The drums are classic eighties synthpop, and came from the Linndrum, a drum machine that uses samples of real drum hits. Producer Paul Hardiman heard one of the early versions of the song and said “The first time I heard ‘Running Up That Hill’ it wasn’t a demo, it was a working start. We carried on working on Kate and Del’s original. Del had programmed the Linndrum part, the basis of which we kept. I know we spent time working on the Fairlight melody hook but the idea was there plus guide vocals.”

Linndrum samples are plentiful online, and Ableton Live comes with a basic Linndrum kit called Core-LD. ELPHNT also has a free Ableton drum kit called LM-1 which offers better control over individual drum tuning, and I’ve used that for the example below. Some special things about the song’s drum track are the timing and the effects, the drums are off-grid with most of the hits coming before the beat, and everything has been run through reverb, including the kick. I used Valhalla VintageVerb again, with 1.4s / 12% mix on the kick and 2.9s / 30% on the snare, then a short but thick reverb with 0.39s / 25% on the whole drum channel. In isolation, this sounds like way too much reverb, but the rest of the tracks help soak up some of the reverb tails, and the end effect is that the drums are pushed into the back of the mix.