Icarus’ top five studio essentials

Soundtoys EchoBoy NA » NA » $199

Tom: “We use this all the time. A lot of other delays are quite digital, which is nice for certain things, but we tend to go for the Space Echo emulations or the Memory Man setting here. There’s a nice bit of wobble on it.” soundtoys.com

Korg MS-20 Mini £420

Tom: “We tend to use emulations of classic hardware a lot, but we particularly used the [hardware] MS-20 on our new track, for bass and a little square wave sound. We haven’t really scratched the surface of it – there’s so much you can do with it.” korg.com

Spectrasonics Omnisphere cm220 » 10/10 » $499

Ian: “The soundbank is enormous, and it’s got lots of ambient and organic sounds in it. You can get stuck in a rut with this synth, though, when using it all the time – it can start to sound like a preset, with a ‘film score’ kind of vibe, so you need to be careful…” spectrasonics.net

UAD plugins from £69

Ian: “We’ve got the UA Apollo, and we always use the LA-2A compressor on vocals. It’s super easy and it just makes everything sound good. We generally use the Legacy one.” Tom: “It’s a proper go-to every time.” uaudio.com

AudioEase Altiverb cm178 » 9/10 » €499

Ian: “It’s the dogs!” Tom: “They’re always releasing new impulse responses for it, and it’s always exciting to get new material to work with.” audioease.com