Skip to main content

Hybrasil: Desert Island Kit

The Irish techno live act Hybrasil reveals what piece of kit he couldn't live without...

Playing alongside Carl Cox and Adam Beyer at Amnesia and supporting Jeff Mills on his orchestra tour are just two of the landmark moments across Hybrasil's 2018. Not only has his high-profile DJ gigs taken him all over the world, his productions have gotten the nod from the likes of Richie Hawtin, Dave Clarke and Laurent Garnier. 

We wanted to find out more about his chameleonic techno sound and what studio kit he couldn't live without. It turns out, it's a piece of gear that went on to define his live show...

"My piece of Desert Island kit is, without doubt, the Elektron Octatrack. The Octatrack is an eight-track performance sampler, designed for both live performance and the studio. My motivations for working with this unit were to remove the laptop from my live sets and to place it as the nerve centre of a hands-on all machine studio setup. 

"The first thing that struck me was just how unintuitive it was to learn, you really need to sit down and give this monster your full attention. The second thing that I realised was just how fanatically hardcore Octatrack users are, it's almost like a way of life. Pretty much any question or problem you can think of is addressed on the user forum. It’s amazing."

"There is a steep learning curve but this is a unique machine with huge capabilities"

"The real key here is time and patience with what you are doing. After the first week of pretty much working on this machine five to eight hours a day, I felt like I was learning to make music all over again, so the inevitable self-doubt crept in. 'I can do this quicker in Ableton' etcetera. That kind of thought process was counterproductive – I had to remind myself of why I was doing this in the first place. There is a steep learning curve but this is a unique machine with huge capabilities."

"One of the stand out performances I've done on the Octatrack was performing on the Amnesia Ibiza Terrace with Carl Cox and Adam Beyer for One Night Stand last July. That was an incredible show, the Amnesia booth and their tech staff were really on point. It came 10 years almost to the week, from my first trip to Ibiza, where I religiously went to Cocoon Mondays, so playing on the Terrace was an absolute dream."

"One of the stand out performances on the Octatrack was the Amnesia Terrace with Carl Cox"

"Overall the Octatrack has been extremely challenging but also rewarding. I still feel like I am scratching the surface with the machine. Every Octatrack user I meet uses it in a different way and from each person, you learn something new. There is no substitute for time and effort, this machine offers a lot but you have to give it your full attention."