by Stephen Fortner, Executive Editor
It must be such a chore to be Depeche Mode! Want to record a new album? Take the demos that you and your bandmates have been doing on your laptops, book a studio, and bring in all kinds of vintage synths and drum machines that you've found in shops and won on eBay. I think it's official - Martin Gore owns one of everything! As promised, and as a teaser for our big story on their new album Sounds of the Universe in the upcoming May issue, here are the last in a series of pictures shot by album producer Ben Hillier.
In case they've fallen downscreen in the Latest News section of our website, here are direct links to Parts I and II of our sneak preview:
Part I
Part II with contest: Identify the gear in the picture, win the new CD and a free subscription!
Here are the latest pics. Click on the thumbnail to open a full-sized pic in a new window.
Ferg Peterkin, recording engineer on Sounds of the Universe. It's entirely a coincidence that his last name is only one letter short of Peter Kirn, who interviewed the DM gents and wrote the story. Behind and to the left of his head is the seemingly ever-present EMS VCS3 synth, a later version of which (the EMS Synthi AKS) was made famous in the then-cutting-edge synth experiment "On the Run" from Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. Behind and to the left of the VCS3, if you look really close, you can see the back of a Korg Poly-800, sitting atop an Ace Tone Rhythm Ace unit. The Rhythm Ace was seriously old school - we're talking one of those "boom-chucka" boxes with a "Bossa Nova" button, people. In the upper right corner of the pic, that's a racked pair of one of the most coveted analog gems among synth hunters, the ARP 2600. Moving to Ferg's work area, we have (sitting just behind the white MacBook) a Tonelux V8 "lunchbox" rack system for preamps, EQs and such, sitting atop a pair of Summit Audio TLA-100A tube compressors, which are sitting on top of an Empirical Labs FATSO analog tape emulator. Ferg is working at a Mac Pro with a Euphonix MC-Mix control surface.
More vintage drum machines than humans should be allowed - with a few analog synths thrown in for good measure. I'll update this story to include IDs of all these as soon as the contest posted yesterday is complete, but for now, I'll leave you the fun of figuring it out. Please note, to win the contest, you just need to identify the gear in yesterday's picture.