UNKLE

Steve: “Ableton is god and all the tempos are coming from that. Basically, in Logic, Ableton, and pretty much all of the DAWs, the MIDI clock source is a bit unreliable. So this is a pretty new bit of kit.

“You have a little plugin in your DAW that allows the Multiclock to know what BPM it’s using. Then it spits out four MIDI clocks, so the two DJ samplers and the analogue synth are clocked to Ableton and when the BPM changes within Ableton the samplers change BPM as well. Then I’m using a Moogerfooger analogue delay and an RV-5 digital reverb for additional effects.”

"We just did a tour of Asia and Australia," reveals File, "and James has a residency at [London club] Fabric. We may cut stuff up bar-by-bar and add percussion and sounds, which we can mute in and out when we're playing live. For instance, in 'Tomorrow Never Knows' by The Beatles, only the first two bars are instrumental, so we work a lot with those two bars, and loop them for quite a while with extra percussion. When you're in a club you can't go straight into songs, you need to give people a groove and take them into the songs slowly. We also take Zip disks of sounds with us, and all our effects, like reverb and so on, come through the KAOSS Pad."

File and Lavelle set up their studio in East London and called it Dos-Shot. File continued his work with his acoustic guitar and MPC2000 programming techniques, while Lavelle continued to contribute samples and conceptual ideas. The studio's Pro Tools rig was a then-top-of-the-range Mac-based TDM system, and in addition to the MPC2000 they retained an Emu 64000, and also had a Korg MS2000 and MS20. Meanwhile, says File, "mates would bring in loads of things. Pro Tools was the hub of everything, and we had every plug-in available going. On the Atari everything was in MIDI, which is great for beats and samples. But working with audio in Tools gave me so many options, I couldn't believe it."

Visible on stage in some live pictures

james lavelle cites the Roland TR808 at 0:15mn as one of its first gear

Steve: “For this set, I’m using some Juno sounds and an organ sound from the System-8. The Akai MPD32 is a MIDI controller that’s hooked up to Ableton. It’s got some white noise samples and a few from the UNKLE track Heaven, so the way I’ve got the filters set up in Ableton I can get some toned white noise effects.

Steve: “We’re running the Ableton Push just to trigger off some clips. The MIDI Fighter is from a San Francisco company. It’s got 16 rotary encoders, but they’ve got push buttons as well. It works with anything, and I’ve MIDI mapped it in Ableton to do whatever I want it to do. Again, cut-offs, reverbs, delays or even volumes for fading drum loops in or out.”

Steve: “We’re running the Ableton Push just to trigger off some clips. The MIDI Fighter is from a San Francisco company. It’s got 16 rotary encoders, but they’ve got push buttons as well. It works with anything, and I’ve MIDI mapped it in Ableton to do whatever I want it to do. Again, cut-offs, reverbs, delays or even volumes for fading drum loops in or out.”

A lot of the pre-editing is now done in File's Apple laptop with Digidesign's M Box and Pro Tools LE, "which is 24-track and as much as I need. After which we'll go into the Strongroom to spend two days finishing off there. We stick the mixes on CD-R, while many of our samples will be coming off the MPC2000."