Jonny White: The gear question. {laughs} well, kenny is probably better suited to answering that question, the guy has probably spent like 100K in the last year alone on equipment. Personally, I’m not a techy guy per say, but one of the pieces I’m in love with is the Jupiter 8. I’ve been looking for one for a while. Not that it mattered because I couldn’t really afford one back then. I was lucky enough to find one on this Asia tour, and I’m really stoked about that, but like I said, I’m not a big techy guy, as long as I’ve got the tools to get the sounds out of my head, I’m good.
Kenny Glasgow: Ah the studio, my favourite space both mentally and of course physically to be trapped in. At the moment Art Department music is developed in three different work spaces; Jonny’s setup in Barcelona, my smaller setup in London, and a slightly larger setup in Toronto. At the moment, in my work space, for effects I’m using a Lexicon pcm96, Ensoniq dp4, Eventitide h7600, for drums and vox processing I use a Drawmer 1960 dual tube compressor, Drawmer 1961 vacuum tube eq, Avalon vt 747sp compressor (for those who don’t know vt stands for vacuum tube), Avalon vt 737sp pre amp, Focusrite 215 mic pre amp, for drum modules I use a Veroma analogue drum synth, Roland tr 808, Machine Drum, Roland tr 707, Emu sp 1200, for synths I use a Nord rack 2, Nord Stage, modified Yamaha DX7, Yamaha DX100, Yamaha cs30, Moog Voyager keyboard, Moog Minitaur, Mini Moog Model D, Roland Alpha Juno 2, Roland Super Jupiter, Roland Jx3p/w programer (definitely not one of Roland’s better sounding analogue synths but if you know how to get the best out of the few sounds it does have coupled with the easy use of the external programer you can, without much effort create some really cool noises. Both the alpha juno 2 and the jx3p were used lots in our first album), Roland Jupiter 8 (and I type that with the most respect, a classic and a favourite amongst many electronic music composers), Prophet vs These modules, drum machines and synths pass through a midas venice 24 channel mixing board, into a fireface sound card and then arranged sequenced and recorded as a song using logic pro on a Mac tower or Mac book pro. The setup is very catered to me and what I need to to get the sounds I’m looking for.
Impressive… the tech fiends can stop drooling now. Our readers won’t know this story, but right before you guys hit it big you were doing Sunday afternoon party called “day camp” with the likes of Carlo Lio and a bunch of international artists on the regular, and Jonny, you and I one day left mid party, because you were wearing jeans and it was like 40 degrees so I accompanied you for a shopping trip. We ended up in a foot locker and you bought a pair of shorts and got a second pair for free, which you offered to me, but I forgot to get them from you before the end of the party... still have those shorts? {laughs}
[Jonny White]
Oh my god YES! {laughs} I shit you not, those shorts are still in my closet at our place in Toronto, tag’s probably still on them!