Clive From Accounts: “Having lots of gear can be paralysing; being limited forces you to push those boundaries”Clive From Accounts AKA Richard Day is not a producer to put in a box. He prides himself on being able to tap into myriad genres and styles from around the world, while still honing in on his love of 90s hip hop and house, something that is evident through his new record, The Very Best of Clive From Accounts.

READ MORE: DESTIINO: “I think it’s outdated now to mix on a desk; DAWs work well if you know how to use them”

Born in London, the self-described “stationary cupboard loiterer” offers synth-heavy releases which are famously meticulous yet detailed, offering very precise music-making that he’s previously admitted can drive him slightly insane. The new album follows the ‘Alan EP’, a record composed almost entirely from Alan Partridge samples. If that doesn’t demonstrate someone’s ability to make something out of nothing, it’s hard to know what will.
He talks to MusicTech about some of the gear that shaped this latest release, where he sources his samples, as well as whether it’s really possible to recreate the sound of records from the 70s.

Congrats on the release of your new album The Very Best of Clive from Accounts! Two of your new singles incorporate music from around the world, with Konsumu Suru which is inspired by Japanese music and culture and Heavier bringing in Afro Beats. How do you approach making new and diverse styles?
The whole album is quite varied in style really, but it wasn’t a conscious thing, as I’m just used to listening to a lot of different genres so that’s what tends to interest and excite me. I don’t come from a strictly house background, but much more from 90s drum n bass and hip hop which then led me to deep dive into the older records they sampled. The love for house came later, so I approach making it in a slightly different way – basically not knowing what I’m doing!
In terms of producing I only have one rule which is never to start with a template or stick to a formula. That way the music can go anywhere and each track becomes its own little universe.
The flip side to working in this way is you’re going to make a lot more “mistakes” but that’s what getting better is all about. Throw yourself in the deep end and make as many mistakes as possible.

Your music offers a retro early 00s feel with your use of old synths and tape. Why is this sound so sought after in contemporary electronic music? How does it add to your music?
I’m mainly trying to sound like something from the 70’s meets the mid 90’s. That’s where my heart really lies. In those beautifully imperfect synth, tape, and gritty sampler textures.
Saturation gives lots of flavour but what I really like about analogue synths and tape, is that you could listen to a repeated note for ten minutes straight but all the micro-changes in pitch and timbre make it feel alive and compelling. You can get quite a few plugins that emulate these effects and I’m definitely not an analogue purist. Whatever gets you there. I used to use a Revox PR99 reel to reel but it broke down almost weekly and there’s only about three people left in the country that service them. Anything you can do to add movement and life to digital recordings is helpful.
Clive From Accounts’ studio. Image: Press
Tell us a bit about your studio.
I’ve been making music a while so I have gone through quite a few different setups. From sitting on my bedroom floor with a Boss SP303, to a studio in an old kitchen (the kitchio) with my Akai MPC 2000xl balancing over a sink, to a rented place in Tottenham that was basically a triangle shape – I don’t recommend that!
Right now I’m very lucky to have built a standalone studio in my garden in Finsbury Park, North London. We live in a two bedroom place, so when our baby came along we needed to rethink things. Building it from scratch meant I could properly think about acoustics from the ground up. The room dimensions plus the enormous DIY bass traps make it sound pretty balanced. I’ve used correction software in the past but here I’ve just tried to learn how the room sounds.
For monitoring I use PMC two 5s, plus the sub, a mono mixcube, Focal Clear headphones and I recently picked up a pair of Adam D3V which are actually really impressive for the price and a nice contrast to the others.
Image: Press
What’s your latest gear or plugin purchase?
I quite recently got my hands on a Dinsync RE-303. That thing is a beauty. I’ve built a 303 clone in the past but this is just next level. The main circuits are exactly the same, using vintage parts and it has that perfect rubbery squelch but with added midi. Pricey but definitely worth it.
The 303 lines on Save Me and Clive By Night are from that.
Dinsync RE-303. Image: Press
What’s the best free plugin you own?
I love Little AlterBoy by Soundtoys which was free back in the day. I use the formant shifting a lot, you can hear that on Riko Dan’s vocals in the breakdown section of my track Heavier.
If we’re counting Ableton stock plugins then Drift is a great little instrument – I used that for the mains chords in Konsumu Suru.
What’s been the biggest investment in your career/studio?
Other than the studio building costs, my Studer 169 desk is one of the biggest investments I’ve made over the years.
Combined with a patchbay I have it set up so all my synths and DIs are routed through but can easily be swapped out with channels from the DAW. My tech, Margo, made an individual balanced outs box so I can record each channel directly back into the computer if needed. That means I can do a mini analogue mix using the nice EQs and subtle transformer saturation but still have everything separated in Ableton. I tend to use the main outputs for tracking though as they have extra character and the rest of my chain (Silver Bullet mk2, Pultecs, WesAudio Dione & Rhea) follows from there. I like to colour things as much as possible going in.
Not just great for tone it’s brilliant for routing. I have a Tascam cassette Porta Two and Nagra IV reel to reel ready to be fed from the inserts. My Space Echo and Memory Man are on the sends and then the pre-fader listening headphone-out drives stereo spring reverb tanks which are recorded through DIs on my Prism Titan interface. That’s a good tip actually as most headphone amps & DIs will do it – cheap, instant spring heaven.
Studer 169. Image: Press
Samples feature heavily in your music, such as in the track Save Me. Where do you source your samples from? Is it all about digging through records, or are libraries like Splice and Landr more acceptable now?
I used to dig for weird records all the time in record and charity shops but nowadays I’m more trawling the internet for obscure stuff.
For the track Save Me I actually used Tracklib for the first time. After some painful experiences trying to clear things in the past it’s a relief to know the tracks are ready to use. The vocals are from Mississippi gospel/soul band, Staples Jr Singers. The only worry is someone’s used it before but that’s always true of sampling.
I don’t look down on Splice, it can be useful especially as they get in more diverse sounds but I don’t really use it for Clive.

