He was introduced to Reason by his friend Aphex Twin. Both old school buddies and proper Cornwall citizens with a knack for electronic music.

Let’s quote this cool bit first:

Funnily enough it was Aphex Twin who had an early beta version (note: Reason) – he was the first person who showed it to me, and I thought “what a wicked idea”. The fact that it looked like a studio was a definite turn-on for me; I loved to see a bit of actual gear simply represented in a rack. I never liked the separate boxes and stuff in those other programs. I loved the fact that it didn’t have plug-ins, I was really fed up with Cubase and Logic and tons of options… a simpler thing was just perfect for me.

Coming from a great interview Fredrik Hägglund (aka Blank) had with Luke Vibert. I probably have read it some years ago but it still feels fresh to me.

Luke shared a Reason song (“98 Groove” which is really cool) and a few of his favorite tricks. I love his dual Scream 4 Combinator patch (“The first one has a slight tape push effect but with the volume as low as can be, and the second one is a heavier tape push effect with all the controls turned right up.”), his sine wave bass using a Malström, and his great trick to use the RV7000 spring reverb mode on stuff like bass sounds (can be heard used on many of his songs).

This is my favourite quote from the interview:

I nearly always start with the drums to get a groove going. The rest of the time I start with a funky loop, or a not-so-funky loop I’d like to make funky, and build around that. But yeah, usually I create a Redrum and get one live and one electronic kick. Sometimes I go crazy and make a whole drum machine of ten kicks. I work in cycle mode for as long as I can take it and if I’m happy with the track I save it to a folder called “Done” where I’ve got maybe 500 tracks like that. At some point later on I go back and see if I find anything I’d like to make into a full-blown track. If I do, I usually start by copying everything like 10 minutes on (to some point I know I’m never going to reach), and then get busy. I always liked that part, it’s like making a story, an animated film or whatever.

Just in case you’ve never read it or like me, have forgotten about it, do (re)read the Substance interview with Luke Vibert → (link not working, content is deleted from Reason Studios website).