Important technical features

• Entire album produced on an Amiga using early 8 bit sounds/tracker software
• Early DAW technology but combined with hardware sounds
• Korg M1 synth (used in lots of 1990s house music)
• Akai S950/S3000 sampler (made famous by Fatboy Slim)
• Primitive / simple studio effects / bedroom musician / independent ethic
• Use of distortion to mask / make a creative feature out of Lo-Fi sounds
• Initial success through distributing music on the internet / MySpace

Track list

1. Merrymaking at My Place
2. Colours
3. This Is the Industry
4. The Girls
5. Acceptable in the 80s
6. Neon Rocks
7. Traffic Cops
8. Vegas
9. I Created Disco
10. Disco Heat
11. Vault Character
12. Certified
13. Love Souvenir
14. Electro Man

Background and context

What were you working on in the early days?

“Right at the start, when I was about 13 or 14, I only had an Amiga 500 Plus running a bit of tracker software called OctaMED. My brother was big into his computers and, when he moved up to a proper PC, I took charge of the Amiga. With the right interface, you could sample things off CD, so I used to nick loads of loops from Fatboy Slim albums and make my own tunes.

“In a sense, I suppose you could say that I immediately went on-board. I was working inside the computer. That computer just happened to be an 8-bit Amiga! I know we get all nostalgic about 8-bit samples, but, rest assured, the Amiga didn’t sound lo-fi and gritty. It just sounded… a bit rubbish. It probably didn’t help that the only monitors were the TV speakers from the second-hand TV in my bedroom.”

“My music landed in the hands of the right people at the right time… purely by chance. I was THIS CLOSE to giving up!”

How long did that set-up last?

“Not long. I moved up to an Amiga 1200 and, at Christmas, persuaded my parents to get me my first keyboard… a Korg M1. That was the great thing about being a kid. You could ask for bits of kit for Christmas and birthdays. I also managed to get a Zoom 1201 – an amazing little effects box for 99 quid! – and an Electrix Filter Queen.

“Without a doubt, that was the best present anyone has ever bought me! Sadly, it broke after about two weeks, but they were the greatest two weeks of my life. A real filter! A filter! I stuck everything through it. Twiddling and tweaking. To my young ears, it made everything sound brilliant! I have to mention the M1, too. I’ve still got it and I still consider it one of the best all- round keyboards you can get. I sometimes dig it out, just for old time’s sake. The piano sounds on it are amazing. Bizarrely, my early studio setup also included a lot of stuff from school. I had a very understanding music teacher who let me take home things like mics, mic stands, a mixer and an eight- track Minidisc recorder. That eight-track was a revelation. That’s how I learned to mix.”

Did the school get a credit on the first album?

“No, but I really ought to have thanked them! That gear kept me going for years. As soon as I left school, I had to give it all back and my studio suddenly looked very empty. I suppose that’s when I decided that I wasn’t going to university. If I went to uni, I’d have no money and that meant I couldn’t buy more gear.

So, I got a job. Just to earn money to buy more equipment. The music thing had really got me… I suppose it’s fair to say that I was obsessed. I didn’t go out. I didn’t really have many mates. I didn’t watch telly or go to clubs. I just listened to music and made my own tunes. It was probably all a bit unhealthy, but locking myself away like that meant I could really concentrate on the music.

“I remember going totally over the top with the Akai S950 – I managed to get it off this bloke in Carlisle for 200 quid. I knew every button and every switch.

I knew how to get the best out of it. I was mad about trying to get the drums to sound punchy. Chopping and tightening as much as I could. Eventually, I realised I needed some sort of compression too, so I put in loads of overtime at work and bought eight Alesis 3630 compressors!

Not one… eight of them! And I stuck one on every output of the S950. “I listen back to some of the tunes I made at the time and they just sound weird. Compressed all over the place, pumping and ducking and sounding terrible. What was I thinking?”

Had you started to send stuff out at this point? Or was it bedroom only?

“As soon as I finished my first demo, I started sending stuff to record companies. From the age of 14 to about 20, I bombarded record companies and DJs with my demos. I was desperate to get it out there. Most of the time, I got nothing back. Not even a letter telling me to sod off!

“I think the most I ever got was a pack of vinyl from some label and a note saying it wasn’t bad for a school kid. That was it… nothing else. I was more or less on the verge of giving up. By the time I was 21 or 22, I was getting pretty jaded. No one seemed to be that interested in what I was doing.

“That was when I joined MySpace. Obviously, no one uses MySpace anymore, but back then it was a Godsend. It was a way of getting my tunes out there. Adding loads of DJs and record labels to my list of ‘friends’.

Is it a question you get asked a lot… how do I get my music signed?

“There is no magic formula. It’s just about getting the music heard, but also being objective. I was really hard on myself before I got signed… and I still am. I try to look at every track from the outside. It’s too easy to get swept along when you’re banging stuff out in the bedroom. You have to stand back and say, ‘Is this good enough?’

“Thinking back, I was quite wary of that jump to Logic-World. Wary of suddenly having money and endless toys to spend it on.”

“And I suppose Twitter has taken the place of MySpace to an extent. It’s a good way of getting in touch with other people… DJs, people from record companies. Then there’s the Laidback Luke Forum. Afrojack came up through there. He does actually listen to stuff.”

What was the first album recorded on?

“All of that first album [2007’s I Created Disco] was recorded on the Amiga setup. It was all done in my bedroom in Dumfries, before I got any interest from the music business. “All I had was the Amiga 1200, the Korg M1 provided loads of sounds for the first album, a huge, 32-channel Soundcraft mixer, my 950 – at some point, that was upgraded to an S3000 – the Alesis compressors, the Zoom, a Line 6 echo-thingy, a Focusrite VoiceMaster Pro and a couple of AKG C1000 mics. That was it!

“The Focusrite was brilliant, because I could really crunch the vocals up and distort them to hell. That was my mixing technique. Distort everything to hell, then you don’t have to worry about things like EQ and balance. Distortion allowed me to work with my limited setup.”

I Created Disco – a Top Ten album in 2007 – was all made on the Amiga?

“Why not? The Amiga did a great job! Even after things started to take off, I did my best to carry on working with it. We were a team! Sadly, I realised it was probably time to give the studio a bit of a spruce-up. The Amiga – God bless it! – was put on the shelf, replaced by Logic with all the bells and whistles, and a Mac. I’m sure you’ve heard this loads of times, but that first jump to Logic is pretty spectacular. There I am, in my bedroom, with my trusty Amiga. All of a sudden, you’ve got a studio setup that’s as big as your budget and your imagination will allow.

“Thinking back, I was quite wary of that jump to Logic-World. Wary of suddenly having money and endless toys to spend it on. I’ve heard stories of bands that spend all their advance on gear, then the album tanks and they’re left with loads of gear and no cash. I was careful. I only bought the things that I really needed, but I didn’t go crazy. I didn’t need to. I was having enough trouble getting my head around Logic and trying to start work on the second album.”