What do samples bring to your sound that you can’t otherwise capture?
There’s a beauty to so many of those old 70s records that for whatever reason is very difficult to replicate now. The character of the old mics, tape and instruments but also the soul and performances.
I try to treat sampling like I’m making a collage and all those beautiful old textures from all those different moments in time add a richness and depth that’s hard to recreate.
How do you see your sound and studio evolving in the next two years?
I’ll definitely still be in this studio but maybe with less gear who knows. Sometimes having lots of gear can be daunting and a bit paralysing. Being limited forces you to push those boundaries and find creative workarounds. Having said that, I’ve sold a ton of synths in my time and I still miss every single one. I recently sold my Jupiter 6 and Pulsar-23 which were used quite a bit on the album and I think about them daily!
Soundtoys’ Little AlterBoy. Image: Press
Do you have a dream piece of gear?
There are so many synths I lust over but the ultimate would have to be the Oberheim Four (or eight!) Voice. It’s four SEMs (two oscillator, multimode filter mono synths) sandwiched together for polyphonic or monstrous unison patches.
One just sold for £20,000 so it’s never going to happen but you can dream! I tried to make a copy once using 4 x Roland se-02s. It worked but was a bit of a faff with the tiny knobs. I used that for the bassline on my track Pearls.
I love everything Tom Oberheim has created, and one of my favourite synths I own is the Oberheim Xpander. It’s such a unique beast, super ambitious for 1984 – it’s like having a fully digitally controllable, modular analogue synth but polyphonic and dripping in vintage character. You can hear it all over my album, particularly the track Spectrum.
A rack in Clive From Accounts’ studio. Image: Press
What’s a music production myth you think needs debunking?
That you need fancy equipment or studios to make good music. Not in the slightest. That might sound silly after all the answers above but it’s true. Give me a phone and I’ll happily make you tunes all day. Ideas and passion are by the far the most important things. Just get stuck in and find a way to make it work.
Who gave you the biggest lesson in your career? Can you tell us about how it impacted you?
This isn’t a lesson learnt directly but from studying Matthew Herbert and all the music concrete and electro-acoustic pioneers that came before him I learnt that you can pretty much make anything with anything. There’s a video of him as Wishmountain at the big chill in 1996 and he’s making amazing stuff using just guitar looper pedals and toasters and packets of crisps etc. He massively inspired me to make my Alan EP which is made from only sampling episodes of I’m Alan Partridge. He inspires me in everything I do.
The post Clive From Accounts: “Having lots of gear can be paralysing; being limited forces you to push those boundaries” appeared first on MusicTech.

