Innehållsförteckning för February 2022 från Future Music

In the studio with Prince Fatty “I used Fish Factory Studios in Willesden to record, which had an old Neve console set up by Antonio [Feola]. I think it was a 51 series. It was a traditional old-school studio setup with a 16-track tape machine. So, two inch, just the desk, and good microphones – Neumanns, AKG, Sennheiser, and so on. But, generally, standard ’70s and ’80s studio microphones. “The room was nice. I liked to record everybody together. I don’t really care about the bleed too much, as long as it’s not overpowering. “I had spring reverbs, and the same reverb King Tubby used, which is called the Fisher Space Expander. That’s a tube reverb. You have to modify it, though. “Then it was mixed in Brighton on my…

FM | ALBUM REVIEWS Cate Le Bon Pompeii Mexican Summer ALBUM OF THE MONTH Two years on from 2019’s excellent Reward, leftfield-indiepop stalwart Cate Le Bon returns with her bold and playful sixth studio album, Pompeii. The enigmatic Welsh artist, who has produced albums for Deerhunter, John Grant, Devendra Banhart and more over the last few years, in addition to her own spellbinding, oddball workouts, is at her wonderful and dreamy best for the new record. Pompeii is perhaps Le Bon’s boldest, most expressive record to date. It is full of the woozy, wonky pop aesthetic that the Welsh maestro has perfected, but it is pushed out to further extremes than before and the result is a brilliantly witty album that feels as surreal as it does warm and familiar.…

Niagara Magna Moralia Disciples RECOMMENDED Magna Moralia is the serenely beautiful album of new age, astral electronic ambience from Portuguese trio, Niagara. After standout runs on both their native Lisbon’s Principe Discos imprint and their self-released, homemade CD-Rs on their own Ascender label, the trio of António Arruda, Alberto Arruda and Sara Eckerson now find their home on London’s forward-thinking Disciples for the new album. Magna Moralia merges elements of ambient, minimal, new age, classical and natural music into a wonderfully immersive and instinctual record. Dreamy piano improvisations are at the root of the album, sprouting from a lush and fertile web of layered, floating synth textures, tropical field recordings, subtle melodies, glassy electronics and arpeggiated tones. The whole record is a fascinating blending of the natural and synthetic, drawing…

Update Your Production Skills | Feature THREE MASTER TOOLS Mastering the Mix Levels $69 1 A simple way to gauge whether your mix or master is hitting various commercial targets or not, Levels puts several properties around its central display, and turns each icon green or red, depending on how it’s going. If you’re not measuring up in any area, you can get more info on why in the central readout. masteringthemix.com Youlean Loudness Meter 2 FREE/$47 2 One of the first great solutions to interrogating your mix as to its LU and True Peak, as well as other properties. Get the free version of Youlean’s Loudness Meter, or plump for the pro. youlean.co MeterPlugs Loudness Penalty $49 3 Get a semi-instant recommendation on how much the different streaming services…

Getting started with Atmos in Logic 1 Say what you like about Apple but they do make tech easy to get your head around, or immerse yourself in. And Dolby Atmos mixing in Logic is straightforward. Take any mix you like, save it as another Dolby Atmos project and convert it via the Mix menu and the new Dolby Atmos option. 2 You then select Dolby Atmos from the dropdown Spatial Audio menu, again new to this version. You’ll then be asked to confirm that you’re cool with the project being converted to a 7.1.2 format. As you have saved it out as a new one, you’re good to go so click ‘OK’. 3 After a visual ‘blink’ several things have now occurred, the main ones being that an all-new…

David Castellani | Produce like… PRODUCE LIKE… David Castellani Get to know this LA techno mogul’s modular-and-more setup – in gloriously nitpicky detail LA-based, Italian-born techno producer David Castellani is a busy man. As a producer, he spent 2021 delivering a string of EPs of rolling, club-ready techno on his own Noetic label. Across tracks including the electro-tinged Alpha Gamma and the pulsing Electrochemical, he has defined a sound based around hardhitting percussion and high-energy modular synth jams. As extracurricular activities, Castellani also runs a clothing brand, After Infinite, and a newly launched modular company, Anti-Kulture, with his partner. We caught up with him to find out how he pieces together tracks and get a sneak peek of his debut module, the Precision Disruptor sequencer. “THE ELEKTRON ANALOG KEYS CHANGED…

