IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ROLAND
until they achieved something truly unique. That hands-on approach is how they still work today, opting for a full hardware setup and, aside from recording in Pro Tools or Logic, eschewing most software-based solutions. They feel the ability to touch the equipment inspires them in ways that Virtual Studio Technology (VST) instruments do not. And that’s something that attracted them to the TR-1000. “When you get to turning the TR-1000’s knobs, all of a sudden, what’s there becomes unique to how your ear hears it,” says Posatronix.“There’s a tactile, hands-on type of art to it.This is a canvas that allows your brain to be the paintbrush in a physical way, using your hands to paint with, versus VSTs.There’s a different connection and value you get from your own internal art.” Bringing that human touch back to electronic music production was precisely the intent, says Peter Brown, Roland’s product development leader on the TR-1000.“You can really just jam out and lose yourself in it,” Brown says. “And it doesn’t feel like you’re battling a computer.” Having the ability to play the machine like an instrument itself is what leads to the kind of happy accidents that made the original line of Roland drum machines so revolutionary. West Coast hip- hop pioneer Egyptian Lover remembers getting money from his mother to buy a TR-808 from Guitar Center in the early 1980s. Shortly afterward, he was on stage with the party promotion crew Uncle Jamm’s Army at the L.A. Sports Arena, playing a cover version of “Planet Rock” on the 808.
what the TR-1000 is.” In Detroit, the birthplace of techno and its myriad offshoot genres, Roland huddled with a list of notable figures including “Mad” Mike Banks and his extended Underground Resistance collective; Carl Craig; Juan Atkins; Scott Grooves; and Octave One. Tommy “Tom Tom” Hamilton and William “B.J.” Smith (a.k.a. Posatronix) of influential techno duo Aux 88 recall Roland asking them what kind of machine they’d make if they could tap any features in the world. “It was kind of like a techno Christmas for a drum machine,” says Tom Tom. The group were already devotees of Roland hardware, citing the Juno-106 synthesizer, R-70 Human Rhythm Composer drum machine, and sound modules like the S-330 and D-550 among their favorites.Two machines they had never used, however, were the 808 and 909.While these were the foundational tools of techno, by the time Aux 88 was working on their seminal 1996 LP Is It Man or Machine (Direct Beat), they were too expensive on the resale market—and, crucially, too limited in their feature set—to seek out. “If you listen to Man or Machine from back to front, you’d assume that there was an 808 or a 909 involved, but [there] wasn’t,” says Posatronix.“Which is why we kind of ended up with our own sound. We didn’t have the advantage of having a bunch of stuff when we were coming into the game.We modified everything in the drum machine that we had.” Working on the Roland R-70, the duo stacked drum sounds on top of each other, then added effects and tweaked parameters
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