🎧 James Murphy: Sex & Drugs & Northern Soul (Curious Creatures)

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1. David Greeves speaks with Matt Cox about the live setup of the Chemical Brothers. With all the different synthesisers, samplers, effects, midi clock and computers, he says the heart of it all is the mixing desk.

   The hardware mixer has always been central to the rig, but as more gear has been piled around it, Matt has had to contrive ever more involved means of keeping it all in sync. “Back then [in 1996] it was a 16-channel Mackie [mixer] with a couple of analogue keyboards and a [Roland SH]101, and an [Akai] MPC that was the kind of brain of the whole thing. That grew on the next tour to a few more samplers and a few more keyboards. After that, we started to use [Tascam] DA38 [digital multitrack tape] machines with a little bit of audio printed to them, plus timecode to run the MPC, so that kept the MIDI and audio in time with one another. And then from there it went to [Akai] DR16 hard-disk recorders for playback, again with some audio printed from the Logic file. That drove SMPTE, which drove an MPC, which drove the MIDI gear and held the MIDI and audio elements together.
   https://www.soundonsound.com/people/matt-cox-midi-tech-chemical-brothers

   What I find most interesting are the people behind the scenes who make it all possible. Although Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons make it all happen, this would not be possible without the work of those programming the machines and maintaining everything.

   There’s two of us that set the kit up. I do the programming side of it and Aaron [Cripps, the backline tech] looks after the maintenance side of it. On occasion there are components that need to be swapped out, so out comes the soldering iron.
   https://www.soundonsound.com/people/matt-cox-midi-tech-chemical-brothers

   This leaves me in even more awe of James Murphy doing both roles in the early days of LCD Soundsystem. I wonder if this was the same with The Chemical Brothers in their early days? It also leaves me thinking about artists like Autechre and how technology has made things ‘more doable‘.
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