Starsky Carr – Starry Racks

1. Favourite knob or fader or switch on a piece of gear and why?

Midimini by Studio Electronics

That’s not something I’ve thought of before. I definitely have a least favourite and that’s the alpha dial on my Juno 2. But if I were to pick one it would be the very retro switches on the Thermionic Culture Vulture and especially the MIDIMini V30. In the US switches turn on when you flick them up, unlike most that turn on when you switch them down. Flicking them up reminds me of old Sci-Fi movies so for a brief moment I feel like an astronaut.

Midimini by Studio Electronics Switches

2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?

For what it does you can’t beat the Minimoog. I know it’s a cliche but there’s a reason it’s such a classic.  I have the 2016 reissue, and when I first used it I was taken aback by how much the experience of interacting with the interface influences your behavior.  If your first few years with a synth were trying to program the Juno 2 and navigating Roland’s 90’s digital interfaces on tiny screens, a big old simple analogue is a revelation.  You spend much more time sculpting tones, and it’s so self explanatory there’s no need for presets. It’s instant gratification, but more modulation options would improve it. I have recently purchased an AJH Synth MiniMod Keyz, and that takes the Minimoog to a whole new level. It’s not as instant, but there are new worlds to explore. A bit like a Minimoog and Odyssey combined in a modular setting. Wonderful!

Arp Odyssey and AXXE

3. What setup do you bring on holiday or tour or commute etc.?

It very much depends on what I’m doing at the time. Last year I took the Polyend Play with me on a few trips, and this year I’ve been playing with the Sonicware ELZ_1 Play. It has to be something I can produce more than a single tone at a time and something I can run on batteries. I did try doing stuff on my a few years ago iPad, but it soon got confusing and too technical to be anything but frustrating, although there are some amazing apps like the Animoog

4. What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?

I love Arturia Pigments, which would be nice as hardware. I guess Waldorf Iridium is the closest as a physical instrument. Mainly though I think most well designed software works well precisely because its software, and a good piece of hardware works because of the physical interface, as software it would most likely be underwhelming. But if I had to choose, a Pigments synth and Iridium in software…. But then they’re almost the same thing!

Waldorf Iridium and the gang

5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?

Roland Jupiter 4

I sold a Jupiter 4 and System 100 to a guy for £100 each on the same day. I was living in an apartment with no heating and he turned up in a Range Rover! Needs must and I needed synths that I could control via MIDI. In the days before DAWs when you were running 48 tracks live and using SMPTE to sync to 8-track tape, anything to make life easier was essential. I put the proceeds toward a BassStation Supernova which paid its dues for years. At the time it was the smart move, so I guess I can’t regret it too much, but everyone has a war story of selling classics for peanuts. Maybe I regret replacing the Jupiter 4 a few months ago. My younger self would be pulling his hair out at the price I paid!

Korg Polysix

6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?

Oberheim OB-X8

There’s been so many over the years.  The Akai S950 and S3000 were integral before software replaced them. I hammered the life out of them, as well as the Supernova. But after selling most of my typical “90’s collection” and going almost fully in the box for a couple of years, I started buying hardware again. Each piece has its moment. The Prophet 08 was a source of constant inspiration, but was replaced by the Prophet 6 and OB6. They couldn’t compete in terms of modulation options which is when I started getting into some modular pieces.  The reason I’ve ended up with such an assortment is so I can move regularly from one to another to avoid falling into the same routine.

Analog Solutions FuseBoxx and MoogerFoogers

7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?

If I had absolutely nothing the first thing would obviously be a computer. The studio I built in the 90s will have cost around £40k, which would be around £94k in today’s terms. Now you can have the same with a cheap PC, Roland Cloud and a couple of other subscriptions. It’s unbelievable really.  So for hardware, I’d start with something that can take you to places you can’t go with a DAW. I’d probably go with something wild like the PWM Malevolent that’s so good at delivering those little sonic hiccups and dirt. It’s another texture that you’re not going to get from software. Be warned, it’s a dangerously addictive gateway drug into eurorack and hardware.

Analog Solutions Ample

8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without?

I would’ve said my Juno 2, but after picking up the Retroakctiv MPG50 controller it’s morphed into the perfect 80s/90s machine.  The Virus TI took that spot for a while. It was so good that I used loads of instances on every track, but the latency was infuriating. Now my biggest nemesis is cabling. You can’t live without it but it causes so much grief, especially when like me you move stuff around a lot. Today for example, I found a couple of things that need attention on my Odyssey, one of which I thought was the HP filter being stuck at a minimum of 75% so everything sounded thin and weedy. After checking over it for an hour or so then booking it in for a service, I happened to knock the interface and the bass came booming back. The number of times MIDI cables, balanced versus unbalanced cables, 3.5 to 6.3mm adaptors or mono to stereo, XLR to jack etc. cause a dodgy connection that takes hours to track down is infuriating.

