And do these pieces of elementary electronics have to be adapted or changed in some way to create a desired sound? "Well, I'm no electronics whizz but we do take old Stylophones apart and see if we can do anything with them. They've all got sounds on board. We tend to use them live a lot more than we do in a recording environment."
Technology may be a wonderful thing but some artists think laterally when it comes to finding unique timbres. "If I gave someone a four-track, a Copicat and a Speak 'N' Spell, and told them to make an album," continues Mike W, "they'd have to be pretty creative to get anything. A PC with Cubase just makes people lazy."
Any which way
Longstone's methods are as flexible as their music. Many musicians choose either screen-based or hardware-based sequencing, real-time or step programming, digital or analogue synths. The Longstone approach is to use anything in every way possible.

"Some tracks are done live in the studio," Mike explains. "There's loads of stuff going on: Copicats whizzing round, Speak 'N' Spells firing off... it all goes straight to hard disk, so we can't even edit it. Then there are tracks that have been worked on for weeks on computer, that have had live elements added after. The point is there are no real rules."

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