Tell us a little about working with Tim Simenon (a.k.a. Bomb the Bass), an act that had a major influence on the budding electronic dance scene in the early nineties

To my mind Bomb the Bass is an overlooked band. There’s an album called "Unknown Territory” that was so far ahead of its time and pre-dates the great electronic music of the late nineties. It was a landmark album and a great influence on the bigger electronic bands of the late nineties I’m sure. Before it was a lame idea, it was all Blade Runner samples and insane programming, really clever stuff. Tim is a very talented guy; he went on to produce Depeche Mode and Massive Attack and tons of stuff. We became friends and I started working for him, so I did the next Bomb the Bass, and various other things. We did another album that didn’t come out called "Strange Cuts” which was interesting, and at the same time Tim got the demo of Chemical Brothers and he played it to his label, and they said, "Oh, that’s never going to happen.”

It was an interesting time as I’ve never seen myself as an exclusive electronic musician and we both had a pretty varied palette. Tim was involved with bands like Psychic TV, Tackhead and [Adrian] Sherwood, which was all a little more exciting than just sitting infront of a computer and I learnt a lot about combining different styles of music.

How has the way you’ve felt about making made music evolved since then?

For me, there are a lot of people who have a great idea and they do their idea, and they’re done. For me, it took up until the last three years to be able to make music that comes out of the speaker that reflects what I’m hearing in my head. I am a big believer in technique and having experience. It’s not a one trick pony thing anymore. I feel comfortable with what I’m doing, I feel a lot different. Five years ago, when I first moved to America, I wasn’t even sure whether I was going to keep doing music. It’s in that time that things have changed for me and that has to do with some luck and some reward for just sticking to what you believe in.

You mentioned that you’ve recently been able to make music that reflects what it sounds like in your head. What was the first track that made you do that?

I think that the last 12 Rounds album that we did. We went to New Orleans and worked on it with Trent. It hasn’t actually been released, but there are some songs on there that were the starting point of feeling like, "Wow, this is something that’s really good.” The other thing for me is that technology has made a big difference to what I’m doing, and I’m committed to it wholeheartedly.

How has the change in technology changed your view on how people make music?

I have my own studio, and it’s still expensive for a kid, but a kid can now access a lot more stuff. I’m working on KoЯn, but I’m working on a lot of it in my own studio. I can bring it back here and work on it, and it’s not going to suffer, when in the past it was more of an issue. Before, you were up against it—the person with the more money had a better shot at making the better record. Nowadays, that playing field’s been leveled so much. There are no real excuses, we can all compete.

I went from drum machines and tape machines, to a Mac with a soundcard, moving up the scale. Now I work with a Pro Tools HD rig, fully loaded on the new G5, and a secondary rig which carries Logic. It’s got the stuff that I like and I know.

Trent and I come from a background where the computer was the instrument, a sequencer was an instrument. What’s happened is that a lot of people who aren’t from that background—they have a Mac, they have Pro Tools, and they understand you can put things in time and tune things. To me that has nothing to do with the art of programming. That’s the fast lane to boring and soulless music.

So what is the art of programming to you?

I think it’s a whole lot of different things. There are some professional aspects to do with knowing what you’re doing but basically it’s the same thing as playing a guitar—why is one guitar player better than another? It’s all to do with what you’re trying to put across, what your taste is.

I heard for your work with Trent Reznor on Nine Inch Nails "With Teeth”, you and Trent built your own modular synth array. How did that add to the album?

One of the things we were doing in New Orleans is that we were trying to make something that sounded exciting, so we did get into the whole modular world. That was something new to me, but I started learning by watching Trent, because he’s a great programmer on that thing. He has a whole wall of it. He would hear a sound in his head, and he would start patching away and always come up with something good . What we were into was the fact that it was very in the moment performance based recording. Unlike midi instruments we could never recall the sound and that in itself made the approach different. I would record, and might work with the parts, but it was more about embracing the imperfections than trying to fix them.

"Hand that Feeds” was posted as a Garageband file for Mac addicts to remix, and now the parts to "Only” are available for fans to remix in Mac Garageband, Sony Acid, Digidesign Pro Tools, AND Abelton Live. What is your opinion on remixing by the masses?

That wasn’t concocted by some marketing guy, that was Trent’s idea. For Garageband, he did that one. For "Only”, I worked on the Pro Tools session, he did Garageband, and someone else worked on the others. I think it’s for the people who are interested. If I saw that I could download the master tapes of a band that I really liked, I would do that, to have a look and see what’s going on. In terms of the remixing aspect, I don’t really know. I doubt I’ll be spending much time ploughing through everyone’s mixes but I think it’s a good thing. I know as a fan, I would like to be let in to stuff that people are doing that intimately.

Tell us about working on the new KoЯn album. I hear it’s a departure from your normal way of working.

It was weird—just as Nine Inch Nails was finishing, KoЯn was starting up, and they had this producer shootout. They had everyone in the world come in for three days, and you had to prove yourself. I didn’t expect to get very far but eventually it ended up with me doing half the record, and The Matrix doing half the record. It has been really good fun. Our worlds are quite different, in some ways. They’ve always done their record by rehearsing a song and recording it. My preferred way of working is in the control room with everyone plugged in. They were just so open to trying new things, and I think it’s come out really good. It’s still obviously KoЯn, but it’s different to what they’ve done before.

This was the first experience of really going in the studio with a big band, and not really knowing what was going to happen. As it turned out it was probably one of the best experiences I’ve had in terms of working. Really nice guys - I’m proud of what’s been done I think it’s going to be good.

How has iZotope helped you in your programming process?

When Trent and I were working in New Orleans, we had a PC running only for Trash—before it ran on a Mac—because we thought it was so good. I think what you’ve got now are these programs, where you can really go deep if you like. That’s what I like about your stuff. When you open it up, it’s not on and off, you have many pages to go through, and you can really define your own sound.

We used Trash through the last Nine Inch Nails album, and it would be our first stop in terms of plug-in distortions. We found the way Trash is laid out, it’s probably some of the best programming in that realm. I think that it sounds great. A lot of the stuff that I like and work on requires distortion, and I found it’s something I use a lot.

Spectron I’m still getting into, I am processing one of Jonathan’s vocals as we speak [lead singer of KoЯn] and I want it to sound cold. I found I gravitate to Spectron as a vocal processor, because of the layering you can do in terms of the effects.

Doing any album there will come a time when you have to play rough mixes for suits and non musical people who you need to impress. A number of mastering plug-ins have come on the market in the last few years but when I recently did a shoot out amongst them I found Ozone won hands down. It just sounded great, and we used it for everything. The thing I like about iZotope’s products is that it’s not really like opening a plug-in; it’s like opening a separate program and being able to get involved in what you’re doing.

Any last thoughts?

I think the layout on your stuff couldn’t be better, and they sound great.