In the studio with DJ Fresh

“It was the first album I’d done in the box. There were only people like Tech Itch working like that, then. I wasn’t a big user of synthesis. My thing was the E-mu sampler. I played it like a guitar. Then Rob from Pendulum showed me this crazy new approach: rather than layering samples and processing them, like I was doing, he was using wavetable and subtractive processing in plugins. I was blown away, but it was terrifying.

“There’s not really any outboard gear on the album, apart from instruments that were recorded in. Most of it was on Cubase and Nuendo, with lots of plugins like Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere and Stylus.

“The drum samples were cut-up drum beats, obviously. I used Albino 3 and Zeta, which I had to buy a PC for. Well, for that, and for this E-mu soundcard that mimicked the sampler, which not a lot of people knew about. You just don’t wanna be producing music on a PC, though. I wouldn’t wish that on anybody [laughs].”