Synth avalanche

9. Most surprising tip or trick or technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?

Understanding wavetables was a revelation. I bought my Microwave XT in 1998 and never truly understood it until years later. Reviewers were excited by user wavetables and I just didn’t get the hype. I’m now all over them, and made a video demoing how you can create wavetables from anything for anything. I worked with Groove Synthesis recently to help put my Prophet VS wavetables into the 3rd Wave in its PPG mode to give all those lovely 80s digital artifacts. It’s one of those ideas that only exists due to the limitations of the technology, and if that creative spark hadn’t happened at the time it would never have been developed.


Artist or Band name?

Starsky Carr

Genre?

Electronic .. is that too broad? Probably to the detriment of my musical career, I can’t do that thing were people seem to write variations on the same track a 100 different ways.  

Selfie?

Starsky Carr Selfie Youtuber Synth
Starsky Carr

Where are you from?

Liverpool, UK.

How did you get into music?

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t into music. It maybe a Liverpool thing, it feels like part of my DNA.

What still drives you to make music?

See above!! I’ve no idea I just feel compelled. I get edgy if I’ve not done something for a while. 

How do you most often start a new track?

Almost always by fiddling around, looking for textures, tones and melodies that lead me somewhere.

How do you know when a track is finished?

They’re never truly finished, there’s always something else to do. But when you think you’re now doing stuff that only 1% of people will notice, when you find you’re spending 10 minutes tailing the delay perfectly, making minute changes to filter sweeps, adding another level of saturation or EQ, it’s time to step back and put the brush down.

Show us your current studio

Rack of outboard
Softube Controller
Roland SH-101
Soma PULSAR-23
Roland TR-606 Drumatix
The Cat by Octave
Moog Prodigy

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

Whatever you do you have to like it. You have to be prepared to stand in front of an audience and play it. If you’re not proud of it, fix it or ditch it. I can’t attribute that to anyone in particular, it’s more a distillation of many pieces of advice that resonated.

The Moog Trinity + Godfather

Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/starskycarr


Jérémy Hernandez – StuffLandSounds

1. Favourite knob/fader/switch on a piece of gear and why?

Moog Mother-32

I guess Vcf mod amount from Mother 32. They allow you to make some good movement with this juicy Moog filter.

2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?

The combo DFAM and mother 32. The only think I would change it’s maybe put them all in eurorack case with some effect and output mixer.

Moog DFAM and Mother 32

3. What setup do you bring on holiday/tour/commute etc.?

My three tier rack Moog with Mother 32, DFAM, Malekko voltage block and the Lyra 8 !

Moog and cables

4. What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?

I learned how use tracker with Renoise two years ago, it was really fun and now Polyend or Nerdseq is here as hardware. I really hope to integrate this kind of sequencer in my set up one day, but actually I don’t really need them now.

Meris Polymin, Zvex Instant Loop Junky and Earthquaker Devices Afterneath


For software I don’t really use a lot, except plugins for effect and mixing. I recently bought a Polymoon by Meris, very fun. Maybe having Polymoon or Mercury 7 as a plug would be very cool, for use as send effect or something like this.

5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?

I miss my Moog Minitaur and my Digitakt, but sometimes you have to make choices…

Elektron Digitakt

6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?

Always DFAM and Mother 32. But Soma Lyra 8 can offer you lot of weird and limitless possibilities, and I really like to use it’s external input for other gear, it’s very exiting.

Soma Lyra 8

7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?

I bought the Arturia Beatstep Pro a few days ago, and I guess if I have to start over I go directly to my Beatstep Pro and control everything in a eurorack system with it. Two voice synth with complex oscillators for example, drums and lot of cool stuff.

8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without

Maybe my Minilogue, because I don’t really use a lot actually, but sometimes I just plug it into an effect pedal, play with my own hand and I can trip out for a long time. So I keep it…

9. Most surprising tip/trick/technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?

Yeah, I have a some good patches, I used this for my video BuGzZ. It’s on the Mother 32:

noise out in vco lin fm.

Lfo tri out in mix 2

Pitch out (DFAM) in mix 1

KB out in vc mix ctrl

And vc mix out in vcf cut off.

Recently I also used pitch output of DFAM to control Lyra 8 hold gate input. It’s mad! 


Artist or Band name?

Stufflandsounds

Genre?