Vienna Symphonic Library (VSL) Synchron Special WoodwindsMeticulously sampled in the pristine ambience of Stage A of Vienna Synchron Stage, they all feature Vienna's new Flow View for an intuitive and effortless playing experience. All included instruments... Read More

NASA astronauts return from long Space Station stay prompted by Boeing problemsSunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore have returned to Earth after a nine-month stay on the International Space Station — a trip that lasted far longer than originally planned thanks to leaks and thruster problems on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they used to get there. Williams and Wilmore splashed down in the Gulf of […]
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ETH price prospects dim as Ethereum DEX volumes drop 34% in a weekEther (ETH) price fell below $2,200 on March 9 and has struggled to recover since. The altcoin is down 14% in March and the decline has hurt investor sentiment, especially as the broader crypto market only dropped 4% in the same period. Adding to the bearish sentiment, traders are also worried about further ETH price corrections after a 34% weekly drop in decentralized exchange (DEX) activity on the Ethereum network.Blockchains ranked by 7-day DEX volumes, USD. Source: DefiLlamaDEX volumes on Ethereum dropped 34% in the last seven days, a trend that also affected its layer-2 solutions like Base, Arbitrum, and Polygon. The market slump hit some Ethereum competitors, too, with Solana’s DEX activity down 29% and SUI’s down 17%. On the other hand, BNB Chain saw a 27% weekly volume increase, while Canto surged an impressive 445%.Ethereum's negative volume trends include an 85% drop for Maverick Protocol and a 46% decline for DODO compared to the previous week. More notably, fees on PancakeSwap—the top DEX on BNB Chain—surpassed those on Uniswap. While Ethereum remains the leader in DEX volumes, falling fees are reducing demand for ETH.Top protocols ranked by 7-day fees, USD. Source: DefiLlamaPancakeSwap, which operates exclusively on BNB Chain, generated $22.3 million in fees over seven days, surpassing Uniswap, which runs on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, and Optimism. Other signs of Ethereum’s fee weakness include Lido trailing Solana’s Jupiter and AAVE, the leading Ethereum-based lending protocol, generating less in fees than Meteora, a Solana-based automated market maker and liquidity provider. Ethereum leads in total value locked, but the gap is narrowingOn the positive side, Ethereum remains the dominant leader in total value locked (TVL) at $47.2 billion, but a 9% weekly decline has significantly narrowed the gap with competitors. Furthermore, its layer-2 ecosystem showed increasing signs of weakness over the seven days leading up to March 18.Top blockchains ranked by total value locked, USD. Source: DefiLlamaSolana’s TVL dropped 3%, while BNB Chain saw a 6% increase in deposits compared to the prior week. Negative highlights for Ethereum’s TVL include an 11% decline in Stargate Finance over seven days, a 9% drop in deposits on Maker, and a 6% decline on Spark.Ethereum’s weakening onchain metrics aligned with reduced demand for leveraged longs in ETH futures, as their premium over spot markets fell below the 5% neutral threshold, signaling weaker confidence from traders.Ether 2-month futures annualized premium. Source: laevitas.chThe current 3% annualized ETH futures premium is the lowest in over a year, highlighting weak demand from bullish traders. Meanwhile, spot Ethereum exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have recorded $293 million in net outflows since March 5, signaling waning institutional interest.After Pectra upgrade, ETH needs a competitive edge and sustainable adoption' Ethereum is also facing growing competition from Solana in the memecoin sector, particularly after the launch of the Official Trump (TRUMP) token. Simultaneously, Tron and Solana have captured a combined $75 billion in stablecoins by leveraging lower transaction fees. Adding to the pressure, Hyperliquid perpetual futures introduced its own blockchain, further challenging Ethereum’s market position.Related: Hyperliquid opened doors to ‘democratized’ crypto whale hunting: AnalystAll of this unfolded amid heated debates among investors and developers over whether Ethereum layer-2 solutions are disproportionately benefiting from extremely low rollup fees. Essentially, the decline in the DEX market share reflects waning institutional interest, particularly as Ethereum’s native staking yield sits at just 2.3% when adjusted for inflation-driven supply growth.For Ether to regain momentum, it must demonstrate a clear competitive edge. The upcoming ‘Pectra’ upgrade needs to provide a viable path for sustainable user adoption; otherwise, the odds remain stacked against ETH outperforming its rivals.This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

