Home Events

London dance music producer Jake Williams wields serious firepower in his Texas debut. A veteran of Cologne’s legendary Kompakt Records, the king of canines travels with a modular synthesizer featuring parts he designed himself specifically for live performance.: Austin Chronicle: Describe your music.: Jake Williams: I’m obsessed with analog synthesizers. That’s one theme that’s present throughout everything. There’s an Eighties vibe and bits of electro and techno, but not pure techno. There’s a four to the floor drum beat, so you’ll be able to dance. It’s for fun rather than chin-stroking.: AC: Why do you use a modular synth live?: JW: I tweak and mod the sequences and sounds, which is really fun. You can have big mistakes that sound amazing or can fuck up the flow completely, which gives a nice element of risk. And I have the modular facing the audience, which looks so great, [because] it acts as the second member of the band. Half the value of having a machine like that is people see what you’re doing.: AC: Any advice for potential modular hobbyists?: JW: Start small. Get the minimum you need to get a sound: a VCA, an oscillator, an envelope, and a filter. There’s a hell of a lot you can do with that.: AC: In the Nineties you had a crossover hit, “There’s Nothing I Won’t Do.” Do you ever consider making another song for radio?: JW: You know, my mother asks me this question: “Why don’t you do another one of those hits?” I have no clue. I was making club music in the right place at the right time and those records resonated in a crossover market, but that was never my intention. There’s no way I could control that or do it again. You make what you make and that’s that.