Mentallo and the Fixer's first record was released in 1992 but by that time they had already been making music for years--and had accumulated over 30 synths, samplers and drum machines. A few years back Gary Dassing divested himself of all his synths while his brother, Dwayne, hung on to many of his. Gearwire asked if there was anything he missed from the old days.

"Well, like I mentioned I parted ways with all of my synthesizers several years back, but if you asked me which one I was particularly fond of I would say the Roland SH 1." says Dassing.

He goes on to say that the greatest improvement in music gear from the time be started until now is the ability to work on recording at home.

"Being able to get a great recording at home, the advancements in sequencing/recording software, being able to work at your own pace and get a good sound recording and Multi track recording via computers and software," says Dassing. "But really the key is experimentation and challenging yourself to try things outside of the scope. To not solely rely on one thing all the time. To spend time crafting sounds and textures."

There is a flip side to the advancement of technology that allows easy home recording.

"The technology itself has seemed to get way out of hand to the point to where it does not take a person with any type of skill to throw something together nowadays- Its like a lot of gear to where its not about real innovation but a sales pitch." says Dassing.

He laments that these days everything is done for you from preset sounds to loops and sequence. The robotic nature of it and the lack of imagination disturbs Dassing.

"I remember back in the day when we were using the commodore 64 as a sequencer and that was considered ahead of its time at the time, but it took skill and effort and to program, there were no automated sequences, so it forced you to come up with something yourself and if anyone is use to old analog sequencers or even synths back in the day, at times all your memory would blank out because of a power surge or something of that effect," says Dassing. "So you had no choice but to come up with your own patches unless you saved then via cassette information. Now if you have no clue what I'm talking about well back then you could save all your patch and sequence information via tape/digital information onto a tape deck---- a time-consuming process but your only choice."

Look for Mentallo and the Fixer's latest recording, Enlightenment Through a Chemical Catalyst on Static Sky Records.