Tencent Music has integrated DeepSeek into its streaming service (and 3 other things we learned on the company’s latest earnings call)China's largest operator of music streaming services says live music is becoming increasingly important to listeners
Source

A Foot Pedal To Supplement Your KeyboardIt’s 2025, and you’re still probably pressing modifier keys on your keyboard like a… regular person. But it doesn’t have to be this way! You could use foot pedals instead, as [Jan Herman] demonstrates.
Now, if you’re a diehard embedded engineer, you might be contemplating your favorite USB HID interface chip and how best to whip up a custom PCB for the job. But it doesn’t have to be that complicated! Instead, [Jan] goes for an old school hack—he simply ripped the guts out of an cheap USB keyboard. From there, he wired up a few of the matrix pads to 3.5 mm jack connectors, and put the whole lot in a little metal project box. Then, he hooked up a few foot pedal switches with 3.5 mm plugs to complete the project.
[Jan] has it set up so he can plug foot pedals in to whichever keys he needs at a given moment. For example, he can plug a foot pedal in to act as SPACE, ESC, CTRL, ENTER, SHIFT, ALT, or left or right arrow. It’s a neat way to make the project quickly reconfigurable for different productivity tasks. Plus, you can see what each pedal does at a glance, just based on how it’s plugged in.
It’s not an advanced hack, but it’s a satisfying one. We’ve seen some other great builds in this space before, too. If you’re cooking up your own keyboard productivity hacks, don’t hesitate to let us know!

Switching DAWs: FL Studio producer tries Studio One Pro 7 for a week
Expert producer Isaac Duarte shares his experience around switching DAWs for a week, transitioning from FL Studio to Studio One Pro 7.

Klevgrand’s Richter Tectonic Compressor is Now FREE for a Limited Time
Production Expert and Klevgrand are currently offering Klevgrand’s Richter Tectonic Compressor (normally $70) for free. Richter is a macOS and Windows release for AAX, AU, VST, and VST3.  Production Expert announced the giveaway in a post dated March 15, 2025. The company didn’t list an end date for the giveaway, but as the plugin is [...]
View post: Klevgrand’s Richter Tectonic Compressor is Now FREE for a Limited Time

Fender Introduces New Models and Finish Options for the “Brand New Again” American Vintage II SeriesToday, Fender introduces more finish options for existing models and the new 1965 Stratocaster and Limited Edition American Vintage II 1951 Telecaster®.  The Fender® American Vintage II series is built with period-accurate bodies, necks, and hardware, premium finishes, and meticulously voiced, year-specific pickups. Each instrument captures the essence of authentic Fender craftsmanship and tone. American Vintage II 1965 Stratocaster®: In the middle of one of music’s most electrifying decades, the Stratocaster in 1965 was an instrument on its way to becoming rock’s greatest electric guitar. A perfect example of a Strat in a transition year, the 1965 Stratocaster® features a 1965 “C”-shaped maple neck, this time with a round-laminated rosewood fingerboard and larger pearl dot inlays. Other authentic features include an 11-hole three-ply white pickguard, the incredibly cool transition logo with larger lettering, and a set of amazing “gray bottom” Pure Vintage 1965 pickups.

