We mostly cover guitarists and guitar-player culture at Musicpsych.com but every now and then something (or someone) gets in touch who is doing something interesting - not with guitars….
The “50 Weapons” label was set up by Berlin electronic music duo Modeselektor to release no-nonsense techno, and Ben Damage is one of their star finds. When it comes to fearless beat-making and stripping sound back to the barest rhythmic essentials, Ben is an absolute master.
He decided to expand on his diet of DJing by putting together a live rig with which he could improvise with sequences and sounds in real time. The arrangement and triggering of sounds is driven by a Sequentix Cirklon sequencer, with a Roland TB-303 and MFB-522 Drum Machine generating the actual sounds, alongside an Akai MPC 1000 for audio samples. His Strymon Timeline joins an Eventide Space Reverb, a Niio Iotine Core 2 analogue filter bank and an FMR compressor for effects processing.
This is a pretty paired back rig when you consider how heavily dance music draws on time based effects. Ben describes the configuration: “The Timeline is on a mono send from the Mackie with stereo returns. I use it along with the Space to give the synths a bigger sound with more stereo and also to bring some movement into the tracks.”
If you want to find out more about Ben Damage, check out his Facebook page or jump onto his Soundcloud page.
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