Making music these days is hella easy. Anyone with an iPhone can download enough emulators and synths to recreate an old Future Sound of London / Coldcut / Guru Josh album without breaking a sweat. Hell, you can bang out a ‘hard house’ album in a couple of hours. Add some chipmunk vocals, a cover of an 80s pop song, some horrendous Teutonic fashion and you’re Scooter.
Given the disposable nature of music these days, it’s nice to see a company still holding a flame for the old schools. The days when you had to have an entire room filled with cables, keyboards, sequences and synths to create an album. The days when companies spent as much time worrying about the aesthetics of their equipment as the sound it produced.
Germany’s Access Music is one such company. Founded in 1997, they’ve been making a name for themselves with a mix of quality synthesisers and industrial design. Their signature Virus series is used by everyone from Dr Dre to The Prodigy, has won numerous industry awards and looks as good as it sounds. Bottom line: nothing says serious musician like a mix of stainless steel and actual wood.
See the full range of Virus Synths at
access-music.de.