John Tejada

Photo taken during an XLR8R interview with the artist in his studio.

"Is your current live set-up still all Elektron pieces? Yeah, it is. When I travel, they just have this great bag where you can fit three of them in it. I don’t know if it’s because I’m doing something wrong, but I usually have to squeeze into really tight spaces at gigs."

"I used to have everything quite tied to songs, but now that’s what I'm trying to get away from…the way something starts, or the drum sounds. So now the drum sounds aren’t tied to any of the pieces, so it's quite loose. And like I said, sometimes I’ll bring the Roland and not the Elektron Rytm, so it'll be totally different drums."

Picture taken during an interview with the artist in his home studio.

"The Elektron machines are really special. They take old ideas from the heritage pieces, but they are more forward-thinking. One of my favorite pieces, and it’s actually not in the studio at the moment, is still my Machinedrum. The Elektron pieces are really unique because they are multi-purpose pieces. Like the Analog Four, or Keys—they can do a lot of CV and audio processing, which is quite awesome, but I think the Machindrum still has a huge bit of magic, especially with the live re-sampling."

Directly in focus, on top of the rack.