A few months ago, I actually had a break to go vinyl shopping, and picked up a record from NYC's Passions off France's Kitsune Maison label. The record was for their single Emergency. I threw it onto my thrift store purchased listening turntable and let the Ortofons do their magic. The sounds that erupted from my speakers blew my mind.

The uniqueness of the lead synth and bass really got to me, so I had to pack it for the party I was playing later that night. When the record dropped later that night, I knew this was a hit, and I immediately felt the urge to contact Ben from Passions.

1. What do you produce with in the studio? What's you gear setup?

The studio setup is fairly simple - A bunch of old broken synths we've picked up from here and there, as well as a Dave Smith Instruments Evolver, which is actually the only fully functioning piece of gear we have right now. Everything is recorded into and sequenced with Logic.

2. You do a lot of digital editing in your tracks. How does that transfer when you play live?

While Passions consists of four people who help produce the music, the live setup consists of just myself using Ableton Live. Tracks are broken down into drums, bass, etc., and then re-sequenced and triggered on the fly. Some of the edits are kept intact with the sound files, while a variety of plug-in effects allow me to re-edit and cut up tracks differently each time they're played. We also usually record alternative versions for me to work with in a live setting.

3. It sounds like you use a lot of live instruments mixed with artificial drums. What type of outboard gear do you use?

Honestly not much. The only consistent piece of gear is an Alesis 3630 compressor. Most of our synths are run through that, otherwise we sometimes run instruments directly into the computer, or mic up an amp - we have one mic, its a Peluso CEMC6 Solid State Microphone (which we got from a friend). Our drums are all either from an Oberheim Dmx or a Linn Drum. The quicker we can get our ideas down and recorded onto the computer, the better.

4. Are you more inclined towards hardware or software when producing?

Definitely more inclined towards software - personally I've always been comfortable working visually and being able to see the structure of what I am doing. None of us are very good engineers, and we tend to focus mostly on melody and structure before the technical stuff. We do a lot of editing, re-arranging, and just generally messing around with what we've recorded after its on the computer.