Liam’s not entirely happy with the results of surgery.
Pride of place in Liam’s analogue collection goes to a Minimoog, complete with a MIDI retrofit.
It’s all MIDI’d up, but I’ve not had the chance to use it! I get stuff from John Young Music Control up north - he looks out for the old synths.” I had a JD-800 but I didn't like it - I swapped it for the Jupiter-8, which has now broken down. Like every other techno artist, Liam has a big interest in analogue equipment. The only downfall is that it’s only got 16 tracks I get round the problem by MIDIing two together to get 32.” “A lot of people use the Atari ST for sequencing,” says Liam, “but I’m so used to using the W-30 that I don't want to move away from that I know it both inside and out. Although the setup contradicts all those helpful guidelines about using Thru boxes instead of daisy-chaining and putting the drum machine first in the chain, the recorded evidence proves that it creates no timing delay problems.Īll sequencing is performed by the W-30 and recorded directly through an impressive Tascam 32-track desk to DAT. This means it has to sit at the end of a lengthy MIDI daisy-chain beginning at the W-30. The Roland TR-909 comes with only MIDI In and Out ports fitted. I started with the W-30, then I got a U-220 and a 909, the old house drum machine.” “Most of the money I got from Charly was spent on a mixer, the studio, all the bits I needed. He’s been building up his kit for about a year and a half. In the studio Liam writes, produces and records everything by himself. The trio then met a rapper, MC Maxim Reality, after playing their first gig at “the roughest venue in the country,” the Four Aces in Hackney. Liam was approached by two dancers, Leeroy and Keith, at his local club, the Braintree Barn. That’s when the band really started to come together.” XL put out some of the tracks as the What Evil Lurks EP it managed to sell about seven or eight thousand and was a minor underground hit. “All the others were top-quality demos, done in the studios, and mine was raw and ropey, almost noisy.
“I think that’s what probably attracted XL,” he says. To record the demo, Liam used the eight separate outputs of the W-30, assigning a different sample to each channel and then mixing down to tape, The results were very rough, but this worked to his advantage.Ī lot of people use the Atari ST for sequencing, but I’m so used to using the W-30 that I don't want to move away from that I know it both inside and out. I spent 1990 going out raving, looking at the scene and listening to the music, carefully, and in October I took a demo to XL, who then signed me up.” “After watching N-Joi, Adamski and Guru Josh on stage, I thought ‘I can write this music myself!’ I’d already bought a W-30 with which I was writing hip-hop stuff but I’d had no success, so I moved over to house. I got fed up with that, and ended up moving to Braintree in ‘89, just as the rave scene was taking off. “I joined a group called Cut to Kill but down in London we didn't get the respect we deserved, ‘cause basically hip-hop is a black scene. “I was into hip-hop music then,” he recalls. Liam started making his own music back in the heady days of 1986. People say ‘Why did you put that into the charts?’ We say ‘You bought it, you put it into the charts, not us.” Dirty W-30 “We’re not trying to commercialise the rave scene the records get in the charts because people buy them. Liam denies any blame: “We know the music and the scene really well and we try to stay true to that,” he says. With the chart successes has come criticism: some say rave and techno music has been lifted from its rightful underground roots and given too much exposure by the likes of The Prodigy.