Losoul breaks down how he made “Some Pals Were Sleepers”

German producer Losoul has explained how he made “Some Pals Were Sleepers”, a track from his new album “Broken English Dubs”, in a feature published by Magnetic Mag on 19 October 2026. The six-track album came out on 5 October on Logistic Records, drawing on jazz, funk and soul and on the idea of broken English as a universal language, with rhythm, texture and movement as its vocabulary.

The track was built mostly on analog hardware recorded into the DAW. A modular synth mixing modules from several manufacturers provides most of the drums, percussion and bass. A first-version Vermona DRM-1 drum machine from the 1990s supplies raw hi-hats, cymbals and a clap, while an eighties Digitech Time Machine delay, which he bought in the US, works as a chorus and flanger on the higher percussion.

The low pads come from an electric piano preset on an original Yamaha DX7, played at near-minimum velocity so the body stays close to a sine wave. The mix ran through a 1980s TAC Scorpion 32-8-2 console, once mainly used in rock, which Losoul says gives the music “a little bit of dust”. As an exception, the solo was played on a Fender Rhodes plugin without quantisation.

In his production advice, Losoul argues for staying with the gear one knows well, whatever trends suggest, and against relying on proven recipes copied from others.

Born in Cologne in 1971, Losoul has been working at the edges of minimal house since the mid-1990s.