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Front Line Assembly Wilhelm Leeb on Analog Versus Virtual
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by Drew Hinshaw
 Bill Leeb’s 24-year-deep discography with industrial techno project Front Line Assembly (and before that, Skinny Puppy) thrums, buzzsaws, and
shrieks like a near-exhaustive history of the synth in EBM—from noisy, atomic-age Doepfer modular racks with spaghetti spilling out of jacks to
hum-free soft synths. This summer’s release, Improvised Electronic Device throbs like it could have fallen out of The Matrix and into a sinister,
Rammstein-era basement lounge.
Tell me about the synths
you use for a record
like this.
I’m still a firm believer in stuff
like the Pearl SY-1 [Syncussion,
shown] and the Oberheim
Matrix-12. I also have an
OSCar, a Minimoog, a Micromoog, and a Multimoog.
Your Doepfer A-100 modular—that’s quite a piece of machinery.
Do you prefer to compose on modular synths?
It’s just different. I’ve got a storage room full of old gear from 20 years
ago, and I don’t know if any of it works anymore. Nowadays with virtual
synths, you just pull up the programs and bang, you’ve got it. But
those little keyboards . . . every time you turn them on—if they work, if
they tune—it’s really labor-intensive. Still, their sounds are better than
virtual synths. They have character. They have noise, because they’re
coming out of a real machine. And they never sound the same twice.
When you’re dealing with that much gear, how do you handle
option anxiety?
I focus on the songwriting. For me, it’s all about that. After all these years
of doing it, you just kind of hear things. You know in your head how
things are going to work out.
 What part of an arrangement or mix usually requires the
most attention?
Vocals are the trickiest—that’s where you really have to finesse it the
most. You can sort of do the words when you’re sitting at home listening
to the music, but when you get into the studio, things don’t always
sound the way you envisioned them. I just find that with music like this,
it’s a work in progress even until the day you do mastering.
When you’re so deep into a project, how do you like to listen
to it? Do you go sit in your car?
Greg [Reely, engineer] loves Genelecs—he’s been swearing by those. We
used to use Yamaha NS10 speakers, and I still have a pair. They sound
really harsh, but the whole thing is, if [the music] sounds good there,
it’ll sound good anywhere, right? I have a really nice car stereo. I also
have a pair of Tannoys, and between all those, I can get a pretty solid
reference. When Greg gives me a rough mix, I can take it home and I
can tell, usually right away. WEB EXTRAS
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