Me in my studio: Mumbai Science

Intro

Mumbai Science are a Belgian DJ/Producer duo who are no longer considered strangers to the scene. As pioneers of the emerging genre that is future techno, the duo adopts a sound that melds contemporary electro-synths with a vintage techno feel.

Over the past three months, the duo released the ‘Unified Theory’; a trilogy of EPs which feel like Mumbai Science on an LSD trip through dance history. What better time to take a peek at their studio, then?

The studio

"Welcome to the Mumbai Science office. It’s based on the outskirts of Louvain, Belgium. That way, we don’t have annoying neighbours to deal with and can go for a nice long walk through the forest when our ears get tired.

"It’s a small, low-end studio, but we’re proud of it. It’s got everything we need… except maybe an espresso machine. Now there’s an idea!"

Logic 9 Express

"We use logic express 9 as DAW. The logic plugins are pretty great. Up until our Ancova EP, everything was made with Logic and its plugins.

"The ‘Ancova’ lead was made with the ES2 and the ‘Hoot’ lead was made with the EFM1. No other plugins or outboard gear were used at all. Now we own some extra plugins like the Waves compressors and EQs, Sylenth and some other free plugins. But we try to keep it simple. It’s easy to get lost in the world of plug-ins."

Elektron Machinedrum

"This thing is just the best! Whenever we need some out-of-this-world percussion, we turn to the machine drum. It’s so fun to play with. You can make sounds you’ll hear nowhere else.

"Sounds like this keep a track fresh. We’ve been thinking about buying a 909 as well. We have tons of 909 sample libraries though. That will have to do for now."

KRK RP8

"These are our monitors, the KRK RP8’s. We bought them a couple years ago and never used anything else, so we’re quite used to them. As an audio interface, we use the fireface UC. Never had any problems with it, so we’re quite satisfied with the piece."

Novation REMOTE

"This is our midi keyboard, the Novation Remote. Too bad we can’t bring this along with us when we’re touring. Playing piano with your laptop keyboard is just not the same! Although we’ve got pretty good at it."

Moog Little Phatty

"This is our Moog little Phatty. This is what we use for our synth leads these days. We just recently discovered the pleasures of hardware synths and are already hooked. We come from a rock history, so it’s fun to play with real instruments again.

"I didn’t think the difference between software and hardware would be that big, but it actually is."

Roland Juno 106

"We just bought this a couple of weeks ago and haven’t really used it in a track yet. The sound of this synth is so distinctive. You either hate it or love it.

"Needless to say: we love it! This synth will probably pop up more than once in our future tracks."

Korg Monotribe

"We used this synth for our track ‘Commandments’. The Monotribe is pretty low cost, but it sounds so good. You can get incredibly dirty sounds from this little box.

"It doesn’t have MIDI, but I heard that you can easily mod it, which we’re definitely gonna do with ours."

Ganesha

"This is Ganesha. He watches over us while we embark on the epic journey of making a new track. Every studio needs its Ganesha!"