The Future Sound of London

The Future Sound of London's Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans explain how, in order to emulate the compressed sound of their songs played on the radio, they ran their entire mixes through a Fostex 3070 Compressor:

"Our best tracks were mixed as we went along because the sound basically dictated the mix, and in the case of 'Papua New Guinea' we acquired a compressor and Brian stuck the whole mix through it", says Cobain.

"That was a very dodgy Fostex 3070 that I got from my dad," Dougans recalls. "It seemed to give the track a gel which we played into. As I was mixing it the whole track went through that compressor, and as you know, compressors can cause a real squeeze effect when you put too much through them. So, we were sort of mixing through the compressor but pulling it back — taming it, pushing it, taming it — and that's how it gelled together."

"We were really in love with hearing our music on radio and it didn't happen enough for us," says Cobain. "However, we loved the compression on Kiss FM and Radio One, so our dream was to get the music sounding like that before it hit radio. That's why Brian stuck the whole mix through that compressor, which was something we'd never done before — it gave a certain squashed sound, and by the time that then went back through the Radio One compressors it just sounded like magic. We always say that track came alive on radio, and after that we coined the term 'twice-baked' — in other words, if you overdo the compression and then it goes through the broadcast network it's twice-baked and it just sounds crap; totally mushed. However, with 'Papua New Guinea' it worked really well."

Original article here.

In this photo of The Future Sound Of London's Earthbeat studio from the early 90's, the Moog Minimoog analog synthesizer can be seen sitting on the floor next to a Technics 1210mk2

In a SoundOnSound article from Nov 2006, The Future Sound of London talk about the creation of their song "Papua New Guinea". Garry Cobain talks about the melodies in the track, and mentions using the Roland JX-3P Synthesizer:

""'Papua New Guinea' is a very good example of the way we were working back then," says Cobain. "When you look at that track, the melodic sensibility of it was mine. I wrote, sequenced and played the JX3P top-line synth part live, I did the same for the strings — a one-note pad in the sampler, triggered from the 1040, with each of the chords being three notes worked out and played — and an engineer we were working with also gave me this one-note harp sample, that, basically, could go from C-0 to G-8 right across the keyboard"

The original article can be read here.