Studio Survival: London Elektricity and his Wurlitzer EP200, a Loungecore machine bought for £120 in 1996

The founder of Hospital Records shares with UKF the piece he can't live without: an electric piano acquired in West Kensington the year the label was launched.

The subject

UKF published on July 28, 2026 a new issue of its Studio Survival series: this time, it's Tony Colman - better known as London Elektricity, founder of Hospital Records - who comes to talk about the piece of equipment he says he cannot do without.

It's not a state-of-the-art plugin. It's a Wurlitzer EP200, a struck metal reed electro-piano, bought in West Kensington in 1996 for £120 - exactly at the time of the launch of Hospital.

Why a Wurlitzer EP200 in a DnB studio

The Wurlitzer EP200 is a stage instrument from the 1960s-1980s. It works on an electro-mechanical principle: small metal blades (the "reeds") are struck by hammers, captured by electrostatic microphones, amplified. The result is a recognizable timbre - percussive attack, warm body, light grain - that can be heard with Ray Charles, Supertramp, Norah Jones, and a considerable part of jazz-fusion and soul.

This is not the instrument that one spontaneously associates with drum & bass. And that's precisely the point: the DnB that comes out of Hospital Records in its early years - what London Elektricity himself calls Loungecore - draws from this palette. An electric piano, a suspended chord, a pad - then a breakbeat that rolls underneath. It's an aesthetic that has defined the identity of the label for thirty years.

What the anecdote tells us

"The one thing I cannot do without, cannot LIVE without, is my Wurlitzer EP200." The sentence is straightforward. £120 in 1996, in West Kensington, shortly after we started Hospital Records: the Wurlitzer preceded the success of the label - it was used to write a good part of its founding catalog.

Two concrete technical lessons for a producer who would follow this reading:

1. A stage analog instrument, even old, can structure an entire production aesthetic. The Wurlitzer is not a "modern" tool in the sense of DAW: it's a physical object, which responds to velocity, which has a strong sonic character. Writing a chord on it rather than sampling it in Serum changes the overall color of the track.
2. The musical gesture takes precedence over the software workflow. London Elektricity does not mention a virtual synthesizer, an effect plugin, or a mastering compressor. He mentions an instrument he plays. This is consistent with the workflow of a producer who composes rather than does pure "sound design".

Context: the Studio Survival series

Studio Survival is a recurring series by UKF that asks producers about the piece of studio equipment they couldn't do without. We had covered the previous portrait - Pulsar, who pointed to an Ableton "stock" workflow and Focal monitors (see publication #1481). The London Elektricity issue takes a notable step aside: where Pulsar stayed in software and digital monitoring, London Elektricity returns to an acoustic-electric instrument from thirty years ago.

To read at UKF

The complete portrait can be read at UKF. You won't find only the anecdote of the Wurlitzer - the article details London Elektricity's studio ecosystem, but we have only summarized here the most documented point by the source. For the track-by-track exploration of the studio, head to UKF.