Archive 2001: Cinérex – Twist and Starts

Twist and Starts is the main single from CX, the debut album of Cinérex — a music project active around 2001. The CD single carries two songs from the album. Written and produced by Tommy Rombouts, Kevin Ross, and Alissa Kueker, with Bass by Mirko Banovic and Guitar by Jo Mahieu.

The record is an archive piece. It is no longer available for commercial distribution, but it remains a useful reference point for how electronic music was assembled at the turn of the millennium — before the DAW became the instrument, and when hardware still dictated the workflow.

Building the rhythm without MIDI

Samplitude 2496 was the production environment — a multitrack audio editor at its core, with no sequencer or MIDI engine integrated. Drum patterns were not programmed; they were constructed as audio, placing each hit manually on the timeline rather than snapping to a grid. This approach forced a different relationship with timing and feel. Patterns were shaped by listening and nudging rather than by quantising, which accounts for a quality in the groove that a step-sequenced session would not have produced in the same way.

Synthesis hardware

The two primary sound sources were the EMU Planet Phatt and the Clavia Nord Lead 1. The Planet Phatt was a phrase and rhythm synthesizer built around sample playback — its strength was dense, rhythmically pre-loaded content that could be repitched, filtered, and layered into something that didn't immediately telegraph its factory origins. The Nord Lead 1 was one of the first commercially available virtual analogue synthesizers. Its subtractive architecture — four oscillators per voice, FM between them, a sharp ladder-style filter — allowed tight control over timbre. Bright attack transients, long vowel-like filter sweeps, dense unison patches: the Nord Lead handled the harmonic material while the Planet Phatt filled the lower rhythmic register.

Signal path and gain staging

All sources passed through a Focusrite channelstrip before reaching the converters. At this point in the timeline, quality analogue hardware made a real difference at the input stage — the converters and preamps bundled into affordable audio interfaces were not yet competitive with dedicated outboard. The Focusrite strip was used primarily for tone-shaping at capture: controlling low-end build-up, adding presence to synthesizer attacks, and ensuring the gain structure into the DAW was consistent between takes.

The video clip

A Korg keyboard appears prominently in the video clip shot alongside the release, though it played no part in the actual production of the track. Its presence was visual — the right shape for the frame — not functional. The footage was captured with the same economic constraints as the music itself: practical locations, available light, no crew.