Artists & Arturia # 22 - Vince clarke meets minibrute

The first synthesizer I've ever bought was a KAWAI 100 FS And...It had... 1 oscillator. A sub-oscillator. It was what I was using when I was working with DepecheMode. When I first tried the MiniBrute The first thing that struck me was the fact that it was small. So I thought, Excellent! It will fit in my studio. And the fact that it had a MIDI-in, and CV and gate in... It was pretty cool! The guys from Arturia came to my studio to show me the synth. They tried to explain to me what "Aftertouch" was. Which the Minibrute has apparently... but I still have no idea what that actually is. It just sounds wrong..."Aftertouch" So what do you mean... "Aftertouch"? So after you touched it... It does something but I just... I couldn't get my head around it. Here we have the Minibrute from Arturia... ...they are French but Minibrute is actually written in English. It has Aftertouch which is this.. OK? You hit the key...it sounds kinda nice! ...but you can do... ...you hear that?... It's like being bit by a mosquito. I really love the filter on it... ...you know, you can put the resonance on FULL... ...to get all those kinda gooky, kraftwerky type sounds. Sounds like synths with a decimator on it... ...but whatever it does or however it does it... I think you can get some very vicious kind of sounds. It's the Brutalizer. That's brutal! I personnaly think it's great that... ...all this hardware stuff is coming out now. You know? It's what I grew-up with. And I think that there is nothing that you can compares to actually having your hands on a synth ...with knobs... and dials... and sliders... You know there is some amazing things that you can do with a soft synth... ...but at the end of the day you are still just using a mouse. You know for me... ...making sounds with a synth is also physical... ...so I can use two hands... ...and I dont know what I'm doing particularly. You know, you can kinda just miss about... you dont have to pre-think it all but just work it out. So you know I think all this resurgence in synths... ...in physical synths is a really cool thing Square wave,... ...Sine wave,... ...Noise, There is a filter,... ...Resonance,... Pretty cool! You've got all that... The MiniBrute does feature on my new...Electronic Dance Music record. And I'm using it a lot for basses at the moment... ... and also for lots of just odd "squicky squicky" sounds that would be working with different DJs and colaborators... ...remixes At the moment I'm just doing a remix for Dido which is kind of interesting... ... and the next Erasure record. ...which is being made now also. And that is actually going to be a Christmas record I did my first DJ set in...Texas. a couple of weeks ago which is really cool, I mean I was... ...you know, dead nervous because I've never done it before. but that kinda worked-out quite well. And hopefully rather than just play records, incorporate some of the technologies that I have into the shows as well. You know I can take along a sequencer or a synthesizer... ...and actually mix it into the stuff that I'm playing That's all very Pink Floyd..."On the run" That's also usefull. Excellent ending!