Strip Steve

«This one was offered to me by a promoter I became close with. It took me a while to get into it I must say – probably because I didn’t pick it personally, when I come to think of it – but once I did I became a bit obsessed with it. It can be CV linked with the rimshot of certain drum machines (like the 707 or 909) to play a pattern of notes you programmed into the synth. It’s so much fun to jam like that. That’s how I did the remix for Surkin and Bobmo’s ‘Harry’, live recorded in one take with just the original loop playing in the back, a bit of arrangement afterwards, but it was wrapped in just a couple of hours and I think you can totally feel it when you hear it, which is something I love. You’ll notice that I’m generally pretty fond of the Roland brand»

«This drum machine is kind of a big deal for me. It had a huge role in a lot of tracks that made me love house and techno. Back then I thought those guys making beats like that were wizards – Paul Johnson, to name one that has recognisable shuffly beats – and for the first two years I was trying to recreate those beats manually by moving little slices of sounds on an audio channel. Ha! One day while touring in Japan I went to that famous synth store in Tokyo called FiveG, I switched on a 909 and made a beat in two minutes. It sounded so special, full of life and violence, like all those tracks I adored… It even made me blush to realise I had this power in my hands, and from that day on I started seeing my heroes as talented artists, and not as wizards full of unexplained magical powers ahaha. I tried many of the clones that are on the market, and even if they all have interesting sounding features it’s the only old drum machine where I find no clone to be remotely close to the power and personality of the original. I like how the sounds phase and naturally compress themselves when played on top of each other with different velocity. If you recorded each output separately and played back the whole beat on your computer it would have an entirely different feeling. I recorded a lot of jams like that, just playing with the decay, muting and fading the different sounds. Maybe one day I’ll release an EP made only like »

«They’re not especially good. They tend to over-emphasise bass and they’re not especially precise, but they’re the ones I got after making my first two EPs on a hi-fi system, so it was already a good step up for me! I’ve been thinking of getting good monitors for a year now, like Genelecs or those new Neumann, but it’s an investment I always have trouble making when I start thinking about what synths or drum machines I could get with the same money… Also, I always said to myself I should get proper acoustic treatment first to get the most out of good speakers, which I didn’t do yet, so… yeah, I might stick with these for a bit as I’m used to them»

«The Juno is the very first synth I bought after getting my first gig paycheck in 2007. It’s still my favourite, a great workhorse which taught me the hands-on basics of synthesis. Every time I turn it on I know it’s gonna be fun and easy»

«I got the DX7 about three years ago maybe. It’s pretty cheap (they produced a lot of them back then) and a lot of its presets are used in classic songs that I love, whether it’s house, funk, new jack swing or pop in general. It’s very heavily used – if I played you a couple of notes it’d bring so many songs to mind. So yeah, I bought it originally for its ‘classic’ sounds, not really to fuck with it – it’s notoriously known for being a pain to program – but then I discovered FM synthesis is actually super interesting and weird compared to analogue»

«I worked for years on the classic Sony MDR headphones, but after they broke I started comparing with other pairs and I found these, which for me are amazing. They are really precise, clearer both in the high and low end than a lot of other headphones in my opinion, so I wouldn’t need to turn them up as loud as other headphones when I mix»

«This is a clone of the famous TB-303, the acid machine. It’s about a quarter of the real 303 price and to me the best sounding clone there is on the market. You can buy the separate components and build it yourself, but it can be tricky to tune certain parameters so I chose to buy it already made by a guy that looked like he knew what he was doing. He named it ‘The Beast’ and engraved it on, so that’s obviously why I chose to name the acid track I made for the BNR compilation like that… I must have done half a dozen unreleased tracks with the x0xb0x synced with my 707 alone, but nowadays I try to include it in more surprising ways than just retro acid house tools…»

«In this photo you can also see the Alesis 3630 compressor and the Ensoniq DP/4 multi effects processor: both very cheap racks that can have very drastic and creative effects. I regularly patch sounds through the DP/4 to find a sort of colour or atmosphere to set the track in. What’s great is that you can chain the effects in any order you want within the unit, like flange a reversed reverb that would then go through a distorted envelope filter, or the opposite. If I do an all-hardware live show one day this rack will definitely play a big role»