Atari ST by Fatboyslim

[amiman99]

Spotted Atari St during Fatboy Slim's interview at 52s time, Cool.

At 7m50s, he is using it!!! Calls it "Museum piece"

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yea4I8EgdqQ

Edited January 11, 2016 by amiman99

[Fletch]

He recently retired the STs. Here is an article about it:

 

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/interview-fatboy-slim-on-going-digital-as-a-dj-and-as-a-producer-546858

[exxosuk]

You would think he would have got a Falcon, or at least a boosted ST from me by now

[amiman99]

He recently retired the STs. Here is an article about it:

 

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/interview-fatboy-slim-on-going-digital-as-a-dj-and-as-a-producer-546858

Great article!

So it looks like he still likes the old school Atari and Akai, more comfortable using it then some software on a laptop.

[Lynxpro]

Great article!

So it looks like he still likes the old school Atari and Akai, more comfortable using it then some software on a laptop.

 

He uses MacBooks during his live performances these days.

Edited January 12, 2016 by Lynxpro

[Rick Dangerous]

Love Fatboy and all his music!!

[Tickled_Pink]

It's just another case of "if it aint broke ..."

 

Fact is that just for running MIDI equipment and sequencing there's little that a modern computer can do that an ST can't.

[exxosuk]

I don't see why its a problem for him to us his ST anyway. If hes making good songs who cares ?

[Fletch]

I don't see why its a problem for him to us his ST anyway. If hes making good songs who cares ?

 

 

From what I had read, his record company wanted his music presented to them in a file format they were able to use. It was as simple as that. The record company didn't want to have to jump through hoops to do whatever they do or don't do with the data once they received it.

 

Life marches on.

[calimero]

 

 

From what I had read, his record company wanted his music presented to them in a file format they were able to use. It was as simple as that. The record company didn't want to have to jump through hoops to do whatever they do or don't do with the data once they received it.

 

Life marches on.

 

 

File formats and applications - culprits of today modern computing world

Edited January 15, 2016 by calimero

[amiman99]

He's more CREATIVE with samples and MIDI then Apple running Ableton, simple as that.

[MrMaddog]

From what I've read, it's for him easier to use a MacBook on stage and keep the old Atari/Akai setup in a studio. If it was me I'd use an ST emulator to use the sequencer to run the MIDI stuff through Albeton. Would be awesome if someone would make a VST based on Steem...

Edited January 16, 2016 by MrMaddog

[pixelmischief]

Thank you for this. It was a thrill to watch.

[chepe]

He recently retired the STs. Here is an article about it:

 

http://www.musicradar.com/news/tech/interview-fatboy-slim-on-going-digital-as-a-dj-and-as-a-producer-546858

While he talks about it in the article, we see that in interviews 2-3 years later he still hasn't completely retired his home studio. Here's another one, at 1.35 we see his Atari again:

 

 

What he did do was to stop hauling tons of vinyls for live performances.

 

Many musicians tend to be very conservative. Once they find some way of making music they like and which sounds 'right' for them, they are often reluctant to give it up. And funny thing is this isn't limited to just say classic music where you just have to have authentic Amati violins or 17th century pipe organs etc. Recently passed Lemmy Kilmister did, to the end, everything pretty much the same he did in the '70s. Same (or similar) bass guitars, same amps, same consoles and so on. He even kept the same people in his road crew whenever possible - Lemmy's friends who visited Motörhead backstage like 10 or 20 years later, were astonished to see how everything was just like in previous visit.

In some genres this is taken to extreme, like in Black metal world - music is recorded using old track recorders or even C-cassettes and fanzines are printed with old Xerox photocopiers because that is The Way, dammit.

 

I read that this isn't Norman Cook's original ST, apparently his old machine broke down sometimes in 2000's. By then ST was already a relic even in music world, but he didn't want to change but bought couple of extra ST's and monitors. His current machine is 520STFM with 1MB memory.

I think there are couple of other holdouts who still use ST. It was mentioned somewhere that Cabaret Voltaire still produce their music with ST.

[Rick Dangerous]

What is the midi program you can see him running?

[chepe]

I think it's Notator.

[Rick Dangerous]

We should get fatboy slim to do the music for an ST home brew. I bet if the game was fun he would do it

[AkaiAtari]

There've been a lot of complaints over the years about midi timing and that it's not as accurate as, for instance, control voltage. Many musicians who've used Atari in the past with applications such as Notator swear that the timing is tighter on the older Atari than the modern day interfaces. Probably because the midi connections are an integral part of the hardware. Norman probably uses older 12 bit samplers as they give a much nicer effect than the modern bit crushers and a lot of the editing software is Atari based.

[chepe]

We should get fatboy slim to do the music for an ST home brew. I bet if the game was fun he would do it

Fatboy Slim doesn't strike me as 'ST aficionado' in same sense as we here. He likely just needed a computer for his music and that's what was available(or somebody recommended it) and he liked to work with it. If he had bought say, Yamaha CX5M instead, he would probably swear by Akai and MSX today

[anamyd]

Here's some newer footage of the setup in action in 2016 (not 2018 as the upload date would suggest), in case anyone missed it!

 

 

The sequencer is Creator, which I believe is the predecessor of Notator.

 

Then, in a 2017 interview, the setup is still there, but isn't powered on at all despite its length (which is actually longer than that particular upload). Norman explains that the Akai disks are in the middle of being converted into modern sample files for use in Ableton on his MacBook.

 

 

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by anamyd
fixed YT embeds

[chepe]

Long-ish article from January 2017 about 'Praise You' single and his career in general. In the end he talks a bit about issues of old hardware, funny stuff. His unwieldy and huge sample collection was one thing which kept him in ST, as transferring it to other platform was huge amount of work and that platform might have become obsolete anyway in few years. But it seems he got around to it eventually. He also says that he has several spare Ataris and Akais which people whom have retired them have gifted him, so if he wants, he can keep his studio up for a long time...