The vocals on this are going through the Roland VP-330 Vocoder, which was a rackmounted version they had in the studio we used in Yorkshire called The Slaughterhouse. It really added something."

"Then I added synth from the studio’s Roland JX-3P. And the vocal hiccup sound was a bit of trapped audio in the Neve AMS. Every ’80s studio seemed to have one."

"Out of the studio and on to the stage, the emphasis falls on sampling. A fully-expanded Akai S1000 does most of the hard work (Dangers calls it "the brain") in conjunction with a pair of Octapads. Additionally there's a Korg M1, a Yamaha RX5 for certain drum duties, and a Roland MC500 MkII sequencer."

"Out of the studio and on to the stage, the emphasis falls on sampling. A fully-expanded Akai S1000 does most of the hard work (Dangers calls it "the brain") in conjunction with a pair of Octapads. Additionally there's a Korg M1, a Yamaha RX5 for certain drum duties, and a Roland MC500 MkII sequencer."

"We've got a digital synthesiser, the Korg Wavestation, but we don't really listen to it. There are obviously more permutations to what you can do with something like a Wavestation, but if you're working in real time it's not so user-friendly."

"We spent a day learning how to use the Wavestation," says Jonny, "and we've never actually used one of the sounds. "

"We tend to start with bass sounds - analogue synths, or the really good dub bass you can get with this Aria Pro II..." He reaches for a living, breathing guitar.

Appears from 0:05 in the video

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Appears from 0:45 in the video

Appears from 0:45 in the video

Appears from 1:22 in the video

Appears from 1:22 in the video

Appears from 2:05 in the video