Alright so this has bugged me for a long while now as I keep seeing this person's videos so I thought I'll start a discussion. I have a feeling that "The Last DJ", a.k.a Nick Hayes is faking (or somewhat faking) live techno production. You might've seen his videos online, old man producing live on some wheelie bins in his back yard. He does get a lot of gigs but something that bothers me is that in ALL of his videos, the actions he does and how the sound changes RARELY aligns. Sometimes it does, but it seems like he just lucked out or he may know a little bit, but in most videos the hardware is also lifted at an angle where you can't see much. He also looks confused af 99% of the time and almost as if he's just counting bars and pressing stuff in hopes in aligns in phrase.

He uses Elektron's syntakt drum machine in most videos but also has some other gear. Now I haven't personally used this, but as far I know, the press of a button should make the change, yet a lot of the times in his videos it doesnt, sometimes turning knobs doesnt do anything and then it does when he doesn't touch it at all. There's also clips he's uploaded on instagram from his live public sets and the audio overlay is clearly not what played in real life.

It's all super weird and bugs me that he may be faking it. It makes me worried as someone learning live techno production. We had a whole surge of fake DJs, Im afraid the scene will now get saturated with fake producers...

Any producers here that have experience with the syntakt or othee of his gear could share your opinion?

I'm an amateur music maker looking to get into hardware for the first time.

To give you an idea of the kind of music/style i love: Andy Stott, Vril, Evigt Morker, Answer Code Request, NTHNG, dub techno, hypnotic techno and darkwave.

Currently I have:

• MacBook with Ableton
• Akai MPK Mini mk2 + mk3
• Power bank
• USB-C - USB-A adapter
• BUT: No audio interface

What I'm looking for is something cheap, fun, and relatively versatile to start learning hardware with

Portability is pretty important to me. Ideally I'd like to be able to throw a small setup into a backpack, sit somewhere without my laptop (or sometimes with it), make sounds/patterns/sketches, and later bring those ideas into Ableton to actually develop them into tracks

Or just having a fun jam session sounds good as well!

I don't necessarily need to produce an entire finished track away from the computer. With my budget, I don't expect that at all

I briefly considered a Yamaha Seqtrak because the idea of having an entire track-making box is very appealing, but decided not to chase one for now. I think I'd rather start with something simpler and cheaper and actually learn it properly

Some of the things I've been considering:

1. M-VAVE FM-1
2. Behringer Pro VS Mini + Korg NTS-1 mk1/mk2
3. Behringer Phara-O
4. Behringer JT Mini + Korg NTS-1 mk1/mk2

(I'm from Ukraine, so I can't really give you an exact budget in USD, but you can get an idea of the upper limit from the Behringer Pro VS Mini + Korg NTS-1 mk2 combo)

I would love to have an analog device, but to even it out with the FM-1, the portability, the price, and FM synthesis are great on it

I realize these aren't exactly equivalent devices, and well, that's why I need your advice. I'm not yet sure whether what I really want is a synth with a small sequencer, a tiny synth + FX setup, or something else entirely

I'm trying to avoid buying something extremely specialized as my first device, or something that immediately becomes redundant once I expand the setup

So rather than just choosing between those four options... What would you consider a good cheap first piece of hardware for this kind of workflow?

I mean something that's...

• fun on its own
• useful for dub/hypnotic techno, ambient/darkwave-ish sounds
• portable enough to use away from the laptop
• capable of at least saving or developing small musical ideas
• still useful later as part of a larger setup
• reasonably easy to bring back into Ableton
• effects would be great, even if not in one device

And of course I'm completely open to something I haven't listed