Rob Brown Quotations

I wouldn't judge people on their instant responses.

You can't go back and edit during the live set in the club. In the studio it's different.

You can sit in front of a computer and have a blank slate and be completely overwhelmed by the possibilities and not get anywhere.

You can get the oldest drum machine out and whack out four sounds like a kick, snare, and two types of high-hat, and try and come up with the freshest thing on the spot. The gear can guide you - you can choose one bit of gear and it's obviously got its restrictions and its limitations, but at the same time, you've got to exploit what it's capable of and what it's best used for.

When you're in the studio, you've got a narrative for what goes on, you might switch on a bit of gear and it might not work as you intended or come out a bit wrong, and you try and exploit it.

Let's face it, we're all clones nowadays. We've all got the same archives, we've all got the same Hyundai, we've all got the same Mac or PC components, and we're all being told the same news stories globally.

There's not much room for deviation, yet if you manage to crack it, there then you can express things that actually do sound unique and genuinely original.

I get nostalgic for things that didn't really exist. I might have a cassette from the first time a Melle Mel track, say, got played on radio in Manchester. And it might be a copy of a copy of a copy of a tape and there's all these weird nuances and distortions that have affected what I know as the truth, if you like, of that track.

I know that there's a lot of room to maneuver in those kind of ghostly musical spheres...

To me, an untrained ear, a young person at the time, I would hear off the different feels, all these different sounds, and then years later realize that everyone had used the same equipment, just to their own ends.