Vince Clarke

In the makeshift living room somewhere round the back of the Odeon, Vince has a few home comforts. TV, video, fridge full of cold drinks, and something which says more about his musical standpoint than anything else I can think of. Whereas a guitarist might have a trusty old acoustic propped up against the sofa, Vince has got a small workstation consisting of Mini-Moog, Akai Linn MPC-60 and Roland MC-4 sequencer, handy for those moments of inspiration and last-minute adjustments to the live set. He points enthusiastically to the Akai Linn.

"This is really good. We use this for all the drum sounds live. All the drum sounds on the last album were generated from synths, so I had to regenerate them for the tour. Obviously I couldn't take an ARP 2600 on the road and start messing about with bass drum sounds for every song, and there's lots and lots of percussion sounds, so they were regenerated and sampled into that thing. I must admit it was a real life-saver, it's so simple. You just hit Record, press the pad and it's down. Only 16-bit recording inside, but the resolution's quite high. Eight outs, 32 drum sounds. So it's in my tank!"