Reviews | IK Multimedia AmpliTube X-Gear pedals IK Multimedia AmpliTube X-Gear pedals €300 each IK place the AmpliTube experience under foot. Robbie Stamp gets into gear CONTACT WHO: IK Multimedia WEB: ikmultimedia.com KEY FEATURES Four DSP-powered effect pedals covering distortion (X-Drive), reverb (X-Space), delay (X-Time) and modulation (X-Vibe) The X-Gear quad of multi-effect digital stompboxes have something of the completist’s catnip about them. The neatly styled yet robust anodised aluminium casings each house a DSP powered core of 16 effects algorithms backed up by 300 preset slots (50 factory), ten rotary encoders, three footswitches, MIDI I/O, USB interfacing for preset management and recording interface usage, expression/dual footswitch control and a comprehensive set of global and preset based parameters to tweak until the end of time. Drive in X-Drive’s 16 algorithms…

Reviews | Alesis V49 MkII Alesis V49 MkII £99 Alesis’ V49 MkII offers more performance features and control with great affordability. Jono Buchanan plugs and plays CONTACT WHO: Alesis WEB: alesis.com KEY FEATURES 49 full-size, velocity-sensitive, synthaction keys, 8 velocity-sensitive, LED-backlit pads, Arpeggiator with 6 modes, tap tempo, time division, gate and swing controls, Note Repeat, 4 MIDI-assignable knobs, Pitch-bend and modulation wheels, 1/4” sustain pedal, USB-powered The battle for your controller keyboard allegiance is fierce, with several companies offering all-singing, all-dancing designs at increasingly affordable prices. Some, like Native Instruments, have tailored their keyboards to their software, making them an integrated choice for those heavily invested in specific hardware/software workflows. But if your primary devotion is to your DAW and you’re seeking a more general-purpose controller keyboard, Novation, M-Audio…

Sounds & Samples | Reviews Audiotent – Wave From £37 > A slick selection of presets, MIDI files and audio loops for Ableton’s Wavetable synth. All with a knowing nod to the halcyon days of rave culture. This nostalgic collection has warmed up basslines, trippy arps, meaty textures, glorious pads and some fist-pumping lead lines. Plenty to help everybody in the place get their mitts on and whip up a banging track, fit for a warehouse, field, or festival tent. All of the included sounds feature macro controls on the 107 processing racks, so you can meld and melt each groove and fiddle with EQ, echo, reverb, phaser, chorus, vocoder, and vinyl distortion, until the sun comes up. The Ultimate Edition comes with a 2+ hour online sound design course…

IN THE ARCHIVE – UPDATED! FM’s Sample Archive gives you over 18GB of carefully-curated, royalty-free sounds to use in your music. Here’s what’s inside… AMBIENT SOUNDS PT.1 > ’90s Ambient (562 samples) > Ambient Dawn (490 samples) AMBIENT SOUNDS PT.2 > Majestic Bells & Mallets (444 samples) > Spring Reverb & Tape Delay (533 samples) ATMOSPHERES & BACKGROUNDS > Atmospheric Beds (369 samples) > Noise, Crackle & Hiss (512 samples) > Sounds of the City (371 samples) CLASSIC SYNTHS PT.1 > Analogue Polys (625 samples) > SH Collection (500 samples) CLASSIC SYNTHS PT.2 > Analogue Poly Chord Hits (342 samples) > Classic Synths: ’80s, ’90s, ’00s (678 samples) > Hardware Arps (511 samples) CREATIVE DRUMS > Cyborg Beats (514 samples) > Lo-Fi Sampling (555 samples) > Obscure Drum Machines (517…

LIKE IT? TRY THESE… Various Artists Pirates Choice Cracking Studio One comp of roots vibes. Perfect mood music to complement Fatty’s vintage touch. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Sugar Minott – Love Gonna Pick You Up, Carlton & The Shoes – Love Me Forever, Burning Spear – This Population Hollie Cook Hollie Cook Longtime collaborator stretches out on her solo album, with Fatty on the boards, and dub and lovers rock on the table. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Milk And Honey, That Very Night, It’s So Different Here Norman Whitfield The Songs Of Norman Whitfield Collection of killer tracks from the highly influential producer whose echo and delay work inspired a lot reggae of come. ADD THESE TO YOUR PLAYLIST: Ain’t No Sun, Since You’ve Been Gone, Ball Of…