Electronic, experimental, happymess.

Selfie?

Jeremy Hernandez

Where are you from?

From France, in a little countryside town around Tarbes and Lourdes. I live in Bordeaux now.

How did you get into music?

I guess it was when I was child, I took headphones of my uncle to listen some CDs, and I found in his room the album Bjork Homogenic, Massive Attack Mezzanine, MTV Unplugged Nirvana. My mind blow up !

What still drives you to make music?

She always opens my mind to a new infinite world and it’s about shared creativity with other people. I can’t do without, even just listening music.

How do you most often start a new track?

Most of time, I’m thinking in my room, I see my gear, and I feel when it’s a good moment to have fun with it.

How do you know when a track is finished?

I never know… haha. 

Filming can help me to say « it’s done », and next I keep my project to have some post production, edit, mixing, etc.

Show us your current studio

jeremy Hernandez’s Studio

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

Stay yourself, stay daydreamer.

Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.

IG: Stufflandsounds

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQwEHYMzHlKQy6yw1l1zAEQ


Noctopolis – Mattis Hencke

1. Favourite knob or fader or switch on a piece of gear and why?

Jen SX2000

I’m not that emotionally attached to individual knobs and faders, but there might be a few which have been important. First, the ”Frequency” fader on my first synthesizer, the Jen SX2000, which gave me the first real player experience of an actual filtered analogue synth sound and gave birth to a lifelong fascination.

Korg MS20 Mini

Second, maybe the MS20 Mini Lowpass filter knob which brought me back to analogue synthesis after many years of playing mainly samplers and vst plugins. And finally, any of the SOMA Lyra 8:s VCO tuning knobs which made me listen to sounds in a different way and appreciate imperfection.

SOMA Lyra 8

When it comes to tactility I must say that my Bugbrand banana cables mean a great deal, though. They’re a pleasure to use. Colourful and sturdy fun!

2. Do you have an ‘almost’ perfect bit of kit? What would you change?

The word ”almost” is important here because the perfect bit of kit doesn’t exist, I think. Gut feeling right now whispers about the Ciat-Lonbarde Cocoquantus. It never disappoints and has opened up a vast sound palette to me. Though ”perfect” is certainly not the correct word for any C-L gear. Which is the wonder of it!

Ciat-Lonbarde

3. What setup do you bring on holiday or tour or commute etc.?

Always: Field recorder. A pretty crap one, my old Zoom H-1 (the Rec button on that one´s been very important, too). For many years the small holiday setup was Laptop/Cubase, USB audio interface, master keyboard.

Lorre Mill Double Knot

If I ever start travelling again I guess the Cocoquantus or the Plumbutter (or my most recent addition, the Lorre Mill Double Knot) would be great to bring but I’m not sure I’d risk them.

Ciat-Lonbarde Plumbutter

4. What software do you wish was hardware and vice versa?

I’m not very good at wishing for what isn’t there already. Nowadays I find it really hard wishing for hardware to be anything else. The tactile side of playing electronic instruments has grown extremely important to me. That doesn’t mean I don’t like software. There are lots of great fx and instruments which I use a lot. I love the Sketchcassette, Valhalla Supermassive and NI Kontakt, for instance.
Software into hardware… if Soniccouture suddenly turned their Geosonics library in a portable, beautiful little synthesizer I’d probably be curious about it.

Tactile synths

5. Is there anything you regret selling… or regret buying?

I regret selling my second synth ever which was the Roland SH1000. I sold it for very cheap around ’98 when it seemed completely obsolete (and it probably still is, but what a clumsy old beauty!). To be honest, there was some divine justice going on since I sold it to the same guy from who I bought a Yamaha CS5 even cheaper a few years before that.
I kind of regret that I sold my Tascam 388 quarter-inch tape/mixer studio too, but that may be mostly from nostalgia and considering the recent tape hype.
Through the years I’ve bought lots of gear which I’ve sold pretty quickly. I’d say most of the Volcas and a Roland Boutique JX03 were all pretty regrettable purchases. And I didn’t gel with the Eowave Quadrantid Swarm, sadly. Maybe I should have been more patient.

Hyve-Synth

6. What gear has inspired you to produce the most music?

Chronologically: my family’s upright piano, my first Porta studio (Fostex 260), the AKAI S2000 sampler, and most recently the Ciat-Lonbarde instruments. All of these have shown new and compelling paths into new territories, or territories looking more and more like the ones I vaguely started dreaming of exploring as a kid. It’s not that different now from what it was back then.

Ciat Lonbarde Deerhorn-Organ

7. If you had to start over, what would you get first?

Piano, DAW, a nice bass guitar and some assorted percussion. And after that I´d discover touch- and gesture-based synthesizer instruments a bit earlier 🙂 .