Limited Edition American Vintage II 1951 Telecaster® in Prototype White: Just one year after launching the Broadcaster®, Fender received a cease-and-desist telegram from the Fred Gretsch Mfg. Co. and was faced with renaming its flagship electric guitar. Taking inspiration from the booming growth and expansive reach of television, the first blackguard Telecaster rolled off the line in 1951. The American Vintage II 1951 Telecaster features an ash body. The substantial '51 "U"-shaped hard rock maple neck plays like a dream with a 7.25" radius fingerboard and vintage tall frets. Characteristic of production in 1951, 12th fret face-dot spacing is narrow and the sole Phillips-head fastener on the guitar is at the truss rod nut. The triple brass saddle bridge, single-line "Fender Deluxe" tuners and Pure Vintage '51 Telecaster pickups deliver classic twang and authentic Fender style. Now available in a very limited Prototype White finish!Fender sits down with English singer-songwriter and guitarist James Bay to commemorate today's releases. Get a front-row seat with the acclaimed musician as he plays the new American Vintage II Stratocaster in Candy Apple Red and shares why a Strat has been his go-to from the beginning.The post Fender Introduces New Models and Finish Options for the “Brand New Again” American Vintage II Series first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

A model for a new streaming industryThe music industry is approaching a pivot point. On the one hand, things look positive: we have UMG’s Streaming 2.0, artist centric licensing, the impending launch of supremium and expanded rights revenue hitting $4.0 billion. But on the other we have streaming growth slowing to 6.2% growth in 2024, Artists Direct revenue growing three and half times slower than the number of artists and independent labels beginning to voice concern over the lost royalties that may result from artist centric. The real challenge facing the music industry is that both of these views of the world are true. In short, if you are big, you can see a path to getting bigger and if you are small you can see a path to getting smaller. This is Bifurcation Theory a concept MIDiA introduced a year ago. 2025 is going to be the year that the bifurcation rubber hits the road. And in doing so, it creates a major (pun intended) opportunity for all those that are not majors.

The long tail is being demonetised

Artist Centric might, just might, result in ‘”many” independent artists and labels [seeing] their royalties increase’ but what is inarguable is that many artists and labels will earn less. This is inarguable because the very essence of the model is that songs with less than 1,000 streams in the prior 12 months will not get paid royalties. To be absolutely clear, what this means is that a body of labels and artists will see their music demonetised on streaming. To be clear, demonetising the long tail is not something new, it is widely employed by the big social platforms, who set earning thresholds for their creators (e.g. you need 1,000 subscribers to share ad revenue on YouTube). But it is something new for the music business.

The groundswell of discontent is coming

When you add this to the long term challenges of feeding insatiable appetite of the algorithms with endless releases and social posts, a growing body of artists and labels are going to asking why they should bother. That this has not happened yet is probably because the majority of artists hit by this were smaller, non-label artists who were already used to small royalties and probably do not have the industry awareness to understand what is at play. The same cannot be said of smaller independent labels, who absolutely do understand the dynamics of royalty mechanisms and will already be doing the arithmetic on how the new system will impact their revenues. Distributors will be doing a similar analysis of the labels and artists they distribute. 2025 will be the year in which we see a groundswell of discontent as these industry constituents start to comprehend what is coming.

A solution…

So much for the problems, what about solutions? Now is the time to build a place for the long tail. A place where the smaller players do not have to compete on unequal terms with the bigger ones. Asymmetric models are not designed for the small players to win. That is the entire point. But simply creating an indie Spotify will not be enough. The pro rate royalty pot model was never designed for a massive long tail and porting it over somewhere else will bring the same superstar dynamics, just with smaller superstars. So, here’s a model for an independent alternative to streaming:

Curation: A highly curated place for smaller labels and artists with human curation at the fore

Play credits: A credits based system, whereby people can subscribe for a certain number of credits and top up if they want, with each credit equalling one play (thereby guaranteeing a fixed per stream rate rather than a wish and a prayer that the royalty pot does not get divided too many ways this month

