Your average electronic-music studio is a hodgepodge of hardware: Rack upon rack of synthesizers, drum machines, sequencers, effects, and all manner of inscrutable-to-outsiders black boxes—a warren of tangled cables and blinking lights. Things have gotten more streamlined in the digital era, but the packrat behavior prevails; virtual studios like Ableton and Logic, with their endless arrays of synths and plug-ins, encourage it even more. But lately, many electronic musicians have been adopting a less-is-more approach, the better to highlight the strengths—and quirks—of their favorite pieces of gear.
Though they also availed themselves of instruments like drums and electric bass, Mount Kimbie made their last album, Love What Survives, principally using just two synthesizers, the vintage Korg MS-20 and Korg Delta. Nathan Fake says “like 99.9 percent” of the synth parts on his last album, Providence, came from the Korg Prophecy, an “awkward” mid-’90s relic with an unlovely plastic shell but a thick, gorgeous sound. The Italian artist Modula has a new album for Edinburgh’s Firecracker label that was made almost entirely on the Yamaha PSS 780; only the drums were recorded using other machines. And Aphex Twin recently made news with a track recorded principally with a late-model monophonic analog synth; the result, “korg funk 5,” has racked up more than a quarter-million views in a little over three months, quickly distinguishing itself as what surely must be the world’s most popular hardware demo.
There must be something in the air, because a number of musicians have recently taken the impulse even further, recording entire albums using only a single piece of gear. As creative strategies go, it’s a no-brainer: Constraints are wonderful creative springboards to previously unimagined methods and workarounds. As one of Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies cards puts it, “It is quite possible (after all).”
Here are five recent albums whose creators stripped down their kit to just a single machine. It’s as close to unplugged as electronic music gets.
Synth of Choice: Korg MS-20
How It Was Made: For a few years, Stockholm’s Simon Haydo used the Korg MS-20, a semi-modular analog synth first released in 1978, in more or less conventional ways, fashioning basslines, chords, and leads with it. Then a friend sent him a link to a tutorial for creating kick-drum sounds on the machine, and a lightbulb turned on. Soon he was using the machine to do practically everything he needed, recording various parts—drums, leads, gravelly noises—into Logic and then arranging tracks on his computer.
He estimates that 90 percent of the sounds on his I Watch Them All as They Fall EP for Studio Barnhus were made using the MS-20. Earlier this year, he released REDUX, a nine-track album produced entirely using sounds from the MS-20, on John Talabot’s HVNX label. He used the same approach on his latest release, The Illusion of an Alternative Choice, out soon on Peder Mannerfelt Produktion, only allowing himself the occasional delay or reverb to flesh out the sound.
What It Sounds Like: Like REDUX, The Illusion of an Alternative Choice displays a chilly kinship with coldwave, analog techno, and even industrial music. Drums clank, synth leads shiver, and white noise blasts like a broken radiator. Throughout, the MS-20’s beast-like character is audible in every growling waveform.
What Was Learned: At first, Haydo expected that it might be difficult to keep various tracks produced entirely with the MS-20 from sounding too similar. “But actually, I didn’t run into any challenges,” he tells Pitchfork. “It was like I finally found my way of producing. Simplicity represents everything I stand for. I am basically ‘maximizing the use of less.’”
Synth of Choice: Korg Mono/Poly
How It Was Made: When he decides to take a break from making music in the studio, Cloudface—Vancouver, British Columbia’s David Reynolds—likes to sit back and let the music make itself. Quickly programming a simple drone or arpeggio on his Korg Mono/Poly, an analog synth from the early ’80s, he’ll listen to it for 20 or 30 minutes as it runs through its paces. “It’s a great way to reset my ears and my brain,” says the member of Vancouver’s Mood Hut crew. He made Variations exactly the same way, using the synthesizer’s arpeggiator and LFOs to keep the sounds in perpetual motion. The only additions to the setup were two delay pedals (Boss PS-2 and Strymon El Capistan), in order to lend more movement to the loops.
What It Sounds Like: Mood Hut’s output is often pretty chill to begin with, but aside from Slow Riffs’ perfectly titled “Gong Bath,” this is among the most purely ambient things to come from the Canucks so far. A swirling, pulsing affair full of muted tones and dusty hues, Variations is deeply meditative.
What Was Learned: “The concept to use only one synth for the album actually removed a lot of challenges,” Reynolds tells Pitchfork. “The process of making tracks, for me, can often get derailed by constantly adding pieces of equipment or editing and overdubbing to death. Once I had this idea, it all came together really easily; recording was started and finished over the course of a weekend.”
