The Focusrite Platinum Twin Trak Pro you can see here has had some heavy use: “All the Ellie Goulding stuff was done through this including guitars and vocals and even some of the compression,” reveals Starsmith. The purchase of the Alesis 3630 compressor, meanwhile, was inspired by a famous French duo: “I read loads of stuff on Daft Punk and discovered they had one of these so I had to get it. It’s so cheap it’s stupid not to own one, and it looks good in the rack.”