Roland MC-101 - Cover of Heliosphan by Aphex Twin

A new toy! As always, I often find the best way to learn a new piece of equipment is to do cover versions, as I find being creative and finding my way round the kit a bit overwhelming when trying to do them at the same time. Everything on here is stock MC-101 presets except he Apache snare sample as I thought it was just too iconic to try and replicate. This is one of my favourite Aphex Twin tracks, and the original recording is a bit lo-fi as it was allegedly damaged by a cat! So I thought it was worth recreating. Hope you enjoy!
#mc101 #aphextwin

[YershJRSZ]

One of the best AFX covers I've heard so far.
There's something magical in this one track

[HeraldOD]

This is probably one of the best Aphex recreations I've ever heard, nice work

[GuyFromNet]

I love how this one doesn't copy original, but convey familiar vibes. Kinda live version

[MrBasic]

Nice job! The 101 certainly is rad and worth of much praise.

[gusiebussi]

It's amazing how good this version is!

[shaft]

very nice, nails at least 95%

this also reminds me how so much of mixing comes down to just two things: gain and reverb (x # of channels)

the closed hat really misses that medium room reverb to blend and 'smear' the 32nds. however subtle, it changes the character of the whole mix.

[Hliosphan]

Yeah very nice. Very accurate but with a great personal spin on it.

[mileslewis]

This has me remembering why I got into recording ::)

[tostare]

A lovely version of my favourite Aphex track. Nice work (and a nice advert for the MC101 too!).

[supracer]

Really enjoyed listening to this cover. Fantastic!!!

[tomfenn]

Very well done! I started trying to do a cover of Heliosphan on my Korg EM-1 mk1 electribe, but then the track wandered off and became something completely different! But this gives me the courage to go back and try again. I do wonder if Heliosphan was one of Richard's very early masterpieces (a masterpiece it certainly is, as too my favourite song ever by Aphex), seeing broken down it's in fact a very basic track and this would bode well back in the days when Aphex was using some crappy Yamaha 2-track sequencer? Just proves you don't need £££'s of gear to produce good music.

[jasonbesant]

Wow really well done cover. I love it!

[BuckshotJones]

You nailed it! 💯 If you added the analog tape hiss then I wouldn’t know this wasn’t from Richard James himself. 👌

[Necrobot]

Bravo!! I keep thinking about covering Low Cool from Cabaret Voltaire as a good excuse to finally import my samples from the film "My Crasy Life" into my Polyend Play and cross my fingers that Stephen Mallinder thinks I actually do it justice!

[Unifono]

very nice cover! I found the mc101 to be very good for getting these kind of vibes

[shaft]

I used to have the PMA-5 in the 90s, and the MC-101 reminds me very much of an evolution of that og box.
I'd run patterns to the PMA-5 over MIDI from an MMT-8 and/or MacPlus running MasterTrax.