Yeah, fuck it. I'll tell you the secret to it all. Say you've got a breakbeat and you chop it up into loads of different permutations and different start points. Then you map out all those variations onto your keyboard so that each key is a different version of the same break. You need to make sure they're all the same tempo and play at the same pitch, even though you're playing higher and lower notes on the keyboard. Some samplers call this non-transpose mode. Then you trigger all the different breaks with the same MIDI channel so that every sample cuts off the other note.This is how you get things to roll. Remarc used to do all his drums like that, with this mono-triggering technique. Once you do that, you mess about with pitches and the effects on each slice of the break. It's like opening the gates of Valhalla.Exactly. That's in perfect harmony with what you were saying about trackers being optimised for this sort of thing. Anyway, I twigged on to that technique and I remember doing it the next day and being like, "Right, this is the shit." Before that I was always wanting more polyphony out of samplers and now it's like, no, one sound at a time.I remember reading an interview with Goldie. He was talking about a series of DATs he made with 4Hero when they were working together at Dollis Hill. They were called the Expo DATs, which were basically disks full of sounds they'd sampled that were used for loads of tracks. The idea is that, instead of making a track and being done with it, you record part of your idea and then sample it. Then you use that as source material to make what becomes the final version. You're using the same sounds but in a different way. This opens up a whole other set of doors. You walk through one and it takes you down a whole other path.I think this is when you really put your own spin on something. We're talking in the hardcore-style sampling context here. This is when it becomes something more than collage. If you resample yourself enough you end up having less and less relation to the source material. It either leads you to a dead end or somewhere heavenly.I think to add texture and retain integrity you have to take the sound out of the machine, run it through a mixer, outboard, through samplers or whatnot. This assumes you have the luxury of external gear, which is great to have but absolutely isn't necessary for making good music.I don't want anyone to be discouraged by seeing or reading about expensive kit. I use all sorts of equipment and different rooms, but you don't need all of this to make great music. All you need is imagination. Anyone can make a record using a cheap drum machine and some ingenuity. The most important thing is what's in your mind. If your mind is in the right place you can make a work of art with anything.There is amazing software out there now for degrading the sound but I personally don't think it's ever really been properly cracked in the digital domain. But I think it'll happen. There's probably some lunatic out there who'll figure it out.For years I was trying to do the opposite, making things cleaner and cleaner. This is when microhouse and minimal were in vogue. I worked towards a really stripped-down setup and was super conscious of where all the cables were running to avoid picking up any hum. But eventually I was like, "What the fuck are you doing?" Nowadays it's rare that I try and rough stuff up intentionally because I'm usually using signal paths that sound vibey anyway. I've been using this Oberheim kit lately and they sound brilliant, super '70s but not in a naff way.I've got the Two Voice. I wanted it for so long. The signal path I'm using with it puts quite a bit in the way but you can really play it on its own. Run it through the cheapest mixer and it'd probably sound better than going through an SSL. So that's an example of something where you don't need to degrade it because it's got its own thing going on that's evocative anyway. If there's no vibe there I'm going to ditch the idea pretty quickly in any case. I've found over the years that, the more ruthless you are with ideas, the more stuff you bin that you're on the fence about, the more you achieve. You only want to use sounds that you love.Yesterday was an example of the longest I'd go. I woke up at ten to five in the morning, god knows why, so I went and recorded loads of really lush synths, tonnes of them. Maybe about an hour and twenty minutes of stuff from three bits of kit. I picked the parts I liked, took the audio to a different studio I've rented, laid out the parts and then spent three fucking hours trying to add a particular style of drums to it. There was something of substance to those drums but they were also lumpy and leaden in this context where all the synths were soaring. I kept pushing and persevering with it and three hours later went to the loo and thought, "What a load of bollocks, bin it." Then I approached it with a different style of drums and in less than ten minutes it was popping. Whole track was done 50 minutes later.The best ones always come together in record time. You're not even thinking about it. It's like the idea was just hanging there on a tree saying, "C'mon, pluck me." And you're like, "Alright, wicked." There was another tune I was working on yesterday where I was trying to add more parts to it, but you've got to be ruthless. Step back and ask yourself: does it really need it? Nope, doesn't need fuck all. Knowing where that point is between adding too much and there being not enough, it's tricky. That's what I've gotten better at over the years, not trying to crowbar more parts in when it's not necessary.I went through a phase a few years ago where I wanted everything to be huge and epic. Now I can write a three-minute tune and be happy with it. If it feels like it gets cold along the way I'm happy to chop it down.Yeah man, rack mount E4XT Ultra.The E-Mu E4 Ultra series were the best hardware samplers ever made. Of course people like to argue about this because they all have different characters but I always thought they were the best. But actually I started off with an Akai S2000 when I was 18 or 19. A guy was engineering for me called Jamie Sefton, he had one. I'd read about them and seen them in photos of people's studios in magazines but I'd never seen one in the flesh.I was made redundant from a job I had at a DIY store around that time. I was getting something like £400 a month and they gave me three months pay as severance. I spent it all on an S2000. My parents were like, "What have you done!" And I'm like, "Yeah, I got this massive cream box that I don't know how to use." But I was so happy to have a real sampler because I was botching it for years.Then E-Mu's Ultra stuff started coming out. The E4 Ultra series has these certain AD convertors. I didn't know this at the time but they are proper lush. Whatever you put into it, it simultaneously gains this heaviness but also a high definition quality. You can also sample at 48kHz so you can have a very clear sound if you want it, although downsampling to 22kHz sounds amazing on a lot of things. Then there are the morphing Z-Plane filters and the super extensive modulation matrix. It's almost like a modular synth.The great thing about the E4XT Ultra is it has an internal 4 GB hard disk so you're not pissing about with zip drives. You can do and undo so you can try things out, which doesn't sound like much in the age of computers but is a pretty big deal in this context. It can sample its own outputs, too. You know how I was talking about resampling yourself, well you can do that internally here. It's got brilliant effects, which you can obviously resample as well and build up layers upon layers of different effects. It's got so many levels to it. It's a deep machine. But once you get into it, it's got a sound that's unlike anything else.I still use it now. I laid off it for a while but when I got back into it I immediately realised why I fell in love with it in the first place. I will never get rid of it. I've actually got a whole stack of them. Four of them are damaged, the fallen soldiers. Leila Arab who used to put out records on Rephlex put me in touch with a guy who fixes them so unfortunately for him he'll be getting a delivery of four broken E-Mus soon.One of them I got from a guy in a tower block in Birmingham. I think he was in Sandwell actually. I see this big old imposing tower and there's about 25 kids hanging about and I'm thinking, "This is a bit dodgy isn't it." I get in the lift up to his flat and the place looks like Fort Knox. I felt shitty because he didn't really want to sell it. So I go back down the lift and walk back out with this great big metal box while all these lads are lurking about outside. I was thinking, "I hope the cab's still there." I think I got it for £300. They were five grand when they came out!