You have recorded under several aliases during the years. Could you give a quick recap of your musical past and the idea behind your projects? What are you focusing on at the moment?

I started making music in the early nineties and appeared on a few compilations back then. My first LP was out in 1999 and in the beginning of the new millennium I released a lot of records on labels such as Raster-Noton, Mille-Plateaux / Force Inc, Type Records and Echocord. To this day I’ve released about 35 vinyls and some CD’s too. I’ve got plenty of monikers depending on what mood I was in while recording. Some of them are Mokira, Lowfour, Rechord, Repeatle, TM404 and I’ve also used my real name from time to time. Musically it’s always electronic and I would say there’s always a dub attitude whether I produce a pop album or a techno vinyl.

How do you adapt studio tracks to live versions?

At the moment I’m touring with my latest project called TM404. The whole idea about that moniker was to record using nothing but the famous Roland x0x series from the early eighties. I’ve had all of those instruments for a long time and some of the I’ve got multiples of. There was a period where I was travelling a lot with swedish electro pop band Familjen and back in the studio I felt I could “afford” to record some music for my own personal amusement. I did however film most of the sessions and uploaded them to YouTube. Again, the sessions were done just for fun but two years after the first upload, a few record labels contacted me and wanted to release the music. I went with the Swedish label Kontra-Musik since I’ve released a couple of vinyls there before and love the catalogue.

This led to people being interested in booking me for live sets. I did the live debut as TM404 at Berlin’s legendary techno temple Berghain in January 2013. For the past ten years I’ve never had a laptop on stage. The Octatrack is always the main ingredient and before that I was using the MPC-4000 a lot. I even went to Japan, Thailand and China with that 20 kg heavy machine so I was so lucky when the Octatrack was able to replace the MPC.

Anyway, back to the Berghain story. Since the music of TM404 is a lot about tweaking FX and mixing, I thought I had to use a laptop on stage again. I adopted my recordings to Ableton Live and brought three TB-303’s, a modded TR-606 and some FX and had Ableton as the master syncing those silverboxes with the Innerclock sync box. All the roland machines got mixed in Ableton and then sent out on separate channels into a big mixer on stage. Since I didn’t want to be “a guy on stage with a laptop” I also brought an iPad to control the parameters of Ableton and I closed the lid of the laptop and started the show. It went perfect and I had so much fun! People were dancing to my slow dubby acid set. Lovely!

A bit cocky after the Berghain performance, I went to Malmö a few days later to do the very same set. This time the laptop got overheated and lost it’s sync with the Roland boxes, so I had to stop playing after twenty minutes. Actually I’ve had occational sync issues during this year and I could never figure out why. Perhaps it’s because all the outboard gear go back into the computer again? Anyway, last month I finally understood that I had to have the Octatrack as the main hub while playing live as TM404.

What I do now is that I have some studio loops as samples in the Octatrack and three TB-303’s and my 606 has one input each of the Octatrack. This means I can mix the Roland boxes within the Octatrack. I add FX, resample and also have LFO’s taking care of filters in some places of the set. Why oh why didn’t I think of this before? It makes my live setup so much more fun at the same time as it’s far more stable. TM404 live nowadays is me with the following musicians: Elektron Octatrack, Elektron Machinedrum UW, three Roland TB-303, a modded Roland TR-606 (the kick sounds a bit more like an 808!), Eventide Space and Strymon Timeline. If I can go to the club by train I tend to bring a Roland Space Echo too. And a Pearl Syncussion. Phew!

When working in the studio, how does the process look like? How do you use your gear?

Everything starts with Ableton Live. I have quite a lot of hardware instruments and FX so Ableton is treated like an excellent tape machine that allow you to jam and add software instruments too. I have nothing against VST’s at all and I have nothing against outboard gear at all so I use both a lot. Ableton is syncing (with a little help of that lovely Innerclock box) my Elektron machines and the Roland x0x boxes. The Sequentix Cirklon is also synced from Ableton and Cirklon is doing the melodies for my analog synths like the ARP2600, Korg MS-20 / MS-50 / Mono/Poly etc. I mix it all using a 16 channel Trident mixer. I really hate arranging music so most of my songs are studio jams that I cut in Ableton.

That’s the beauty of hardware, it’s so easy to improvise and frankly sooo much more fun that making music with a mouse. Again, I might have to correct that statement, since I’ve created lots of material with just a laptop running Jeskola Buzz, Propellerhead Reason or Ableton Live. I really prefer the synergy of rusty old analog gear, modern hardware technology and cool software solutions.

What can we expect from you next in terms of record releases?

This autumn I’ve released a twenty minute long TM404 12” as well as a mini LP from Tilliander. There’s at least three vinyls being released in the spring of 2014 but until then you’ll have to stick to those recent releases. And book me to perform in your city! I’ll bring those Roland boxes and Elektron instruments in perfect harmony. I promise!

Be sure to check out Andreas' sounds on SoundCloud here.