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‘I was supposed to bring my Korg MS-20, but I had some technical problems,’ Hugo excuses himself when he begins his lecture. An hour later, nobody is bothered by this minor disappointment, because Hugo just showed us some next level stuff.

 

When Hugo performs live as Palmbomen, he is not only controlling the sound, he’s in charge of the visuals as well. ‘By controlling the lights, I replace the band that I don’t have. I wrote a program that enables me to translate my music in a visual way as well.’

 

‘The way I work with hardware, is that everything comes together in a patch bay,’ Hugo continues. ‘Or in other words: I use a bunch of holes to connect all kinds of different devices.’

Palmbomen definitely has a vintage feel to his sounds. ‘I like to use tape echo’s and analogue effects for vocals to make my sound less smooth. I use a lot of sixties stuff, not because I want to sound old, but I like the lo-fi sound. For this I use a VHS-recorder that I bought for 5 euros. You get a lot of noise, but in the end it sounds great.’ According to Hugo, it is most important to create a dynamic sound. ‘To get a dynamic sound, you can use really old stuff, like a Roland Jupiter 4 for example. If you want to have a clean sound, use digital techniques. But I don’t like my sounds clean.’