Table of Contents

32.
Illustrations: Alan Worn
New Jersey native Todd Edwards is among the most respected and influential producers in dance music. Credited with inventing UK garage
even though he lives in the United States, over the years Edwards has amassed an impressive list of international DJ appearances, music
releases and collaborations (including “Face to Face” from Daft Punk’s album Discovery). At the end of the day, however, Edwards comes
home to his house in New Jersey, which he shares with his family, to produce and invent new songs and sounds. Here he explains how he
re-imagined his home studio.
Basically I spend most of my time in a room with four walls. It can get very lonely. I don’t have a lot of outside contact because I’m constantly
working crazy hours.
My ideal studio would be a dome. The walls and ceiling would be covered with one continuous high definition video screen. This would give
the same effect as a miniature planetarium. The room could either transport me to different locations or have images projected on it—a live feed
of whatever location I want to look at while I am working. That could be the ocean, a mountaintop, a stage at a concert, etc. Whatever visual I
feel inspired by would be surrounding me as if I were there. It’s about being able to leave that room that gets claustrophobic after awhile.
I love the idea of the holographic computers in Minority Report and Iron Man. Since a sampler is my most valued tool in music composition,
instead of a computer monitor to display my sampling work, I want fully interactive holograms. Each sample from my library would be
displayed in front of me, with both visual soundwave representation as well as the picture and name of the album I sampled it from, if I used
an album. No more knobs to turn or a mouse to click. It would be completely hands on, literally. It would free up the space so I don't just have
all these things sitting around that I don’t necessarily need to use all the time. I would also love a device to stop time, so I can eliminate the
continuous stress of running behind schedule.
The stairs are because the studio is my place of solitude. Sometimes, as a producer, when you’re not DJing a lot, you spend too much time alone,
but other times you need to be able to escape and work.
Explore a soundboard of Todd Edwards samples in the interactive version of this issue at scionav.com/scionmagazine20
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