Leeroy Keeps Swinging
Leeroy Thornhill, late of the dance titans The Prodigy, takes Gavin Paisley on a virtual tour around his home studio.
Gavin Paisley, 18 May 2010
Where do you go after being ‘the tall bloke’ in the biggest electronic dance band in history? Leeroy Thornhill answered that question by hanging up his dancing shoes and leaving The Prodigy a decade ago to build his own studio from scratch. Since then his Flightcrank and Smash Hi-Fi projects, plus a nifty line in DJ-ing, have seen him earn his productions stripes.
“Even since Flightcrank started 10 years ago,” says Leeroy, “things have changed so much in music technology. It was all hardware even then. Now, I’m almost completely software based. There are so many good plug-ins and synths now.”
So you’ve crossed over to the virtual side completely? “I still use a bit of outboard gear, compressors mainly. Obviously things have changed so much in the last few years. I still have my patch bay all rigged up, with the compressors in it. I route stuff through them, like kick drums for instance. Then I route them back into the audio cards on my Mac.”
How about sampling? Does he still fall back on ‘90s favourites like the Akai series? “Nah, I use an internal sampler now, the Motu Mach5. It’s an awesome bit of kit, with really good quality sampling. I’ll sample something in, say, (software synth) Kontakt, then run it into the Mach5. It instantly sounds a lot better.”
If sampling, does he go straight for the original audio or take the recent production approach,
favoured by Daft Punk in particular, of replicating samples using your own equipment?
“I’d go for the original audio every time. Usually I’ll try and manipulate it in some way. With
sampling, especially if you’re making bootlegs, you need to sample the original and leave it as it
is, so people can recognise it and connect with it. But generally I’ll take the sample and twist it ‘til
it’s unrecognisable”.
A very Prodigy-eque approach. Did you pick that up from Mr Howlett? “Heh yeah well... I’ve picked up a lot from Liam, I’ve learned so much from him over the years, being in the studio with him.”
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