Synth of Choice: Korg Poly-800 mkII
How It Was Made: Germany’s Benjamin Brunn has been honing his synth chops for over 20 years, first using a Korg X3 workstation—no additional hardware, no computer, just a tape recorder—and later the Clavia Nord Modular, the machine that gave his contributions to a long-running collaboration with Move D their distinctive, silky glisten. For Pieces From a Small Corner of Paradise, he used only the Korg Poly-800 mkII, an eight-voice, hybrid digital/analog synth released in the mid 1980s, availing himself of its onboard sequencer and digital delay (but no overdubbing and no computer-based arrangement) to achieve a more complex sound.
What It Sounds Like: With all its parameters hidden beneath a mind-numbingly difficult menu system, the Poly-800 is notoriously difficult to operate in real time. Brunn compensates by programming quick-moving arpeggios and bright, jazzy chords that bristle with harmonics. It’s a sound as wispy as dandelion tufts scattering across the stereo field.
What Was Learned: “I liked the Poly-800 more and more the longer I worked with it, both because of its limitations and because I realized how great it sounds,” Brunn tells Pitchfork. “We fit together very well. The working title for the album was Love Affair With a Poly-800.” He acknowledges that certain aspects of the instrument—the janky sequencer controls, the “stepping” sound of the filter—can be a pain in the ass, “but they add to its character, which in total is loveable, just like with humans.”
Synth of Choice: Clavia Nord Modular G1, Clavia Nord Modular G2
How It Was Made: In his live shows, Brunn typically plays one of his Nord Modulars—an unusual “virtual modular” synthesizer that debuted in 1997— along with classic drum machines like the Roland TR-707 and TR-626. But for his second album this year, he stripped down to just the synths, taking advantage of their deep programmability to create dynamic, evolving sounds and sequences. Some tracks are single takes on the G1, others on the G2, and a few a combination of both. (He does resort to using a Casio keyboard on two tracks, but we’ll allow it.)
What It Sounds Like: If you like the glistening, almost ambient house music of Brunn and Move D’s Songs From the Beehive, you’re in luck, because this album offers 14 tracks of that same luminous vibe, but even more blissed out. The nuanced chords and quick-stepping sequences of Small Corner of Paradise return here, but the timbres are even fuller, suffused in squelch and click and ping. There are no drums, per se, but Brunn’s sculpted white noise lends a percussive edge in places, resulting in ambient techno as richly hued and deeply polished as gemstones.
What Was Learned: “When I make music, I don’t start with an idea or expectation of how the music should sound,” Brunn says. “It’s more like a conversation with the instrument, and the course of the conversation depends on the instrument, my mood, the time of day, the season. It’s a natural process, and therefore very pleasant.”
Synth of Choice: Casio CZ-5000
How It Was Made: The Amsterdam DJ (and Gaussian Curve member) Young Marco, aka Marco Sterk, has a serious rep as a crate digger; not for nothing did he helm the second edition of Dekmantel’s Selectors series, a set of compilations dedicated to oddball disco and hard-to-find dance music. But he discovered the identical twins Satoshi and Makoto on YouTube, where they have demos of their experiments on the Casio CZ-5000 going back six years or more. Sterk contacted the duo about releasing their music, and they responded with dozens of CDs and file folders full of material; that became the basis for an anthology out now on Sterk’s Safe Trip label.
They bought the instrument way back in 1986, and they’ve been making music with it ever since. The instrument’s digital engine lends a vivid, glossy timbre, and its eight-track sequencer makes it possible to program remarkably complex, multi-part compositions. (Since the synth’s only on-board effect is a chorus unit, they also used an external effects unit for delay and reverb.)
What It Sounds Like: Much like Cloudface’s album, CZ5000: Sounds & Sequences finds its sweet spot in hypnotically cycling arpeggios and cool, airy pads. On the opening “Flour,” they use out-of-phase cycles to lend the illusion of movement to their loops. And a little canny sound-sculpting of white noise gives a few tracks a flickering hint of rhythm, without detracting from the music’s billowing forms and psychedelic feel.
What Was Learned: Plenty of things are “impossible” with Satoshi & Makoto’s instrument of choice, but they regard these constraints as stepping stones to productive compromises. “For example, percussion sounds were difficult to make, so we made songs without rhythm tracks at first; then it became somehow ambient,” the duo tells Pitchfork in a joint email.
