Kassian's container studio and the risk rule
Kassian record everything through a desk in a shipping container and cut it up later. The System-1 handles almost every bassline they write. The interview is short on gear specs and long on the one thing worth stealing: how far they push a setting before it stops sounding like someone else's record.
▶ Kassian's container studio, clocked from the Analog Rytm
The whole room runs from the Elektron clock and jams get cut up later in Ableton. The System-1 covers almost every bassline, and the interview's real point is the push-it-too-far habit.
◢ learn
▶ Acid leads in Serum 2, with the distortion as a pluck
Mono mode, a bandpass biased low, and diode drive that only fires on the attack — that's most of the acid character. Then the multiband compressor boosts the quiet sections per band and the hall reverb opens it into a room.
▶ Three-band ducking in Sidekick, with a mirrored kick-tail shape
Mirror the ducking node and the bass gets the inverse of the kick tail — no second curve to draw. The three-band mode came with this update, and linking bands without re-shaping slopes is the faster workflow.
◢ free & gear
A plugin that reads your own Lexicon 224 ROMs(free)
You'll need the original ROM sets — five files for the 224, eleven more for the XL variant. The Space control slows the DSP clock and stretches delays and modulation, which is the interesting part beyond a straight emulation.
THE DREAM, the character strip from DREAM DECAY, now standalone(free)
Six orders of drive, dream, and bit-crush in one free chain. Blend pitch drift, hiss, and wow with the single Dream knob, then reorder stages to change whether the crush hits before or after saturation.
◢ the word
TWK models the Tweaker's overdriven VCA, no clip point
That's the Drive stage from the Tweaker, $39, and it folds the top end down as it crushes transients. The XY pad decides what gets saturated, so you can keep the sub untouched while the mids get hairy.
A coaxial 3-way monitor for the desk, with a DSP latency question
€499.99 a pair gets you a coaxial mid/tweeter that keeps imaging stable up close. The FIR filter adds latency Teufel hasn't published, so test with a wired source before using it for tracking.
Dino Lenny's picks from the long-hair rave era, sample notes included
Chime, Break For Love, Beat Dis — Dino Lenny lists the records and names the samples, like Adam F lifting Westchester Lady for Circles. No production tips, just context for where the sounds came from.
| ▲ #14 | Black Traxx, Rick Lenoir, Gary Wallace — Keep Taking Me High (Highest Mix) |
| ▲ #19 | Carloh, Reboot — Panteras (Original Mix) |
| ▼ #100 | George Smeddles — Breakout (Extended Mix) |
| ▼ #73 | Paolo Bardelli, TonyMontana dj — Velvet Eclipse (Club Mix) ▼ 40 · 1d · ▶ hear |
| ▲ #66 | Dennis Ferrer, Mia Tuttavilla — Touched The Sky (Extended Mix) |
- synth: Roland TB-303 — Roland TB-303, designed as a bass accompaniment box; its resonant low-pass filter and accent circuit became acid when driven hard.
- technique: Acid modulation — Sequence 16 steps, accent select steps, push resonance until it almost squeals, then sweep cutoff up and down over the loop.
- artist: Josh Wink — Philadelphia producer and Ovum co-founder; the acid line came from his live hardware setup, not a sample pack.
- 1. Insert Envelope Follower. Set Fall to 100%, Gain to 15 dB.
- 2. Add Grain Delay. Spray 150 ms, Random Pitch 0.5, Feedback all the way up, Wet/Dry 50%. Switch Sync to Time.
- 3. In Grain Delay mapping, set Max to 50% and assign Envelope Follower to the Time parameter.
- 4. Add Auto Shift. Quantizer off, Waveform Random, Formant Mod max, Retrigger off, Wet/Dry 25%, Fine 30 cents.
- 5. Add OTT. Low cut 80 Hz, Wet/Dry 50%.
- 6. Add Shifter. Coarse +12 st, Window 150, Tone 4000 Hz, Wet/Dry 20%.
🔮 Producer Horoscope (for fun) — Your DAW will delete the best take; autosave is your only religion.
Make something rough. You can smooth it later.
one of these lands every morning.
for working house producers with a track already half-finished.
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covered in this issue: serum 2 · cineol-x 224 · sonic academy sidekick