Ben from
Galactic writes
"my band played a show with Chemical Brothers, and I took some shots of the gear".
And here they are (click on the pics for big versions). Nice to see them keeping it old-school, with a very battered MPC3000, a knackered Octave Cat, two Akai S5000 samplers (complete with Zip Drive!), and everything covered in little coloured stickers so they know what to do.
It's a very long way from
Daft Punk's Pyramid, which contains almost nothing but computers, controllers and copies of Ableton Live. There's
another shot here.
Ben from Galactic writes "my band played a show with Chemical Brothers, and I took some shots of the gear".
And here they are (click on the pics for big versions). Nice to see them keeping it old-school, with a very battered MPC3000, a knackered Octave Cat, two Akai S5000 samplers (complete with Zip Drive!), and everything covered in little coloured stickers so they know what to do.
It's a very long way from Daft Punk's Pyramid, which contains almost nothing but computers, controllers and copies of Ableton Live. There's another shot here.
One piece of gear that the photographer desperately needs - a tripod!
ReplyDeleteThe Jupiter 8 seems to have been replace with a DSI Polyevolver in the linked picture.
ReplyDeletewhat's with the three keys cut off in the first photo?
ReplyDeleteI think that there be a Jaz drive, not a Zip.
ReplyDeleteDoes that mean their not faking it anymore? Doubt it. They turn on the gear, get some lights flashing and a tech off stage hits 'play' on the DAT. I've heard almost all SONY artists are doing this.
ReplyDelete'decrepitude'
I've seen some of their shows and had the pleasure to meet them. What their show consist of is some of the vocals (duh), synth noises, and drums are on the akai 5000's. The MPC3000 sequences the show (not someone off stage pressing "play"), which Tom controls along with a mixing board. All those synths do get used, so there is a decent amount of improvisation to their shows. If you listen to a few of their live shows, you will begin to hear the variations right away. First of all, the samples they use come in separate tracks, which run through effects, so they can strip down a track to drums, add reverb/echo to it and so on. There are a couple of youtube videos which show them rehearsing for the show, in which you hear them testing each track. Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me remember how to find the video of it. Anyway, if you do have a copy of one of their live shows or have seen them live here's the breakdown of a few of the things they do live, this is not 100%, but the best I have from watching the show, reading articles, and other detective work:
ReplyDeleteNord Modular: Used on Don't Fight Control (the primal scream cover): you can pretty much find it by the crazy noise near the end of the song, sort of an LFO induced arpeggio.
Roland Jupiter 6: Used on Sunshine Underground mainly, also used on Surface to Air in '05.
Roland Octapad: Triggers samples, used in the majority of songs.
Octave Cat: Used on Block Rockin Beats. The keys were probably broken because they've been using this synth at every show and a roadie is bound to drop something.
Korg MS-10: Yeah, they haven't started using the DS-10 game yet. This is used between the end of the show and the encore, creating a heavy booming noise.
Elektron Machinedrum: Used on Galvanize, All Rights Reversed, Star Guitar, and a really heavy bit-crushed "boom-boom" noise during the middle of believe.
Roland Juno-106: Their first synth, they've only used it for the riff on Hey Boy Hey Girl (and occasionally you hear the typical old Juno problems occurring) as well as running it through a distortion pedal for Chemical Beats, sounds pretty amazing at the end of the show before the encore, almost like someone (Tom)is bashing an electric guitar.
Elektron Monomachine: The center-piece of Saturate, which they say the song was pretty much made by this machine. They add a theremin-like effect.
Future Retro 777: This thing is used heavily on the tracks Do It Again and Under The Influence, giving both a good distorted riff, impossible to miss on the tracks
DSI Poly-Evolver: Mainly used on Das Spiegel and A Modern Midnight Conversation for some arpeggios.
Octave Kitten: Tom plays a solo at the very end of the show in which he climbs up one of the rigs and starts tweaking this thing. It's technically broken, almost like they spilled some coffee on it and somehow the lfo tweaks everything. It'll definitely make you want for spend the money on a Kitten and break it.
oh a MS-10. I've got one of those (inside my Nintendo DS!!!)
ReplyDeletesurprising that they still carry all that gear around... real 90s mystique
ReplyDeleteTha Akai S5000 is wrong, these a s6000's
ReplyDeletethe left one is almost same as my setup.
ReplyDeletei realize that putting some breaks into "external input" on my MS-20 sounds like CB
meh i mean "right one". the filter of MS makes really wild big beat.
ReplyDeleteThose are Akai S6000's, not 5000's BTW.
ReplyDeleteI apologise for the anal retention ;o)
oh. i hate porns. haha. because it make me hot
ReplyDeleteThanks for all these infos Biff. I didn't know you knew so much :p The Juno is used on many other tracks too. The bass of Out of Control, the big droping bass at the beginning of Under the influence for example.
ReplyDeleteI think I was at this very concert where Galactic+Chemicals performed on the same stage: NUKE Festival in Austria, Europe. Great show, I love Galactic and of course the Chemicals, too. I was the balancing engineer for a radio station and recorded Galactic, unfortunately we had no rights for the Chemicals, so my OB Van had to be dark and silent. What I learned from the Monitor Guy on stage was that they delivered 8 stereo channels to the board and that most of the sounds do come live from the modules(premixed into "stems") so they are able to do manual filter sweeps and envelope tweaking. Sequencing is of course essential, otherwise they couldn't make the visuals work in sync with the audio.
ReplyDeletewhat are the dots on the pads and keys for?
ReplyDeletethe stickers are used to remind me of the different notes used in various arpeggios which the mono poly plays
ReplyDeleteA problem I've been trying to solve is how to send patch changes to all that gear at once? I'm trying to figure out a way to do that. Maybe CB has the solution I've been looking for. My live rig consists of three synths so far and I have to change the patches on each individually between songs. I'm going to start adding other gear soon, and it will get complicated. Any ideas?
ReplyDeleteChange patches with midi... thats what PC is for :) In the old days we ran a few "empty" bars of tunes that had the sysex and program change midi messages rather then note data. Works a treat!
ReplyDeleteSorry did he just say 'Don't Fight Control'? A Primal scream cover? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha, what a weapon...
ReplyDelete