Massive Aphex Twin Interview with Tons of Synth Talk

You'll find the full interview at noyzelab

Some interesting bits regarding the EMS SYNTHI 100 pictured below and the three KORG PS3300's to the left which were originally owned by Dave Simmons.

On unusual ways of making sounds with the EMS SYNTHI 100: "2nd thing that comes to mind is putting a bank of ldr's and a few thermistors over the oscilloscope of the synth 100, its 20 ldr's and 3 or 4 thermistors, so you get a nice visual feedback thing going on, sounded insane, got to record it next time! pitch transition were so nice..also got to record synthi100 with all oscillators synced,..that IS a sound...all oscs on that thing have sync

but like that you are going from electricity to light waves then back to electricity and then finally to sound waves in air, top...oh and then electrochemical in yer hed and then.......______ s100 with ldr's+thermistors

ive got a cv in control on the lights of the synthi 100 so can also use those to operate the ldr's, also putting the bank of ldr's behind a fish tank with light on other side, fish modulation :)"


On the three KORG PS3003's "so going back to about 93/94 ish there were 3 for sale in loot newspaper london for £10k for bloody ages, like 6 months or something, nobody was buying them! I mean i remember thinking that was a shit load of cash then even. so i went too see them, I had about £2k to my name then to live on and i would've dropped the lot on one of those bad boys so thought id go and see if i could get one of them at least. Went around with my friend vic, it turned out it was owned by Dave simmons of simmons drum fame! and his wife! was so cool to find that out but was REALLY bad atmosphere because they were SO SO nice to us, very welcoming showed us the synths , played us their music even , they didn't know who the fuk i was, even if id told them they wouldn't have known who i was.. but it became pretty apparent to me they were very in need of the money prob coz his business had gone down tubes, bought 3 korg ps3300's in better times for god knows how much...they even made us dinner thinking I was going to buy all 3 , it became really horrible atmos..then i was like ill buy one of you ...silence...tumbleweed..., here I've got 2k in cash now! they were so sad and didn't sell it to me , so i went home also sad.. then ffwd about 6 years and better money times for me and I was buying up loads of cheap analog on ebay and i thought i wonder what happened to those 3 korgs, id heard a rumour cold cut had bought them, pulled some strings and realised matt black lived literally 5 mins away from me! so i thought ok, its destiny. went to see him, they were all fucked, but working AND midi'd, he'd midi'd them. Matt, really lovely guy, was very friendly and lushly agreed to sell me one, it was unusable, used it on fenix funk for the mental spectral sounds at the beginning with pitch bend applied to it oh and dissonant sounds at end.