TEED on using one synth for 80% of his album: “If you get used to any single synth, you can do anything”When the pandemic hit, TEED was faced with a producer’s worst nightmare: sell all his gear or go broke.
Like so many other musicians at the time, his income relied significantly on touring. Although TEED had the sound foresight that it would be at least two years until he could once again earn money by performing. So, he made the call. He sold everything. His Rhodes. His MS-20. His OB-6. All gone.

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“That was horrible,” says TEED, real name Orlando Higginbottom. “I haven’t really wanted to start collecting equipment and building a studio again.”
But the loss of his arsenal did not mean he stopped making music. He still has plugins such as Cableguys Shaperbox and FabFilter Saturn. He is also seeking opportunities to use new pieces of kit. Sometimes he would borrow synths from his friends. That included the Access Virus TI, which he used to make 80 per cent of the sounds on his new album, Always With Me.
Higginbottom messed around with the Access Virus at the studio of his friend and member of the electropop duo Bag Raiders, Chris Stracey. Stracey let Higginbottom borrow it 18 months ago, and it’s still at his house. The pain of watching his own studio disintegrate sticks with him, but Higginbottom relishes the opportunity to use one piece of equipment as the soul of a body of work.
Image: Press
“If you get really close with any single instrument, any single synth, you can reach the place where you can do anything,” Higginbottom contends. He goes on to admit that he rarely updates his software either; he prefers to stay with the version he’s most comfortable with, even if he is literally seven versions behind.
“I grew up listening to classical music. My dad’s a classical musician. Until I heard jungle, I hated everything apart from classical music,” he continues. “For 600 years, people have been working out what to do with the violin. Our obsession with new technology is cool, but we’ve got enough stuff to keep making music for a while.”
That unburdened attitude leads to what Higginbottom enjoyed about the Access Virus. The main panel isn’t overloaded with knobs and settings. The parameters are simple. He enjoys the built-in reverb and arpeggiator. He was also drawn to the character of the sound. No matter what he tried, he couldn’t recreate it using any of his soft synths.
“If you get really close with any single instrument, any single synth, you can reach the place where you can do anything”
“It feels almost like I’ve only started to uncover it,” Higginbottom says with verve. “I still think I could make another record on it.”
The quality also filled him with nostalgia for his youth because he associated the synth with early jungle and drum & bass production. That was the music that made him want to be a producer.
“The first time I heard jungle, it was incredible. It is what I’d been waiting for, and that happened to me when I was 10. It was so visceral,” Higginbottom recalls. “I was in the record store every day during my school years. I wouldn’t spend my lunch money on lunch. If I didn’t eat for four days, I could buy a record.”
Image: Press
He still has all the records in his house. He didn’t sell those during the pandemic. One is Woman That Rolls by Aphrodite (1999). Another is And Remember Folks by DJ Hype (1996). He reveres that music to the point that he doesn’t want to make it himself. At least not directly.
“I loved those times. I loved those years. I’m sure that subconsciously, I’m always trying to go back to those feelings with music,” Higginbottom says.
That nebulous, yet persisting relationship to early experiences defines Always With Me. The first musical obsession. The first crush. “Those memories stick with you and shape you for your whole life,” Higginbottom says, adding that those moments create the framework of how the next ‘version’ will feel. It will be different, but it will remind you of the original — finding the Access Virus provided a link to his first experience with synth.

One track on the album where he dives deep into the synth is In Darkness, a vocal house tune with numerous moving melodic lines. He settled on the various glittery passages after he had almost discarded the track completely. But in that state of nearly giving up—of being so close to the end—he came back with a new perspective.
“Often what I’ll do is I’ll open up a channel, press record, go over to the keyboard, and start fucking around and scrolling through presets. The track sort of came to life again at a lucky moment of flicking over to a different sound and hitting two notes. When you hit those two notes, the rest of the riff is just there in your head,” Higginbottom says. “You can be too precious about an idea. You can be treading too softly around it. You should always have the guts to try something crazy.”
“For 600 years, people have been working out what to do with the violin. Our obsession with new technology is cool, but we’ve got enough stuff to keep making music for a while”
Everyone’s definition of “crazy” is different, but Higginbottom takes an unexpected turn with Start Again. Following ten explorative tunes that move between indie dance and rave-ready techno, this closer is a pure ambient track built from an Access Virus pad, as well as old organ recordings, some MS-20, among other pieces of audio. He put them all together, resampled the combination, pitched it down, and then started the process over until the soundscape was full. He also mastered the track at a lower volume than the rest of the album.
“I hope that what happens if you’re listening to the record in order is that the penultimate song ends, and then you don’t even notice that the final song is playing,” Higginbottom says.
Perhaps his album will launch the same kind of first obsession for someone that jungle did for him all those years ago. If so, Start Again creates the space for reflection on what will come next. Higginbottom wasn’t sure what would come next after selling his gear, and while he waits until he owns his own house to start rebuilding his studio, he now has the chance to stumble on different pieces of equipment that could remind him what it’s like to make music for the first time.
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