In pictures: Clark's Berlin studio
Intro
We peaked inside the studio in our huge Clark interview already. Now we delve deeper and look at the kit Clark uses to create his unique blend of electronic music. From modulars and Moogs to Mackies and mixers, dive in and try not to be as jealous as we were...
Moogerfoogers
“These units are expensive, but annoyingly fresh. Me and Bibio [label mate and guitar guru] often riff on trying to make our, er, riffs ‘hairy’. You don’t ever want a bald synth sound. Moogerfoogers sort that right out.”
“Below the Moogs is the Vermona ReTubeVerb. It's noisy, messy, dark, evil, hissy. Amazing. I wish you could get under the hood and twang the spring though.”
Drawmer 1960
“This is really lovely. The compression is very subtle but it gives mixes this finesse – a great big orange swell.”
Moog Voyager
“Amazing for MIDI but it’s too stable and the filter isn’t as good as the old Moog synths. It’s great though. The octave switches are... phwoar. You just need to crank it on to tape and then it sounds potent.”
Toft ATB24
“A really wonderful bit of gear. The pots feel like they mean business. Sweeping the low mid-range on the EQ with The Kitten going through it it's just delightful.
"I've literally sat there for hours doing nothing but that. It’s not too big either, it delivers perfectly-sized portions of audio, all summed pretty nicely too, although I haven’t got much to compare it to except my old Mackie, which I also really rate. In fact, the Mackie distorts better than the Toft.”
Akai APC40
“It’s a bit generic, but that’s because Ableton have defined a new paradigm in music production. It’s messed up how it works on the fly with mics.
"I built a whole soundscape with this reverb and rainfall in a church hall. With rifle mics and the looper plug-in, you can arm, edit, chop up and re-record without it even hiccupping. Mental.”
Modular
“Basically, I’ve got three VCOs, an LFO module, a filter and a sequencer. The sequencer is rotary, not binary, so you can’t really programme melodies on it, rather it throws up riffs that are vaguely in tune, which is really useful for what I like doing with it.
"I also have a really powerful ADSR – a shaman. I never thought that an ADSR could be something that would have different levels of quality, but I’ve upgraded and you can almost make a poly riff with it – although because you’re only using one modulator it’s never going to be truly poly. When you use two of them, the way they interact really throws up weird things.”
Mackie HR824
“These are pretty nice and I’m really used to them now but I prefer my Sennheiser IE80s. Generally, I find I mix most tenaciously on headphones – real quiet, like.”