Albums | Reviews Madmess Rebirth Hassle Records Rebirth is the loud, sprawling and intense debut album from London-based Portuguese psych rockers, Madmess. The band formed in Porto and cut their teeth based in an abandoned shopping centre that was turned into creative hub and studio and practice space by up to 300 musicians. Their time there was a definite impact on the outfit’s diverse and genre cross-pollination that we see today. By 2017 bassist Vasco Vasconcelos, drummer Luis Moura and guitarist Ricardo Sampaio headed to London, where their debut EP gained a cult following. The debut album arrives at a time where it feels everything is coming together for the band. Rebirth is bold, loud, exciting, energetic and full of attitude. Heady psychedelia merges with sprawling stoner jams, chugging heavy…

Spatial audio & Dolby Atmos Learn how – and why – you should work with this increasingly usable system > We understand the world of stereo: the audio signal consists of two channels, and then differences in level between one signal appearing in both channels create the impression of the sound appearing from somewhere between the two speakers. Those levels can be changed and adapted, and a sonic object can be made to appear in any place along the line, or indeed move around it. Dolby Atmos take this further. The concept is simple enough: instead of having just two speakers as in a stereo setup, or five speakers and a sub as in a 5.1 surround sound system, Dolby Atmos allows you to play back over whatever system you…

Update Your Production Skills | Feature Working with Dolby Atmos Music Panner in any DAW 1 Let’s have a look at how Dolby Atmos can be encoded in a DAW using the Dolby Atmos Music Panner plugin. The plugin is available in Audio Units, VST3 and AAX versions, and comes for free from Dolby’s website. At the same time, you can install various template projects for a few of the major DAWs. 2 Here in Ableton Live, the template project loads up with ten mono tracks and 27 stereo ones (ie, 54 mono pairs). A copy of the Dolby Atmos Music Panner (VST) is loaded onto each of them, routed and ready to go. 3 The idea is that the ten mono tracks (the Beds) represent your system’s outputs, while…

David Castellani | Produce like… GET THAT SOUND… Introducing the Anti-Kulture Precision Disruptor VIDEO ON FILESILO 01 > Precision Disruptor is the debut module from David’s new Anti-Kulture brand. “It’s a generative, random-based sequencer. It’s a bit like a 303 sequencer but it has a few special features that we think are going to be really useful in the Eurorack world.” 02 > “On the little baby keyboard you have the ability to select the notes you’d like to include in the sequence,” David explains. “Below the keyboard you also have an option to include octave ranges from 0 to +/-2.” 03 > The sequence itself is created by adjusting a bank of five sliders. “These are for gate, accent, slides, note and octave. When you push any one of…

FM | PRODUCER’S GUIDE Get 3D with Animoog Z Rob Redman gives us a kickstart in taking sound design to another dimension, with Moog’s latest virtual instrument Moog’s updated version of the popular wavetable synth may look very similar to the original but it has one big new trick up its sleeve and that is the addition of a third dimension. This effectively takes the old 2D grid and adds a second grid flipped 90 degrees, giving the Z depth. This means plotting a sonic path can be done up and down and side to side, as before, but now also near and far. This opens up whole new sonic territory to explore, with many more possibilities for creating patches. From the traditional and simple, through to some pretty wild,…

Interview | MMM MMM The glowing techno chords of MMM’s long-awaited debut album, On The Edge, are delivered with scapular precision. Danny Turner charts the record’s creation © Camille Blake Having first met in 1994, Berlin-based duo Erik Wiegand and Michael Fiedler have collaborated intermittently on numerous singles and EPs, producing electro, funk and techno-influenced club music under the name MMM. Berghain resident and producer Fiedler (aka Fiedel) brings his DJ background to the fore, while Wiegand (aka Errorsmith) lends his experience as a software developer to provide creative solutions. MMM’s slaying electro track Donna (1997) was an immediate success, yet the duo would not reconvene for over a decade, and it was not until recently that they combined to create their debut album, On The Edge. Sophisticated and emotionally…

Interview | Daedelus DAEDELUS The US producer teams up with UK poet Joshua Idehen for a new work of hip-hop-influenced electronics. Matt Mullen finds out more Three facts about Daedelus that neatly capture the expanse of their ambition: they were sampled by Madlib on the classic MF Doom track Accordion, they’re part of the founding faculty of the prestigious Berklee College of Music’s electronic music performance program, and they’re an artist-in-residence at the SETI Institute, a scientific centre seeking extraterrestrial intelligence. These three data points illustrate the scope of Alfred Darlington’s talents: as a beatmaker, producer, performer, professor, and innovator, they simultaneously inhabit the worlds of cutting-edge music technology and improvised, off-the-cuff beatmaking, demonstrating that in an increasingly borderless music world, there’s not all that much difference between the two.…

