Korg

Ben's Korg MS10 was bought in late 1980 and remained our principal instrument. Am I right in thinking it cost something over 400 pounds? It was very exciting. It could not wait until the next weekend so the Monday after the Saturday that it was bought I was taken over to Vine Cottage to look at it. We had seen it, as well as other pieces of equipment, in a strange alternative department store in Oxford called Omni. A superb little unit with a big fascia above the keyboard covered in knobs and patch sockets, it was in contrast with everything around us, let alone our musical equipment up until that point. The 'Oscillator' survived to appear with the synthesizer on Laughter in the Next Room, but it had had its day. The first session with the Korg -- and with John's double-necked guitar -- in December 80, produced four tracks, all included on Video Rideo: Red, Dead Men Don't Talk, YellowSong, The Fountain Overflows. (Gerard)

The Korg was used almost as often as a filter/mangler for our otherwise sonically drab drum machine as it was used as a straight keyboard. The little box on top of the synth is a signal processing unit that tracked the amplitude of an incoming signal for 'wah' type effects. It also supposedly followed the pitch of a monophonic signal. Of course it didn't do that at all sucessfully, but instead made wierd pitch related hicoughs and burbles - just what I wanted, really. (Ben)