Wally Badarou

BADAROU'S COMPASS POINT studio has a full Synclavier system as its centerpiece. Apart from that, there's a Macintosh computer, a DX7, a couple of TX816 modules, a Roland digital piano and two analogue synths: an Oberheim OB8 and a Prophet 600.

'Just like - and for as far back as - "Fisherman", I came up with just the beginning of it, browsing through the features and presets of my newly acquired Sequential Circuits Prophet 600. It didn't mean much to me by then, but having a cassette recorder ready, I taped it just in case.'

What did happen, though, was that he was introduced - in 1979 - to Robin Scott, who was preparing the recording of M's single 'Pop Musik'. Badarou put a newly acquired Korg 800DV synthesiser to good use ("it was a pretty neat machine - most of the synth sounds on the single are from it"), and when 'Pop Musik' became an immense international hit, it gave him his ticket to the international music scene.

BADAROU'S COMPASS POINT studio has a full Synclavier system as its centerpiece. Apart from that, there's a Macintosh computer, a DX7, a couple of TX816 modules, a Roland digital piano and two analogue synths: an Oberheim OB8 and a Prophet 600.

BADAROU'S COMPASS POINT studio has a full Synclavier system as its centerpiece. Apart from that, there's a Macintosh computer, a DX7, a couple of TX816 modules, a Roland digital piano and two analogue synths: an Oberheim OB8 and a Prophet 600.

"Mark and I usually start out spending time writing songs, and then we go into choosing synth sounds, setting tempos and writing sequences. On the synth side we work mainly on the DX7 and the TX racks, and there's also a couple of Roland machines like the Juno 6. The whole band joins in the pre-production, but Mark and I are more involved on the technology side, so we probably have a more predominant influence over the way things are going to be recorded in the studio."

'Once back there, I did not stop shuttling between studio A & B, carving Prophet 5 synthesizer tracks to almost everything that was recorded at Compass Point that year, and the following years, to the point where I finally got nicknamed "Prophet".'