Surgeon Interview

Actually it’s probably the Pulsar-23, one of the channels seems to be a bass channel with resonant filter.

I thought it might be a bit unruly for melodic lines, but seems to have a MIDI in for pitch.

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“Ultimately, it’s about knowing yourself and realising what works for you rather than looking at person X and deciding to make music in the same way they do."
Most important part of the interview.

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I can tell you from experience that’s not true. Surgeon is at a different level than most other techno performers, he works to the crowd (as all good techno should) and if you’ll pardon the shit metaphor, paints a new picture every set using the same brushes and palette. I booked him years back and not only is he a wonderful down to earth human, he also knew that our (small and obscure) city liked it harder, so geared his set to that, and nearly levelled the place :joy: Idk how many other artists would take the time to do that tbh.

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Yeah seen him multiple times from small sweaty clubs to big clubs and festivals and he’s always delivered. From dj sets to live he’s always progressed and never got lazy or samey. He’s up there with the best for me as a producer and performer

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what I really like about Surgeon interviews is the way he’s talking slowly while looking at his gear as if he’s calculating every possibility of each knob and button, like he’s preparing for a chess game with his gear, playing every combination of possibilities in his head.
and yeah, his sets are very diverse with any gear in front of him…

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Just to clarify, he is saying here that he does not use the loop recorder on the Pulsar 23, citing the need for tighter loops in techno.

Fair enough, missed that.

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Surgeon does so much with so little. He’s inspiring me to shed some gear for sure.

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Same here a real inspiration and he seems like a real humble nice and down to earth stand up guy. Just with my Roland SP 404 MK2 and small 4u modular setup can do a lot for live shows.

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I’m a long time Surgeon fan but not to the point where i would listen to a whole album at home. When i skipped through the new album i thought, yeah this is cool but nothing special. But yesterday i bought it (yes i’m old and still actually buy music:), had a little vape and danced to the continous mix of the album. What a blast!

When you dance it really makes sense and all the parts mix into each other very well. There’s nothing totally new or groundbreaking about it but it’s hard to find such a well “composed” techno album. It sounds like the raw techno i love without a lot of gimmicks but also has enough creative ideas to keep me focused. Hard to describe but this album convinced me again that Surgeon is one of the best.

I’d love to see him live at some point. Unfortunately he’s so big now that most of the places he plays are totally packed and i like to have a bit of space to dance around me.
That’s why i like his new album even more. It gives me a kind of live feeling even when i’m at home.

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great interview, there’s another kinda medium length one done at schneidersladen when he was using the octatrack. It’s pretty funny, he mentions a couple times “i have no musical training” and when he’s asked a question about how many bars the OT loops for he got uneasy again lol

Love to see it, yea i think online it’s a bit of an echo chamber we’re simply a small slice of all the people who buy these things. Believe it or not there’s tons of people who couldn’t be assed about feature sets and price cuts/hikes and new competing equipment and just want to make people dance. It’s refreshing

anywho here’s the SL youtube clip. Great watch and all us elektron nerds can swoon over the OT as center piece lol

i really like Lady Starlight’s stuff too. She’s using an OT Mk2 and rytm mk2 quite a lot. I will add one of her sets here as it is banging and a lil less industrial but related as they’re performance partners for a while

enjoy! hope this wasn’t too off topic

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He’s actually got a few (3?) full live performances on youtube via ASW, worth checking out if you haven’t.

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