Mentat Mix

Mentat

Techno and progressive house from UK producer and live act Mentat. www.mentataudio.com Contact: mentat@mentataudio.com

  1. 2026-03-04 A quick set of live techno at Dublin Castle EMOM

    6 MAR

    2026-03-04 A quick set of live techno at Dublin Castle EMOM

    A short set live from the Dublin Castle in Camden at EMOM London. I was also hosting the night and introducing acts so had about 5 minutes to set up. Good thing I recently simplified down my setup to a single case. Sorry for the not so great video, as you can see I just about slammed the camera on the tripod as I was starting to play! I was testing something I've been working on - replacing my Mod Dwarf pedal end of chain setup with a Raspberry Pi setup built into the case. I've got a front panel module feeding the audio out of my mixer into a Raspberry Pi with a Codec Zero hat for audio mounted inside the eurorack case. This does a bunch of end of chain stuff - it literally lets me have a full mastering chain of plugins on the output. Also gives me low cut filters for performance, recording onboard, a line out to the PA and a headphone amp. Pretty useful bit of kit. Just ironing out some reliability issues and getting the front panel tidied up and I'll do a video on what I've been doing with it. Gear used: Oxi One Mkii - All sequencing BitBox Micro Sampler - Drums, percussion loops, some synth parts Mutable Instruments Plaits - Melodies and effect Doepfer Wasp filter - Filter on the Plaits Noise Engineering Manis Iteritas - Melodies Dopefer A-111-6 - Bass Knobula Poly Cinematic - Chords and melodies Jakkplug Monsoon (Mutable Instruments Clouds Clone) - Granular effects Bastl Pizza Crust - Percussion and occasional synth Blue Lantern Stereo Sir Mix Alot - Mixing Happy Nerding FX-Aid x2 - Reverb and delay Forge tme Vhikk - textures If you're interested, my ModularGrid is here: https://modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/2884273

    12 min
  2. Live Melodic Techno Set at Factory Setting, London

    9 FEB

    Live Melodic Techno Set at Factory Setting, London

    Recording of my live set from the Factory Setting event this week. I played first up as people were arriving - nice to set the scene for people. I've always loved that feeling of walking into a club with music going and taking it all in, so I enjoyed being able to be the soundtrack to that. It was a great event, with loads of excellent sets and a really interesting and inspiring talk, demo and set from 808 State to headline. This was also the first time using the OXI One sequencer live. I had some left over patterns from a studio jam which I started with, improvising the arrangement and then bringing some more improvised elements in later. Enjoying the new sequencer, although still lots to learn. I'm not dropping the Torso T1 though, I really like that for other reasons so I can see myself still using it. It's like playing slightly different instruments really and they both push you in slightly different directions. I've got an hour long studio set recorded earlier in the day with the same setup which I'll share soon. Gear used: Oxi One Mkii - All sequencing BitBox Micro Sampler - Drums, percussion loops, some synth parts Mutable Instruments Plaits - Melodies and effect Doepfer Wasp filter - Filter on the Plaits Noise Engineering Manis Iteritas - Melodies Dopefer A-111-6 - Bass Knobula Poly Cinematic - Chords and melodies Make Noise Mimeophon - Delay and effects Jakkplug Monsoon (Mutable Instruments Clouds Clone) - Granular effects Bastl Pizza Crust - Percussion and occasional synth Blue Lantern Stereo Sir Mix Alot - Mixing Happy Nerding FX-Aid x2 - Reverb on everything and multi effects on the Poly Cinematic Mod Dwarf effects pedal - End of chain compression and mastering and some stereo whole mix hipass filtering and delay If you're interested, my ModularGrid is here: https://modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/2884273

    11 min
  3. Live Melodic Techno at Factory Setting, London

    21/10/2025

    Live Melodic Techno at Factory Setting, London

    My latest live set... this one is a little different... Not a new direction, but just an experiment with playing some pre released tracks in live versions rather than completely improvising. I'm definitely not ditching the improvising - just trying something to see what I can learn. Having been doing lots of entirely improvised sets recently I started looking into recording some of my improvisations and developing them into tracks. This made me get out my Cirklon sequencer again, and I thought for this month's Factory Setting event I'd have a go at recreating live versions of some of my studio tracks that had been released. So this set consists of Indigo and Flight, which came out on my own label Cirrus Sounds, and Marble which came out on Traum Schallplatten and was the first Mentat track I ever released. These tracks were originally written in Ableton Live, so I brought across some of the samples and the sequences to the BitBox sampler and the Cirklon sequencer, and live jammed the arrangements on the sequencer and the modular system. This brings different challenges than improvising... having sounds in mind for each track and section I have to remember more. I have to remember what sequences are coming from where, how they should sound and how I need to set up the synth to make those sounds. When improvising I can be a bit more immediate and experiment, but here I have to get to something I have in mind, which is a different approach. I don't have to think as much about where I am going though, as I had the three track order planned and to a certain extent the types of arrangements I'd be creating, even though that was a bit improvised. All in all I was pleased with how it went. It goes a bit abstract going out of Indigo into Flight where the transition in synth sounds wasn't as smooth as I wanted it to be. But it's OK I think and something I'd quickly improve with some more practice. Something I learned was how I might approach varying structures a bit more even when improvising. I have tended to be very loop and groove focused, but my released tracks have more back and forth of differing sections. No reason why I couldn't do this with the improvising - it's just another thing to develop and practice. Next I'm going to explore constructing some track starting with improvisation on the Torso sequencer, but recording them into the Cirklon and refining them into more finished tracks. The Cirklon is much better for that kind of detailed work - although the Torso shines brighter to me for ideas and live jams. I might try some live sets with a mix of more prepared and improvised stuff - it's nice to play some more detailed melodic stuff and recognisable tunes. But I do prefer fully improvising in the moment in many ways, so I'll see where it takes me. Gear used: Sequentix Cirklon - All sequencing BitBox Micro Sampler - Drums, percussion loops, some synth parts Mutable Instruments Plaits - Melodies and effect Doepfer Wasp filter - Filter on the Plaits Noise Engineering Manis Iteritas - Melodies Dopefer A-111-6 - Bass Knobula Poly Cinematic - Chords and melodies Make Noise Mimeophon - Delay and effects Jakkplug Monsoon (Mutable Instruments Clouds Clone) - Granular effects Bastl Pizza Crust - Percussion and occasional synth Blue Lantern Stereo Sir Mix Alot - Mixing Happy Nerding FX-Aid x2 - Reverb on everything and multi effects on the Poly Cinematic Mod Dwarf effects pedal - End of chain compression and mastering and some stereo whole mix hipass filtering and delay If you're interested, my ModularGrid is here: https://modulargrid.net/e/racks/view/2884273

    14 min

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

Techno and progressive house from UK producer and live act Mentat. www.mentataudio.com Contact: mentat@mentataudio.com