Me in my studio: GOOSE

Welcome

Hailing from Belgium and embracing elements of both rock and electronica, GOOSE have just released their fourth album What You Need.

The Flemish four-piece (keyboard player Mickael Karkousse, guitarist Dave Martijn, bassist Tom Coghe and drummer Bert Libeert) are contemporaries of the likes of Soulwax, Aeroplane and The Magician, and have remixed for everyone from Daft Punk to Scissor Sisters.

Currently on tour, GOOSE are playing the Camden Assembly tonight. Read on to find out more about the gear they’ll be playing on stage and use in the studio. 

The studio

 “Welcome to the Safari Studios. It's basically an old wedding suite packed with gear. We have Pro Tools and like to use it as a multitrack recorder with a limited number of plugins: mainly EQ, compression and reverb. All the synths, outboard and other effects are hardware. It's not that we dislike software instruments, but we just like to feel real knobs and instruments in our hands. Let’s take a tour!” 

Teisco 60f

“God, we love this Japanese synth! The 60f was a real game changer for us and is now a big part of our GOOSE sound. While recording our Bring It On album, we borrowed a 60f from Soulwax and were blown away by its powerful square wave pulse width modulation bass sound. It kicks you right in the stomach! The 60f and its big brother the 110f are our main live synthesizers.” 

Yamaha CS-50

“The CS-50 is so different to all the other synths in the studio; it sounds so natural and musical. It's extremely versatile, too - great for pads, leads and sound effects. If you can’t afford a CS-80, then this is the perfect solution. It's basically half a CS-80, so just press the record button twice and you have a CS80! We gave it a retrofit so now it has MIDI In and Thru.” 

Korg Rhythm 55r

“This lovely drum computer can be heard extensively on our new album What You Need, on songs like Where are we now and Forever. It's our little ‘drum compagnon’ while writing songs and making demos. Its sound and swing are so warm and organic, it gives you an instant desire to create.” 

ARP 2600

“We bought it nine years ago in Holland from a lady who really needed the money and was so sad to let it go. When we entered her house we heard birds whistling but only realised later that she made her final patch resulting in a bird sound - heartbreaking! I promised her we would take good care of it.

“I recently brought it to the ARP expert ‘Saint Eric’ for a reparation and it came back as a beast with a modified 4012 filter and a new VCA. It's truly one of those unique machines that will give you sonic presents if you treat her with love.” 

Siel Orchestra 2

“The very first synth we ever bought and our introduction to the then unknown exciting world of synthesizers. It's an early-’80s pre-MIDI era machine made in Italy containing beautiful strings that remind me of a Solina String Ensemble. There is an extreme resonating flanger on board, too - crazy Italians!

“We purchased it new for 100 quid in Masselis, a local piano shop that is not there anymore. Imagine how long it was standing there waiting to be played.” 

Formanta Polivoks

“The bad boy of the studio is a Russian duophonic analogue synthesizer that was meant to copy the American Minimoog. It has an extremely brutal filter (it will eat the MS-20 filter alive!) and behaves extremely unreliably, but delivers great and surprising results because of its bad temper. Ours is modded with CV/Gate in so its crappy plastic keyboard is barely touched nowadays.” 

Simmons SDS 8

“Eighties galore! We bought the module together with four hexagon-shaped pads and a large kick pad. It's a great sound source for creating natural noise rhythm and deep kick drums. It even has sensitivity to add a human touch to your playing.” 

Roland SPV-355

“When we are bored with a sound we just put it through this rare pitch to voltage synth. You can control the CV of the synth with a guitar, vocals or whatever you want. It's monophonic, has two oscillators and a sub oscillator and sounds fat, ravey and never predictable because of its weird tracking. That's a real bonus to us!” 

Roland Alpha Juno-1

“Small, affordable and superb sounding! Better than the famous Juno-106 if you ask me. Huge rave and hoover sounds with a spectacular stereo chorus. We take two of them on the road. Once we tried to replace them with a new Prophet 08 but without success. Alpha Juno for the win!”