Discretionary pricing: Whereby labels and artists can determine (on a track-by-track basis) how many credits each track requires. Despite us having been educated so by streaming, not all music is worth the same. Labels and artists  might decide they want some of their songs to be zero credits, some to be 1 and others 10. It is a model that works well in other areas such as stock photography libraries

Curated freemium: Instead of simply a free tier, and in addition to zero credit streams, the free, ad and brand supported ‘front door’ would be an Apple Music Radio-like set of live streaming radio stations. All with clickable ‘now playing’ track details and some with, you know, actual human DJs

Not just music, but about the music too: Artist interviews, album reviews etc. Taking the bets of What Bandcamp and Apple Music do

Alternative remuneration: Artist subscriptions, tipping, social commerce, Shopfiy-like artist stores, virtual items. Not each and every one of these will fit every artist and label, so these would be opt-in extras

This might sound like pie in the sky thinking, but the simple fact is much of this is already been done, some of it in the music business (e.g. Apple Music Radio for curation and interviews, Bandcamp for reviews) and some outside it (Audible and Getty Images for credits). And we actually laid out a lot of detail for a similar model in our Bifurcation report last year.

However, there is one really difficult thing needed to make this really work: artists and labels would have to remove some or all of their music from mainstream DSPs, even if this is only done on a windowing basis. But if you are a smaller label or artist facing the prospect of demonetisation then really, how much is there to lose other than the vanity metrics of stream counts? Is this way easier for an analyst to write as a blog than for a label or artist to actually do? Of course. But the alternative for many will be to play the role of the slow boiled frog.

But what is great about this approach is that it benefits both sides. The long tail gets a place where it is both welcome and stands a fair and reasonable chance of monetisation. Meanwhile, the big labels and artists have more space (and therefore monetisation) for themselves on traditional streaming.

This will not be some huge Spotify killer. It will be a Bandcamp move for the 2020s. A place for alternative-minded super fans who do not want to spend their entire time lost in the algorithm’s mainstream maelstrom. Music is not all the same, it has never been. It is time to stop pretending that it is.

Fast Company names 10 Most Innovative Music Companies 2025Fast Company has released its annual list of the 10 most innovative music companies for 2025. Not one of the major streamers or record labels made the list.
The post Fast Company names 10 Most Innovative Music Companies 2025 appeared first on Hypebot.

“We will be indefinitely suspending production”: Moog’s Subsequent 25 has been discontinuedAfter five years, the Moog Subsequent 25 has run its course. Initially unveiled at NAMM 2020 as an affordable take on the Subsequent 37, the Subsequent 25 will now no longer be in production. Production of the Subsequent 37 will continue as normal.
The discontinuation became effective on 13 March. “We will be indefinitely suspending production of Subsequent 25 and offering the remaining available units through our global dealer network,” the company announced on its website.

READ MORE: Serum 2 is finally here: new features, pricing and everything else you need to know

While the Subsequent 25 captured the essence of the 37 in a design similar to 2013’s Sub Phatty, it also offered a slew of improvements. The newer model offered double the headroom and a re-tuned Multidrive circuit for dirtier tones. Moog also worked to reshape the synth’s gain staging with its Ladder Filter, which allowed for greater harmonic saturation, compression and richer low ends.

While no new synths will be created, Moog isn’t leaving current Subsequent 25 owners out in the cold. The company will still offer parts and repairs for the discontinues model. “We remain dedicated to supporting all owners of the Subsequent 25 and will continue to provide repairs, maintenance, and parts to ensure your instrument operates at its best for years to come,” Moog promises.
Though we’re waving off the Sub 25, this may be a sign of the Moog moguls conjuring up a new take on the Sub 37.
It’s also a sign of the Sub 37 prevailing as a timeless piece of gear. To this day, synth-heads continue to discover and love the Sub 37. YouTuber Yaahn Hunter Jr named the Sub 37 as the “epitome” of his style just four months back.