Reviews | Universal Audio Volt 76 series Universal Audio Volt 76 series from £215 UA have finally joined the affordable audio interfacing party, reports Jono Buchanan CONTACT WHO: Universal Audio WEB: uaudio.com KEY FEATURES 2-in/2-out (276) or 1-in/2-out (176) USB 2.0 audio interface, 24-bit/192 kHz audio conversion, Mac, PC, iPad, and iPhone compatible, Vintage Mic Preamp mode and built-in analogue circuit based on 1176 Compressor, USB bus powered, Direct Monitoring, MIDI In/Out PRICING: Volt 1 76, £215 Volt 2 76, £265 Until now, UA seemed happy to cater to the ‘pro’ market alone. That changes with the release of the Volt interfaces, which arrive to disrupt the more affordable end of the audio interfacing world. Here, we’re focusing on two of the more eye-catching designs, the Volt 176 and 276.…

Reviews | Synth Gems 1 Synth Gems 1, by Mike Metlay £53 Dr Mike has unearthed a veritable treasure trove of vintage synths for this landmark book, Simon Fellows finds CONTACT WHO: Bjooks WEB: bjooks.com KEY FEATURES 320-page hardback book for anyone who loves synths, or even just great photography Mike Metlay’s Synth Gems 1 chronicles iconic synthesisers from 1970 to 2000 in glorious colour and extraordinary detail. It offers insights into more than 60 vintage synths, lovingly documented more than 320 pages with hundreds of stunning images and thousands of well-chosen words. Vince Clarke provides the foreword, which sets the tone for the entire book. “I definitely believe”, writes Vince, “that the whole electronic music scene has made it possible for people to have ideas, to express and record…

Reviews | Moog Animoog Z Moog Animoog Z £8.99 (in-app) Rob Redman takes Animoog Z for a spin round some new orbits to see what Moog’s update offers over its predecessor CONTACT WHO: Moog WEB: moogmusic.com KEY FEATURES 16 voice polyphonic wavetable synth, Available for iOS, iPadOS and Mac PRICE: Free to download, but full synth engine access requires an £8.99 in-app purchase The original Moog Animoog was an interesting concept for mobile musicians and sound designers, with a novel interface. The new version takes things into 3D, with the addition of an extra dimension of sound design. So, what is it? Animoog Z is a 16 voice synth that is in essence a wavetable synthesiser. At first glance the retro mad scientist’s lab GUI might lead you to believe…

Roedelius & Story 4 Hands Erased Tapes 4 Hands is the beautiful collaborative album between two friends and piano lovers. Austria-based German composer Hans-Joachim Roedelius is an innovative and longstanding artist who has influenced generations of musicians in a career spanning more than a half-century. Tim Story is an American synthesist, pianist, composer and Grammy-nominated master of ambient compositions. But on 4 Hands, they are just two longstanding friends, holding an intimate conversation in their most cherished medium, piano music. The record was made by Roedelius laying down short, intuitive piano sketches, which were then fleshed out and layered into Story’s intricate work. Made on the same grand piano, both artists’ work complements and accents the other, creating a wonderful conversation between the two that morphs into a singular and…

Feature | Update Your Production Skills Using Mastering The Mix Levels to prep a track for streaming 1 Let’s put some of this mixing and mastering knowledge into practice. Here’s Mastering The Mix’s plugin Levels, which lets you know how your audio is shaping up against various commercial and theoretical standards. Levels goes on the master bus, after all processing. 2 As we play our music back for the first time, we can see from the icons around the circle whether our track is shaping up at different times, or whether there are some issues. We’ll head first for the Peak detector, which shows us that the mix is peaking at a nice, safe -1.0dB… or is it? 3 By switching to True Peak mode, we see that the signal…

