Copycat

Along with the Korg, one the firsts bit of "real" music equipment I ever bought. Made by WEM. It had a tape loop and it whirred and made faint clicking noises and was, at the time, one of the most exciting things I had ever owned. I first saw a WEM Copycat at a rehearsal by A House - and I immediately wanted one, although I had no idea what it actually did.

Gerard got rather good at sticking a bit of cardboard over the erase head to create looping-varispeed-soundscapes on the fly. A technique that he used in many of our late night TV improvisations.

I still own several of the tape loops marked with 'do not erase' symbols because they contain useful or exiting looped material. More to digitise, I suppose. Sigh. (Ben)

Very much a core piece of equipment. I do like the minimalist quality of the post-synth, pre-Copycat stuff (Tranquil Vale, Dead Men, Fountain, YellowSong (Video Rideo)), but synth and Copycat (and then drum machine) came increasingly to function as a single unit in the construction of many tracks. It wasn't a particular skill of mine, but after some experimenting with reel-to-reels (see EMUCF in related groups) the Copycat did also give us a quick means of doing interesting loops. We also tried looping vocal noises, whispers and murmurs, with some good effects (is Secrets of the Passive Margin (Endzeit) one of these?), and there are the more industrial loops of the Biohazard Sessions, building metallic textures that created a bleak landscape of the industrial outskirts as backdrop for the rest of the music. (Gerard)

Glancing at my shevles the other day, I discovered that the correct spelling is Copicat. Oops. (Ben)