We even crowned the Sub 37 as our Gear of the Year Best Hardware Instrument in 2016, and it’s continued to be a favourite.
“With a machine like the 37, you interact to your heart’s content, just dialling, connecting unusual sources and destinations and, more importantly than anything, learning,” reviewer Andy Jones said at the time.
“This beast oozes quality at every turn, following solid analogue formulae at one instance and then bizarre twisting snake sonics the next,” he praised. “Beware, you will lose a day or two of your life just playing. And make sure you record everything, as you will come up with wonderful music.”
The Sub 25 is still available for purchase, though stocks are limited.

The post “We will be indefinitely suspending production”: Moog’s Subsequent 25 has been discontinued appeared first on MusicTech.

Groover expands Artist Services and ToolkitMusic promotion platform Groover expands artists services with the goal of empowering musicians and DJs by providing them with the tools they need to gain visibility and meaningful opportunities in the music industry.
The post Groover expands Artist Services and Toolkit appeared first on Hypebot.

UJAM announce Vox Humana plug-in All proceeds from the sales of UJAM's new Vox Humana plug-in will be donated in support of the Bob Moog Foundation’s educational and preservation initiatives.

“Why not do what we’re doing in the studio, and then create that live?”: Carl Cox on why DJs are intimidated by performing with a live setupOver 40 years into his career, Carl Cox is an indisputable veteran of electronic music. And while the decks have been his home for decades, he’s also reignited his burning passion for fully live sets, using synthesizers and machines to create music that will never be heard again.
In a new interview with MusicTech, Cox explains how live sets allow him to connect with audiences in a way that pre-existing tracks don’t permit — and wonders why more DJs aren’t trying the same.

READ MORE: Deadmau5 sells his catalogue for $55 million: “We inherit a legacy that changed music forever”

“The idea of my performance is always excitement,” he says. “What’s going to happen? The creativity of that – what can I achieve? How do I connect with people?”
While DJs rely on a library of pre-existing tracks to spin, a fully live set forces Cox to think on his feet and create something from scratch. “Coming down from the DJ pedestal to go into realms of creativity… the machines don’t play themselves,” he explains. “You have to create the sounds, you have to find the rhythm, you have to find its soul.”
With a cockpit of synths and drum machines feeding into his Pioneer V10 mixer, Cox is able to find the soul and rhythm in real-time. “I create the energy of my music through the mixer,” he says. “Cuts, fades, and effects. I use it as an instrument… Having a V10 as my only DJ tool within my live set keeps me on my toes.”

While the process can be tough, the end result is absolutely worth it, Cox explains. “When it all comes together, it comes through the speakers, and everyone’s got their hands in the air – there’s your moment,” Cox smiles. “That’s where I’m happiest because I’m being challenged.”
This focus on producing a DJ set to be “almost like a concert” is why Cox grew tired of DJing.“It’s the reason why a lot of DJs are bored,” he says. “They’re playing the same tune, week in, week out.”
That said, many DJs find comfort in pre-recorded sets, but Cox says these people would be intimidated by a live setup. “If you stick most DJs in front of [a live setup], they’ll just walk away,” he says.
“I feel there’s laziness to that, because when you go in the studio to record, you use these machines. You use a drum machine, you use synths, you use keyboards. Why don’t you do what we’re doing in the studio, and then create that live?”
When performing, Cox’s goal wants to keep active and in the moment. Ditching computer screens has been a big help, as he’s either got his hands on his Pioneer or is actively scanning the crowd. “I don’t want to be seen scrolling the menu,” he insists. “It makes me a very dull looking performer!”
“I’ve always had aspirations of being a live electronic artist,” Cox explains. “I didn’t want to come out of Covid and just continue to DJ. I [like to] dive into the machines, swim around in all their components, and find out all these wonderful things that can come out of them that turn a corner on people’s expectations.”
Cox is set to debut his latest live set, Evolution, at Ultra Music Festival on 29 March.
The post “Why not do what we’re doing in the studio, and then create that live?”: Carl Cox on why DJs are intimidated by performing with a live setup appeared first on MusicTech.