Okay, so there it is, it's the corner of my old living room, where I used to sit in that big brown comfy armchair you can just see the top of between the speaker and the PC monitor. You should always work in a big comfy armchair, otherwise you'll never get a thing done. The armchair is still here in my new studio where I am sitting writing this.

This is the view Iused to have, my old PC what I used to record everything on (it was a piece of shit, 433 celeron processor, 32 gb HDD and shit loads of Ram cards shoved in in an attempt to make it less shit. Crashed every hour, on the hour, and the right hand speaker was been blown for 4 years. Got a new one now, 2 gb processor 70gb of hard drive and 512 mbs of RAM, all wirelessed up to the net and everything, flat screen monitor too (Xmas pressy from the Missus, bet that makes you jealous). That's my MIDI controller next to it, more on that later. Luckily the overflowing ashtray is just out of shot for once. On the bottom right you can see the RCD that I had to use as my entire living room was run off of just that ONE plug, it's the only one in the room, old house. Atop the keyboard you can see my phone, which I never answer, old photo albums, which I'd been using for some cover artwork, an empty pack of tobacco, and Essential Spider-Man volume 4. Everything you could never need.

And on my left, highest shelf first, box full of floppy discs, radio tuner (must have tunes while I work, Radio 2, Steve Wright at the moment) dodgy old analogue delay unit made by Melos (never heard of them, but it makes some very scary noises) under the delay box, is an ART-SGX-LT FX unit (catchy name huh?) great for DI-ing guitars as it has a full pre-amp section, but you can't edit any of the preset effects, so it's quite annoying. Also next to the melos is a midiverb which has never worked, but for some reason I never chucked it out. To be honest I tend to use the onboard effects in cubase now, and the guitars go direct through my BOSS ME-30 which has an amp simulator built in.

I've sold the midiverb to a guy in the US now, he paid me real money for it, and it cost him even more to get it shipped to the US, and he knew it didn't work, strange people you find on ebay.

Next shelf down, we have a JEN Synthetone SX-1000 analogue synth. Big twiddly knobs, scary beepy noises, and all done in old wood. Very nice, apparently I could get a lot of money for it if I ever sold. Next to that is a Moog "The Rogue" one of the smaller moog models with only 2 oscillators, but it's still very cool, I like analogue gear, you can't really replicate it.

On the desk under the shelves is my 16 channel Studiomaster Diamond 16-2 mixing desk. Not the greatest bit of kit ever, only got a three band eq and only 2 aux inputs, but it's never done me any harm. Everything goes through here before it hits the PC (including my radio). I alsop have an 8 channel version of this that I use for live work, but that's with the PA which I'm not putting up here (you can see the 8-channel on the cover of "Audio Pornography"). Next to that you can just make out my antique fostex 4-track, which I mostly just keep for nostalgia value. It's an X-15 series 2, so there must be a series 1 out there which is even older and shitter, though it's hard to believe. In front of the 4-track is my Boss DR550 drum machine, which I used to rigidly stick to. It's nice, very '80s, very fake, very me, Puppyfish would have sounded all wrong without it. Oh and there's that ashtray I was talking about.

Top to bottom, Roland D110 sound module, again very '80s, very fake nearly sold it once, but went and got it back for "Audio Pornography" cos I realised I was gonna do electronica again. Oddly enough, the same thing nearly happened with the Akai sampler underneath (it's an S-01 8 part, little beauty I got on ebay for cheap if you're interested). But the old Akai I used to have )SY-36 or something) turned out to have sold without me noticing, so I went out and bought this one instead, and it just made it onto "Audio Pornography" for the last track I recorded for it.

I use the sampler for all my drum tracks now, having decided I like the better, fatter quality of a real sampled drum, and the live feel of playing the things rather than sequencing them.

Under that is the Ashdown electric blue bass amp I've been using for the last 3 years or so, since my old Hi-Watt bit the dust. This thing is fantastic, tiny, tiny amp, 150 Watts RMS kicks out like you wouldn't believe, very handy, and you should try the sub-harmonics control, ultra scary rumbly noises. Would have put in my new Fender Twin I just got, but it's being repaired at the moment (what already? But you only just bought it!... long story...)

Since writing that comment abou the Twin, I can confirm that it took nearly a year to fix, and the repair bill was £150 more than I paid for the amp in the first place. Owch! Beautiful amp though, sounds great, wouldn't trade it, pics coming soon.

Okay then, here it is, my Midi controller. Yep, it's a very very cheesy Yamaha PSR-36. Even older and crapper than the one it replaced (that was a Yamaha PSR as well, only newer, about 360 I think, though I can't remember and the binmen took it away one tuesday morning). That one had a great piano sound as well. This one doesn't, but this one was free (thanks to my beautiful girlfriend bartering it out of her ex-husband for me). It has a midi out, that's all I need. I disconnected it's speakers, as it has one of those volume controls that doesn't go all the way out, and leaves a humming in the background. The old one died after I got completely hammered one night about 5 years ago, came home and decided to play some Marvin Gaye on the piano, then threw up into the keys. Would have been okay, but I didn't remember doing it, until the smell started to come through about 2 weeks later. Heh, but it kept going up until about 3 years later when it just died totally.

New pictures of the new studio will be coming soon, honest, but when Isay soon, you know what I mean.

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