‘It was the poor man’s studio’: how Amiga computers reprogrammed modern music

“Phat as fuck.” This was how jungle legend Gavin King – AKA Aphrodite – described the powerful bass capabilities of his Amiga 1200 home computer in a 90s interview. Several decades later, it remains in his studio. With its drab grey buttons, it looks more suited to tax returns, but Amiga machines are instrumental in electronic music as we know it.

“The thing about the Amiga bassline is that it was constant volume, it didn’t waver,” King says now, “so when you pulled it up to the maximum volume that you could press on to vinyl, it made it, well, phat as fuck.”

In the early 90s, the artists who used these Amigas didn’t know it yet, but their experimentation would become central to the burgeoning hardcore, jungle and drum’n’bass scenes, and pave the way for the accessible home electronic music