Feature | Update Your Production Skills Mixing spatial audio in Logic You too can mix with ‘stereo killer’ Dolby Atmos. We reveal how in Logic 10.7 > 2022 marks a decade since Dolby Atmos first appeared in cinemas – the premiere of Brave in LA being its first outing in 2012. The technology uses a 128-channel system to deliver a totally immersive experience through multiple speaker arrays at an increasing number of your local Odeons. One of the main benefits of Dolby Atmos is its ability to decode these 128 channels and deliver an Atmos mix through everything from a more typical 7.1.4 speaker setup – seven speakers around you at ear level, one sub and four speakers above you to give you an impression of height – through to…

Bonobo | In The Studio With BONOBO After years of touring, Simon Green found himself lacking creative stimulus. Danny Turner learns how modular synths fuelled his imagination © Ye Rin Mok Two decades into his career and Simon Green’s Bonobo is still reaching previously unexplored heights. Having debuted with the downtempo, trip-hop vibe of Animal Magic in 2000, his multi-layered sample-based approach to production has enveloped jazz and world music styles, attracting numerous Grammy nominations. Mainstage performances at major festivals raised his profile further and he even climbed towards the upper reaches of the UK chart with his 2017 album, Migration. Increasingly enmeshing electronics and live instrumentation, Green’s onstage setup has become increasingly expansive. However, his gruelling live schedule took its toll. Stimulated by writing on the road, the pandemic…

Produce like… | David Castellani DAVID CASTELLANI TRACK BUILDER… Turning modular jams into club-ready techno BEGINNINGS VIDEO ON FILESILO “I tend to begin with a kick drum and then jump to a lead sound rightaway. This is mainly because I find that the lead sound is the most important and should have the freedom to not be restricted by the other sounds. If other sounds are already there when I get to the lead, then it becomes limited in how far it can go. “When it comes to specific modules, I try not to be predictable and reach for something different every time. This is actually at the core of my process because it keeps me excited and guessing for what will come next.” BUILDING A TRACK “My music generally…

Reviews | iZotope RX 9 iZotope RX 9 from $129 The audio repair colossus reaches its ninth incarnation. Robbie Stamp explores what’s new CONTACT WHO: iZotope Inc WEB: izotope.com KEY FEATURES OS: Windows 10, macOSX 10.14.6 - 11.6 SUPPORTED HOSTS: Logic Pro, Pro Tool 2021, Live 11, Cubase 10.5-11, Nuendo 11, Studio One 5, Reaper 6, FL Studio 20, Audition CC, Premiere Pro CC SUPPORTED FORMATS: AAX, AU, VST2, VST3 (64-bit only) PRICING: RX Elements $129, RX 9 Standard $399, RX 9 Advanced $1,199 (upgrade and subscription options available) It’s hard to imagine the audio production landscape without iZotope’s RX repair and restoration platform. With each generation it’s sharpened to become a formidable tool for a huge range of tasks, straddling post-production, music recording/mixing and content creation with pricing schemes…

Reviews | Ocean Way Audio Pro 3 Ocean Way Audio Pro 3 $2,994 per pair How much should you spend on your monitors? Jon Musgrave tries out Ocean Way Audio’s latest high-end nearfields CONTACT WHO: Ocean Way Audio WEB: oceanwayaudio.com KEY FEATURES Frequency Range: 45Hz to 20kHz ENCLOSURE TYPE: Rear Ported LF DRIVER: 7” with aluminium dome HF Driver: 1” with silk fabric dome ONBOARD AMPLIFICATION: Class D 125W (LF), 90W (HF) MAXIMUM SPL: 110dB INPUTS: Analogue XLR, Digital AES-3 DIMENSIONS: 229 x 343 x 356mm WEIGHT: 10.4kg Ocean Way Audio produce a number of high-end audio products, and are probably best known for their impressive horn-based monitoring systems. A few years ago they introduced the more traditional-looking Pro 2A large nearfield and this is now joined by the more…

Sylvan Esso | A Career in Gear A CAREER IN GEAR Sylvan Esso The electronic pop duo explain the gear choices that defined their most important work © Shervin Lainez Amelia Meath and Nick Sanborn are Sylvan Esso, a duo recording radiant electro-pop that thrums with unrestrained emotion. Balancing the scales between all-out pop melodicism and electronic experimentation, their third album Free Love saw them move out of the box and further into modular synthesis, earning them a 2022 Grammy nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Album in the process. Though they’re reinvigorating pop music with adventurous sonic techniques, the duo are no gear snobs: they’re equally happy running an entire track through a radio transmitter and pushing Ableton’s stock plugins to their limits as they are laying down chords on a…