Me in my studio: Paul Hardcastle

Hi, I'm Paul Hardcastle and this is my studio, it's been up and running since 1987 and it's mostly used by me, my daughter Maxine and my son Paul Jnr.

Paul Jnr is a sax player and has been working on tracks for Pacha as has Maxine, in fact we all have, my Pacha album came out just last month, Perceptions Of Pacha 8. I recorded the Sound track to the spice girls movie Spice world, for which I won best score award. What's nice is that it has a great view over the fields of Essex, and is not just 4 walls - well the Vocal room is but hey I'm not a vocalist so I don't go in there much!

Lately I have recorded all of my New album '19 Below Zero' in the Studio, which I have done for Universal Music, released on October 15th, it took around a year to put together and used the equipment as seen in the following pictures.

What was amazing was that in the loft while looking for some Midi leads, I came across an old 24 track master which I thought had been misplaced for good, it had an alternative version on 19 that I did at the same time as the original, so I bounced to Aiff files, remixed and added new sounds to it. It's called 19 Below Zero and is the last track on the Album, this Mix has ever been heard before, Rob da Bank also recorded a mix of 19 for the new album.

I still use this analogue desk occasionally when I'm using the outboard synths in the racks. Also had this since 1986, This has been used for all my Jazzmasters and Hardcastle series albums, for which I have won several awards.

Rack one and two contain lots of synth modules. Sometimes I switch it all on or if I'm feeling lazy I just use lots of plug-ins.

You can't beat a Mini Moog for bass and mellow lead sounds. I did have an original mini moog but I upgraded when they introduced this a while back.

I still use this quite a lot still especially on my chilltype stuff.

I used this on all my 80s hits including 19, Rainforest, The Wizard etc. Not switched it on for years but it still worked ok last time I used it.

This is my Synclavier which I have had since 1986 and was the worlds first total digital system i.e. no tape at all!

The first track I ever recorded on this was the Wizard The Top of the pops theme. There were not many of these around as the cost was astronomical. I was lucky to have just had the biggest selling single internationally and blew a lot of my royalties on it. Around £200.000 but now you can do the same thing and much more on an Apple Mac Pro for £2000!

It has a separate Machine room to house the Synclavier as it’s really noisy, it has 16 fans and sounds like a 747 jet when it’s on.

My prize possession in the corner of the studio is a Juke box, which was given to me as a present from the great late Phil Lynott, I worked with Phil just a few weeks before he passed away.