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.

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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.
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