"Computers have transformed music" - Metronomy and the state of music tech

Digital technology has changed the way we listen to music - but what about the way it is made? Metronomy, a band who straddle the analogue/digital divide, discuss the uneasy terrain of modern music, and test out some of the most advanced gear available.

As musicians tip-toeing playfully along the analogue/digital divide, Metronomy sum up pop music's conflicted relationship with technology. In the mid-2000s, they were the epitome of an electronic act: three guys behind electric keyboards, playing to a laptop backing-track. NME described their second album as "an electro record" featuring "synthetic Tetris wonk-pop" and "psycho speed-synths", and they became famous for performing with pressure-sensitive lights strapped to their chests: a comic touch that seemed to announce that they were a band of the digital age, and not afraid to laugh about it.

Since then, however, Metronomy seem to have moved steadily back in time. After recruiting a drummer and bassist in 2009, the band began appearing in matching uniforms - rich burgundy blazers, pressed white slacks - as if to summon memories of the Temptations or early Beatles photographs, and their music took on a more period tint. The transformation culminated in the release of their fourth album, last year's Love Letters.