A screenshot of Jonny from the Jarak Qaribakalbum teaser video.
After seeing Jonny play Dudu Tassa’s super rare Fender “Nocaster”, you might expect Jonny to use a drum machine even rarer than the old CR-78. In fact, his setup is surprisingly modern and super portable. It consists of a Roland T-8 beat machine and a Moog DFAM semi-modular drum synth. Both are units with “live” panel controls. Although the Roland has preset rhythms, the knobs on both units are hard-wired: what you see is what you get. That means any “automation” needs to be dialed in by hand.
The T-8 is designed to be a portable “best of” Roland rhythm boxes, with digital emulations of the 808 kick, 606 snare, TB-303 monosynth, etc. Regardless of the technology, the kick and snare at the start of Ya Mughir al-Ghazala certainly have that “Roland’ sound. Given the borrowed guitar, it seems that Jonny didn’t want to travel with a bunch of gear for this project. The T-8 is certainly much smaller than the vintage TR-909 that Jonny uses with Radiohead, let alone his modular. It’s easy to imagine Jonny working out some of the beats on the T-8 during his flight over.
The T-8 has a few patch points for sync, mixing, headphones, and MIDI. On both Ya Mughir al-Ghazala and Taq ou Dub, Jonny has a yellow patch cable from the "Sync Out” on the Roland to the “Adv / Clock” input on the Moog, allowing him to use the Roland as his main clock. That’s convenient since the T-8 has a BPM display. Jonny also uses the mix/headphone out to send his signal to the mixer (via one of the many blue DI boxes). He’s not using the MIDI input on the Roland, which means he’s in full control of tempo for the group whenever he uses the drum boxes.
As you might expect from a semi-modular, the DFAM is more flexible than the Roland in the range of sounds it can create. There’s a patch cable routed from what looks to be the “VCO 1” output to “Velocity” input, adding some extra movement to the sound. Jonny devotes himself to the device on Taq ou Dub, only taking his hands off the device to play a few brief guitar arpeggios (and to adjust the Roland’s hihat). It’s worth noting that Jonny’s DFAM is fitted with one of the “preset” overlays that come stock in the box with the unit. The youtube channel “Kilombo audio” made a demo of all the preset sounds, if you want to guess which overlays Jonny might be starting from.
In this screenshot from Taq ou Dub, the bend edge of an overlay on the DFAM is clearly visible.
Jonny adjusting the “VCA Decay” control during Taq ou Dub. Not the blue patch cable connecting the DFAM’s “VCO 1” output to “Velocity” input — that’s one way to add some automation.