EDITORIAL: Self-Iso Music Set Up Pt. 2
Part two of our series looking into the home studios of local artists…
Despite toilet paper and canned food stocks being somewhat replenished, the global COVID-19 pandemic still sees us locked indoors. Moving naturally through the many phases of being in quarantine, society is currently in the vice-like grip of coping mechanisms like finishing 5,000 piece puzzles. Or baking sourdough bread. Or watching live DJ streams and leaving comments like ‘Anyone selling googs?’'. Overall, it’s fair to say the #iso-life is starting to wear thin.
With our sanity well and truly at the verge of collapse, a plus side to our new way of life has seen a lot of creatives channelling their energy into finishing projects, picking up new skills, and using their art to unify a somewhat solitary world. And nothing gets a project finished like receiving inspiration from an artist you look up to.
In that spirit, we present you with part deux of our Self-Iso Home Studio series which takes you into the creative spaces of your favourite DJs. For this round, we take a peek inside the home studios of Otologic, Jennifer Loveless, Whiskey Houston, Luen, Ben Fester, MTLDA and Hyper Binary. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, it’s not crucial to your understanding of this project as a whole (like Episode 3 of Tiger King), but no doubt, it’s an excellent accompaniment.
Disclaimer* There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using your time to complete puzzles, make sourdough, and watch live DJ streams in isolation - or even do nothing at all.
📸 Otologic by Hamilton Coates
‘Our studio is at Tom's place and is made up of various gear the two of us have acquired over the years, and some particularly nice things our friend Tornado Wallace couldn't transport to Berlin. We record everything through the Allen & Heath Zed-R16 desk and send it out to various outboard effects like the Roland SRE-555, RE-201, DOD R-908 and Ensoniq DP/4. Tom's dog Simba guards it all with his life. At Nick's we have an ARS 9000 mixer and Technics turntables. There we plan to catch up on some mixes for friends that we promised years ago but haven't found the time to finish until now.
Recording our NTS radio show from isolation is also kind of normal for us, being on the other side of the world, but we're doing that too alongside cooking, recording some new music and finishing off old projects and, of course, cleaning the studio - thank you for giving us a reason to 😉’
📸 Jennifer Loveless by Duncographic
My home DJ set-up is two Technic SL-1200 MK 2 turntables, two Pioneer CDJ-450s, a Vestax PCV-275 mixer, a Pioneer RMX-1000, and a Technic SU-VZ220 amp.
We're currently in an unprecedented time with many people suffering, particularly those already doing it rough. Community support is key, especially checking in on your friends and family that are working in healthcare and aid. In terms of my work, this time has made me realise just how much my self-worth is tied to my output. I am interested in operating in a different way.
One good thing has been that much of this time feels like my early teen years, where time seems to be infinite and restrictions plenty. In theme with those years, sleep has resurfaced, as have long video chats and phone calls, video games and finding the time to be playful and unintentional. Those are all things I have "lost the time for" over the years through the anxiety and stress of having to do more and better, constantly (capitalism). This feeds into the way I am approaching music listening, production, and life in general - and that is a good thing.'
📸 Whiskey Houston by William Hamilton Coates
My partner Millú and I have a studio in our house that we share. In the DJ booth, we run 2 x Technics 1210MK2's, 2 x XDJ700's, and we switch the inputs between a Pioneer DJM900 and a Condesa Lucia, depending on what kind of mixing we want to do. I've been a big fan of the Equator Audio monitors since I first invested in good speakers. We use a combo of the D5's and Q8's, which is definitely too loud for the suburb we live in. I recently bought an Apogee Duet audio interface to rip records with my Condesa so an upside of iso is that it's giving me plenty of time to get stuck into that job.
I'm really looking forward to these endless days of cleaning up my Rekordbox files and organising the walls of records not pictured here. The Aus dollar isn't going to improve anytime soon, so at least I won't be adding to the chaos with countless Discogs regrets for a long while.’
My Mumma took these photos of me in the studio last night (pic below). I moved in with her a week ago, the day before the QLD border shut! We actually broke down in our old 1991 ute on the way here, so we packed the gear into a hire van with a bunch of house plants, some pumpkins from our veggie patch and our puppy 'Muzzy'.
I've brought a Behringer DeepMind 12 and Neutron semi-modular, my favourite synthesizer the MiniNova - inherited from my housemate Ciara - and these baby Genelec speakers (propped up with Harry Potter hardcovers). During the isolation, I'm hoping to get my parents garden pumping and write a new EP.
Ben Fester
‘Welcome to my crib. My set up is located in the little sunroom off of my bedroom. I have two Technics and a Pioneer 800 mixer that has ghosts inside of it. I also have a CDJ that I keep under my bed because when I turn it on it just says “wait” for ages, and I'm over waiting. I’m lucky to have my studio a couple of minutes walk from my house, so I’ve been going there to work quite a bit. When I'm not there, I’m finally ticking some long overdue boxes around the house while hanging with my partner and Bagel (pictured) who are both W.F.H. at the moment.’
‘I’ve had a dedicated studio space since the end of last year - until then I was working from my bed(room) and just using headphones. Thankfully friends with full setups have let me record mixes and practice at their place over the years! Now I’ve got a Technics turntable and Adam Audio monitors to listen to records. To write music I use Ableton, with a Push controller and midi keyboard. To sample I have a Korg Electribe ES-1, Yamaha DX-7 (thanks mum), a couple of microphones and a Yamaha acoustic guitar.
During self-isolation, I’ve actually been writing mostly with my guitar - it’s been nice to step away from techno for a little bit. I think breaks are necessary for most pursuits. I’ve also been trying to do things I don’t normally find the time to do, which is mostly browsing aimlessly on the internet, and reading articles I never got round to, or researching for future music/life/events/ideas. I think this time inside has made me realise how full-on my schedule normally is, and makes me want to tone it down a little so that I always have some time to just sit in front of my computer for no reason!! My creativity sort of thrives in this environment - when there are no time frames imposed...
Hyper Binary
My DJ setup has a Xone:92 mixer which I am in love with and 3 CDJ-900 Nexus, it's always more fun with 3-4 CDJs! My studio setup is stripped back now as I had a bunch of hardware but has moved more into the box (Ableton). The hardware I still use is the Elektron RYTM MK2 alongside the Adam A7X monitors which makes the studio really enjoyable.
During isolation, I have been trying to stay sane ha! Also, I've been working a lot in the studio to write as much as possible for overseas labels as I have some releases out this year.
