Liam Howlett’s synths and gear in studio and live.
"Liam plays everything in manually, rather than looping sections all the time. It's incredible to watch. He also starts each new track differently. Sometimes, he'll tune all the keyboards down to a certain sample, so that none of the equipment is really in the key it says it is. We got other sounds by trying all sorts of mad things. For example, we put a speaker underneath a grand piano playing a 303 bassline, taped up all the piano strings, then put an effects box in there as well. Another time, we put a brick on the piano's sustain pedal, so that all the strings were just above the hammer, then we fed the effects unit through there again. As a recording process, it was completely unique. No matter how experimental a lot of music may appear to be at first, somewhere along the line, an orthodoxy will develop, and a traditional structure or methodology that you can recognise is sure to creep in. That never happened with Liam. "
- former N-Joi producer Neil McLellan on the recording of Jilted Generation.