8. What’s the most annoying piece of gear you have, that you just can’t live without?

I usually sell the annoying stuff. One instrument I think will stay with me is the Lyra 8. It changed my listening a lot and I love it but to be honest, those tuning knobs really take some patience. The lower they go, the more mindfulness demanded to get the wanted notes. But having grown into that routine has made tuning of the Ciat-Lonbarde instruments a breeze, so I guess I should be grateful to that sturdy little ”white angel”, annoying as it is.
The Tocante Bistab is on the whole extremely annoying and I could definitely live without it, but it’s a fun curiousity.

9. Most surprising tip or trick or technique that you’ve discovered about a bit of kit?

To my surprise I´ve become a much better bass player through switching to fretless bass. Over all, everything that forces you to listen carefully, instead of having safe routes and measures laid out all the time, is good. As long as we leave the Theremin out of it, of course. And a bunch of other instruments. But – baby steps …

Fretless Squier Jazzbass

Artist or Band name?

Noctopolis and Mattis Hencke.

Genre?

For Noctopolis I guess have to say electronic. And I would hope cinematic and emotional in its better moments. MH is more semi-classic, fairytale music and pop.

Selfie?

Sort of, but not really. A musical portrait 😀 .

Mattis Hencke aka. Noctopolis

Where are you from?

Living in Uppsala, Sweden.

How did you get into music?

Singing, drumming on biscuit tins and making up melodies from early age. Discovering the sound of synthesizers and pop music in general at the age of about 10 was a huge revelation. I took drumming and piano lessons and performed in different orchestras and ensembles but more importantly, I always wrote songs and formed different bands with my brother and schoolmates. Making noise, trying different instruments, dreaming up concepts and bouncing hissy tape recordings between decks with my friend to create full productions became very important, we learned about multitrack recording and from there it really took off. I’ve just never stopped creating and discovering music. Artists like David Sylvian, Trent Reznor, Scott Walker and Fennesz have been huge inspiration sources, as well as numerous neoclassical, ambient and post-metal artists and bands.

What still drives you to make music?

I want to create the sounds and represent feelings and pictures that I carry inside of my head and which are beyond words. I also strive to make the music I want to hear, it´s a way of life by now. Playing and making music is ta great path to get in touch with my core, so to speak. I wouldn´t call it an escape from reality – music and art contains so much more of creative, constructive reality than a lot of other miserable pastimes and preoccupations. Music can be an outlet for emotions and a recalibration of the soul and spirit. And that’s regardless of objective quality and results, as long as it leaves the performer curious and imaginative, I think.

How do you most often start a new track?

That varies a lot. Sometimes with a bassline or a sample, more often with improvising on the piano which turns into fragments of a song. Sometimes with a sung melody. There are plugins which have inspired quite a lot of my music too. The last few years I´ve started to improvise a lot on hardware electronic instruments and nowadays the Ciat-Lonbarde setup is a good starting point for exploring. I’ve got loads of recordings and snippets on the hard drive which sooner or later find their way into more ambient tracks or actual pop songs.

How do you know when a track is finished?

A good sign that I’m on the right track is when I get the sensation ”Wow, did I really create this?”. That, combined with a certain kind of childish happiness when listening to the music in an environment which is not the studio. The most difficult part, when it comes to knowing whether a track is really good or not, is to find the balance between emotional impact and cool or newly found sounds and ideas. That, and also to know that sometimes less is more, but that more is more quite as often!

Show us your current studio

It’s about 1,5 x 2,5 meters with no window. That’s definitely both a blessing and a curse.

Noctopolis home studio
Noctopolis home studio
Noctopolis home studio

Best creative advice that you’ve ever heard?

Spend time away from your music before finishing it. Never mix more than one track at once. Abandon songs that keep annoying you and make you frustrated, they’re probably not that good anyway. Or (quite rarely) they are, but you need more time to grow into them.

Promote your latest thing… Go ahead, throw us a link.

Recent two track ambient single:

https://noctopolis.bandcamp.com/album/a-year-ending-when-getting-back-home-single

2020 ”Space trilogy” albums:

https://noctopolis.bandcamp.com/album/malacandra-2 and

https://noctopolis.bandcamp.com/album/perelandra

…and a sentimental little something:

https://mattishencke.bandcamp.com/album/everyday-tales-bonus-tracks-version

They´re all at the major streaming platforms as well.


[Editor: Do you have a favorite tip, trick or way of working with any of the gear from this interview?
Then throw us a comment below…
]