Eric Hilton

Featured in this July 29, 2021 Instagram post. It formerly belonged to Rick Wakeman of Yes.

Thank you to legendary Rick Wakeman of @yesofficial for parting with your well-traveled Korg Trident. I will put it to good use.

There will indeed be some distinctively prog-rock and 70’s analogue moments on my upcoming LP Ceremony - 8/20/21.

Hashtagged and front and center in this May 13, 2020 Instagram post. A pair can also be seen in this 2020 press photo and Instagram posts dated April 24, 2020 and August 20, 2020.

It’s Wednesday, I think... Probably a good day to make some music . #hofnerbass #tandbergfasett #thieverycorporation #paulweller #sergegainsbourg #janebirkin

Featured in this April 24, 2020 Instagram post. It is also mentioned in this May 15, 2017 Music Radar interview and this December 12, 2018 Oregon Music News interview with bandmate Rob Garza.

This Wurlitzer electric piano has been with Thievery Corporation since 1996. I bought it at @atomicmusic in Beltsville, MD for $225. It has graced Lebanese Blonde, The Richest Man in Babylon and so many of our songs. Yes, it is indeed a secret weapon. #thieverycorporation #wurlitzer

Music Radar

“We are pretty hooked on Pro Tools these days. We used to use Logic, but we like the sound of Pro Tools because it seems a little less dark, and we’re using a lot of UA plug-ins. We have a lot of outboard gear too, a lot of vintage compressors that we use a lot. We use a lot of vintage keys, like a real Wurlitzer keyboard and an old Lowrey organ. For keys, I really like the vintage stuff – we just got a Korg Polysix synth that we’re really into. But we basically stopped engineering our own stuff after our second album, so we rely on an engineer these days.”

Oregon Music News

What’s your favorite gear to use?

I love old synthesizers, old Rolands, Korgs, especially the Roland JP 8000, Moogs, the Korg MS2000 has also been a favorite keyboard. Sometimes it is great to pull out old drum machines and guitars as well. We have used an old Wurlitzer we got from a school auction—that one has been on many records. We sometimes just pull up a lot of random things gear-wise as well.

Featured in this September 21, 2020 Instagram post.

Lately, this 80’s Casiotone has been my secret weapon. It just proves that it does not require expensive gear to make it happen. #casiotone #thieverycorporation #infiniteeverywhere #erichilton #theimpossiblesilence #triphop

Visible in this August 20, 2020 Instagram post.

Visible in this June 18, 2020 Instagram post.

Used for Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi and The Mirror Conspiracy, as stated in this May 15, 2017 Music Radar interview.

Why did you adopt electronic music rather than just using acoustic instruments?

“It’s the power of the sampler … You can sample sounds like kicks and snares, chop up beats and make your own beats. That’s what gave birth to our music from the very get go. We were using an Akai MPC3000 as our main brain when we made our first two records and a couple of other workstations back then, which were keyboards that had samplers built in. Our music was heavily sample based, and that was exciting, and it’s still exciting to use snippets of things and treat them in a certain way.”

What workstation were you using?

“The Ensoniq ASR-10, which was like our tape machine because it had 270 seconds of mono sampling time. When we recorded a vocal, we would record it onto DAT and bounce pieces of it onto the keys of the ASR-10 and then the Akai would trigger the different keys in a sequence. That’s how we taped, which is kind of incredible – we’d store the vocals on floppy discs. The saddest thing is that my ASR-10 start-up disk is broken.”

(...) Did you combine gear with Rob initially?

“We did. Both of us had limited gear, but together it was enough. I think I only had the ASR-10, a turntable and a bunch of records. Rob had the Akai and I can’t remember what we used for monitors at the beginning; it wasn’t anything special. Eventually we bought a pair of the cheapest Tannoys, which we still use today as our main reference monitors because we know and trust them so well. We set up a studio in a friend’s bedroom and used that for a few weeks and made two songs. We hit it off and really liked working together, so we moved into what was, basically, the liquor room of Eighteenth Street Lounge – a club I’d started with some friends. Then we found a studio space right next to the lounge and rented that out for about ten years.”

Used for The Temple of I & I, as stated in this May 15, 2017 Music Radar interview.

“We are pretty hooked on Pro Tools these days. We used to use Logic, but we like the sound of Pro Tools because it seems a little less dark, and we’re using a lot of UA plug-ins. We have a lot of outboard gear too, a lot of vintage compressors that we use a lot. We use a lot of vintage keys, like a real Wurlitzer keyboard and an old Lowrey organ. For keys, I really like the vintage stuff – we just got a Korg Polysix synth that we’re really into. But we basically stopped engineering our own stuff after our second album, so we rely on an engineer these days.”

Used for The Temple of I & I, as stated in this May 15, 2017 Music Radar interview.

At that early stage in Jamaica, did you focus on EQing the recordings in any way, or did you save that for later?

“Not past the basic recording EQ. We didn’t really get into any production down there; we just made sure the drums sounded really good and that we were getting great bass or guitar signals. We didn’t do any fine-tuning, although the console we used down there was the Rupert Neve 5088, which is pretty special and a little better than what we have here.”

Visible in this June 18, 2020 Instagram post. It is specified in this August 27, 2020 Reddit AMA reply that Hilton uses Logic Pro at his home studio.

dr_apeman LogicProX used to feature a demo project from TC, you know?

EricHiltonMusic Yes, that was so cool.

At Montserrat House Studios we're using Pro Tools for TC. I use Logic in my home set-up.

Visible in this June 18, 2020 Instagram post.

Visible in this 2020 press photo.

Hashtagged and visible in this May 13, 2020 Instagram post.

It’s Wednesday, I think... Probably a good day to make some music . #hofnerbass #tandbergfasett #thieverycorporation #paulweller #sergegainsbourg #janebirkin

Used for Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi, as stated by engineer Christopher “Stone” Garrett in this July 28, 2011 Universal Audio interview.

Back to Eric and Rob, so you set up their studio, but how did you end up becoming their engineer?

They had another engineer at the time, and he was using Cakewalk. Their albums before that were recorded onto DAT tapes [laughs]. It was so archaic. For Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi (1997), which was their first effort, they had an Ensoniq ASR-10, Akai MPC3000, and a DAT machine, and that was it. And they had an Alesis MIDIVerb 4. They did the whole record with just the DAT. So I was coming into these guys, and I had worked at the music store, and I was really familiar with all this equipment that was out there, and it was a lot of emerging sort of digital technology at the time. So, I set up a Macintosh system, and sort of rewired their studio.

Featured in this May 19, 2022 Instagram post promoting Lost Dialect and throughout this behind-the-scenes video released on August 1, 2022, starting at 0:05.

#sp1200

Used for Ceremony, as can be seen in this January 6, 2021 Instagram post.

My 3rd solo LP is almost complete!

It is a continuous honor and pleasure to share my music with you. New LP - Spring 2021! Stay tuned & be well...