Vincent Villuis - PowerCore X8 user

“I always consider a studio to be a laboratory, a place for concentration, research and experimentation,” he says. “It’s also like a jam with oneself in fact, the musicians are the machines and effects.”

“I strongly believe in the notion of the audio accident and macro-focus when I search for sonic textures, melodies and rhythmic grains. A track often starts its story from a detail during an effect manipulation or an unconventional ‘cut’ in a sample editing. All my tracks have this notion of fragility and harmonic fragments in their source.”

So what about Villuis’ studio set-up?

“I have organized my set-up with various MIDI and audio channels with several installed chains of effects,” he reveals. “The TC Electronic Powercore X8 is gradually becoming the main ‘sonic filter’ in my studio configuration. I have programmed new reverb parameters with both MegaReverb and VSS3. I just like how they sound – they spread and amplify the inserted sounds, giving them a distant and clean dimension. And when you play with the volume knobs pre and post on the insert busses, the spectrum gets a blurry but delicate treatment. I also use Character for drums to get a warm texture. I really enjoy its vintage touch, far from the usual distortion effects. This is finer and more accurate than the usual vintage plug-ins, because it shapes the dynamics just as I want. I use a lot the equalization curves from both EQSat and Dynamic EQ because they are really intuitive and straightforward tools to control the frequencies.”

“Combined with other effects, the Filtroid with its parallel filter and LFO routing offered me a lot of experimentation possibilities,” Villius continues. “On almost every track, I used the Limiter, the Compressor, and also the Expander from Master X5. It deeply underlines my pads, bass lines and leads. Over the last month I redesigned the bass frequencies on some tracks with the Virus synthesizer, combining the previous work with the unique Virus fat bottom end.”

Vincent then goes on to reveal more about the audio side of his operation. “As for audio streaming, my Konnekt Live audio interface sends the general outputs to the pair of Dynaudio Acoustics BM15A monitors. I don’t use the effects that come with Konnekt simply because I get them from the Powercore. But during a session, if the system’s sound is too average, the Fabric C compressor helps add a nice punch to my audio output. For my bass guitar or voice recordings, the Konnekt Impact preamps offer excellent conversion. Konnekt has this warm and dynamic audio spectrum that I have never heard in other soundcards. In comparison, I feel other audio interfaces are too neutral or cold for my ears.”

So what has Vincent got lined up for the near future?

“I have just finished and released the new album,” he replies. “The next chapter will be something with less beats and more classical-acoustic oriented. The summer festival season will start soon and I am in the process of reworking all of the album tracks to play them live in different ways for each date.”

“In July, I will be performing as AES Dana and H.U.V.A. Network at La Nuit Hypnotique III in Alsace, which opens the German festival Stimmen. Then I am heading to Lithuania, Ukraine, Italy, Hungary and Greece to perform at various electronic music open-air festivals. From January 2010, I will be resident artist at les Dominicains de Haute-Alsace (Guebwiller, France), and I will start the composition of a piece on the ‘ceramics’ and create ‘a musical garden open air installation’.”

Links :

Discover the album AES DANA - [ Leylines ] Ultimae info: www.ultimae.com