The $200 title: The $200 Groovebox That Saved Me From Vegas
I’m stuck in Vegas for an extra day by myself. Totally miserable and bored. I debated bringing my Teenage Engineering EP-133 K.O. II and, oh my loins, am I glad I did.
This thing is so much fun. So entertaining. You can go round and round on it for hours. It’s got such groove.
It is absolutely the spiritual successor to the old cash-register-looking Akai MPC3000 style MPCs. Don’t ever get one of those, by the way. They’re nothing but trouble unless you actually enjoy replacing floppy drives and troubleshooting old garbagy electronics instead of making music.
The KOs are cheap and cheerful.
What’s funny about Teenage Engineering is people yell at them for simultaneously being too expensive and too cheap and “making toys.” Given their product range, it’s ridiculous. Why can’t people just be happy?
That being said, these things are like $200 on Marketplace, and you should go buy one today.
They really do act like the old MPCs if you’re interested in old-school house music where you’ve only got four or five elements going at once. You can really learn the essence of how that music was done with one of these machines because they only do so much. Very groovy.
And speaking of, I don’t know if the groove is technically “correct,” but the it is great. Be subtle with it.
If you watch videos from Ian Pooley and his workflow, you’ll get where he’s coming from instantly.
Also, just like the Las Vegas street musicians, the batteries last forever. Four AAA batteries and they just go and go and go. It’s amazing.
You really can’t beat these samplers for pure fun.
I’m convinced most people who buy an Roland SP-404MKII never even scratch the surface of what it can do. With these KOs, you can scratch the surface almost instantly. You could probably “master” one in a couple weeks. Muscle memory aside, obviously.
And the big thing is this: you can make a shitload of tracks quickly and efficiently, and it would be hard to have more fun electronically.