Josh Abrabams Josh Abrahams’ name has been inextricably linked to Addicted To Bass, but Christopher Holder discovers there’s a lot more on his plate. n 1999 few people have been more influential in fur- has been signed by Sony, contracted by Baz Luhrmann thering the cause of dance music in the Australian to work on his latest film, and has moved his Fishtank Imainstream than Josh Abrahams. [Josh will thank me Studio to the commodious environs of the Festival for saying that when he’s being pursued by a bunch of building in Sydney. 40-year-old rock dinosaurs with greying pony tails, hitting I met Josh at Fishtank to discuss gear, Baz and his rare him over the head with their Led Zeppelin box sets and incurable bass addiction. shouting, ‘So it was you, ya bastard!’] Christopher Holder: I imagine when you set up shop Songs like Addicted To Bass and Thrillseeker finally here at Festival you were able to get everything ‘just jumped the Triple J hurdle and, via mainstream FM, so’. Is this your dream studio? found their way into every office, car, and kitchen in the Josh Abrahams: It’s certainly a room where I’ve got country. Addicted To Bass went top 20 and his album, access to almost anything that I want. The only thing Sweet Distorted Holiday, has been doing a brisk trade ever that’s lacking is a latest generation digital synth, like a since. Then there’s the ‘small’ matter of his double ARIA Korg Triton. I’ve got a whole wall of analogue keyboards, award winning triumph last month, which has done little analogue drum machines, old analogue effects units, and to harm his mainstream marketability. what’s great is that everything can be accessed from the Josh Abrahams production skills were honed during patchbay now. So, if I want to take a vocal sample and his time with the ARIA Award winning Future Sound Of run it through the filter on the MiniMoog I can. It’s great Melbourne. Josh’s star rose higher when DJ heavy- being able to think of a weird connection and then being weight, Carl Cox signed him up for a worldwide techno able to make it. release on his Ultimatum label. The result was The But I’m aiming for the studio to build up what I hope is Satyricon, an uncompromising dancefloor manifesto. the best of everything. We’ve got some great old mics Now, since the release of Sweet Distorted Holiday, Josh like the AKG C12 and a Neumann U87, and a new 34 Neumann KM184 which we’re going to use for drum insanely hard sounds. overheads and brass. We’ve also got the Manley VoxBox Then there’s my Roland TR909 techno drum as a preamp, which is very warm and smooth. machine, which also has mods on it by the same guy. CH: Anything here that you can see will need There’s a pot for the kick drum pitch, so I can tune it changing? really high or low, and there’s a switch for the pitch JA: I think the desk is the only thing. I like the Mackie 8- decay envelope on the kick – you can lengthen the bus, it’s really workable and I’m really on top of it, but for decay on the kick which can make it sound much more some reason it’s just a bit lame in the bottom end. The like a Simmons tom. There’s a long release on the white Mackie has a ‘sound’ to it and anyone who’s familiar with noise of the snare drum, so you can get a really long the Prodigy album will know that sound. It’s a very direct decay. The snare drum is composed of two different sound, very in your face, but now it’s a little too techno pitch oscillators, and a white noise generator, and I can or electronic for my liking. All the machines that I have pitch the different oscillator independently. There’s a are so electronic anyway that I tend to want to soften pitch control on the hi-hat, and there’s a mix pot on the them with the desk. But for the price, it’s unbelievably handclap which balances the white noise aspect and the musical and versatile. click part of the clap. They’re great mods. He has done CH: What did the Mackie 8-bus other mods which are so extreme replace when you bought it? that it’s very hard to get the JA: I moved from a Tascam 8-bus, machine to sound like a 909 any which was a desk that I really “I think more, but this is more of an enjoyed. Being into hard techno at enhanced 909, which I love. the time, I really liked overdriving the making baby CH: I see some Korg synths over gain, and it had a great bottom end. I there… also loved the Midi muting on the noises in the JA: The Poly 6 is a lovely pad Tascam. I was able to do a lot of machine and has a lovely built-in weird stuff by muting the effects middle of a phaser/flanger unit – a really great returns. The Mackie console doesn’t ‘80s string sound. The Korg have Midi muting, which I really want chorus really Monopoly, which is really whacky. at times. To make up for that I’ve got It has four oscillators, and you can a Midi-controllable eight channel works” force them through each other in Midi gate, called a Niche Audio different cross mod and sync type Control Module. It’s just a box of ways – you can really get that channel faders really, and you put it across the inserts. machine to scream. That way, the things which don’t receive Midi volume CH: And the rest? messages, like the analogue synths, can still be faded in JA: There’s the Sequential Circuits Pro One, which and out via Midi. sounds a little like anything by Depeche Mode – I CH: Talk us through your wall of analogue synths. actually suspect that this Pro One may have belonged to JA: I recently bought a Roland SH7, which I’ve fallen in Pseudo Echo at some stage in its life. Similarly the love with. The SH7 completes the set of four Roland SH Jupiter 8 has a very specialised sound – the minute you series synths I wanted. The SH7 and the SH5 are both huge beasts, there are all sorts of weird routing possibili- ties on the filter section and they both have ring modula- tors, which can also receive an external signal. For example, I can run a drum machine through the SH ring modulator against one of the synth’s oscillators, which normally produces something interesting. Then I’ve got the Roland SH9 and the SH2. They’re all great for fat bass sounds, just plug them in and you sound like Devo without trying. Next up is the MG1, which was actually made by Realistic and sold at Tandy stores. But it’s a design licensed from Moog – its actually a two oscillator MicroMoog in a Tandy package. I bought it from a guy in Melbourne’s west who does these bizarre modifications, and he put a couple of pots on the side for me. The first pot is a cross modulation pot, forcing Oscillator 1 through Oscillator 2, which gives you this really bizarre screaming cross mod sound. The second pot is a filter modulation which forces Oscillator 1 through the frequency of the cut-off filter, which results in some plug it in you’re such an early house sound, sounding like it’s too specialised to use the Eurogliders, extensively. or Icehouse – I enjoy these synths for but again, if you their fatness, or their partic- push it you can ular speciality. They all get it to sound sound very different from really extreme. one other. For example the The Roland Pro One might look quite TB303, which similar to the SH9, but it’s sits atop its own an incredibly different Mutron digital sounding machine. The delay unit. The SH9 is a single oscillator Mutron has a synth but it’s so fat. The Pro nice analogue One is a two oscillator front end so I synth and it’s quite thin actually use it as sounding, but it’s filter an overdrive routing makes it very unit, specifically Some of the analogue synths, including the Roland TR909 with mods, powerful. for the 303 which Korg Polysix, and Roland Jupiter 8. Top left is the Tandy MG1. CH: You talk about sounds so much more tougher if you put it through a little sampling your synths. Has sampling played a bigger overdrive. part in your production in general? The MiniMoog I bought quite recently. I don’t use it a JA: It has, yes. Currently I’m producing a solo album for great deal because it’s such a specialised sound – I Amiel, who sang on Addicted To Bass. Being a teen of the sample it more than I actually play it. I’m slowly getting ‘90s, she hears these old synths and complains that they into sampling my analogue synths rather than playing sound “…too ‘80s”. So it’s quite a tough job for me to use them directly. They’re all hooked up via two Kenton these machines and pull them into a more modern Pro4 Midi to CV converters, so often I’ll use them like context.