...uses Cubase music production software for mixing the music, determining how loud the drums will be, for instance.
"The reason this [composing] is a revolution, musically speaking, is that in the past you had to rent these studios by the hour, or spend tens of thousands of dollars to build your own studio," he said.
"But with Reason you have a veritably unlimited amount of equipment that can be imported into each unique song file, kind of like a virtual shopping spree for virtual gear... .Each of these virtual instruments would run anywhere from $200 to $1,000 (£116 to £583) a piece. This synthesiser, with all the features it has, would be about $1,200," he said. Now "if I want to make a new one, say I want to make a synthesiser, I go to 'create' and click on it and boom, it pops up".
His hardware consists of a Dell 2.6GHz Pentium 4 computer with 1GB of memory, five Maxtor 300GB hard drives, Mackie H24 speakers, a Yamaha 01V digital mixer, Technics CD turntables, CDJ-100S Pioneer record turntables, an M-Audio MIDI controller keyboard and an M-Audio Delta 1010 sound card. He also works on a laptop when he's on the road.
"I couldn't make rock 'n' roll without guitars, and I couldn't produce music without at least synthesisers and samplers. But to be as prolific and detailed as I am I must have computers, smoking fast computers," Lorin said. "Yes, I sample humans, like the guy beat-boxing or the vocalist. But all the beats, all the bass, and a huge majority of the sounds are synthesised, even if they sound like an electric guitar or a cello or a violin or a flute... It's all on my computer."
At the University of California, Santa Cruz, Lorin received dual minors in electronic music and education, and majored in community studies, for which he started a music therapy program at a juvenile detention centre.
Though he has concentrated on electronic music for the last 10 years, Lorin's influences run the gamut from heavy metal and rock to hip-hop and classical. At the impressionable age of 16, he was banging heads and moshing to "churning" death metal at private parties in the basement of a public library in San Jose, California, where he grew up. At 27 years old, that intensity is reflected in his current music, albeit in a more sophisticated way.
"I got attracted to electronic music because it is so much more inherently positive than death metal... And it is grinding and it is sexy. That's the bass," he said. "Nothing sounds fatter than electronically produced beats and bass. No drum set or bass guitar is going to make that perfect blended sound."
"I'm creating songs that mesmerise me... I'm playing music that twists me into a dervish."
Twist he does, and not just his knobs. He bobs in full-body moves and chops the air with his hand to the beat, his long dark hair flying around him like a fine silk scarf.
In Lorin's world, no sound goes unnoticed — including birds chirping in his California neighbourhood, a cash register and wind chimes down the street — which makes for music that is multitextured, or "omnitempo maximalism," as he puts it.
Though he doesn't create his music live in performances as some musicians do, Lorin works live with customised songs and mixes them in a fluid way for a spontaneous show that some feel is much more involved and engaging than what typical DJs do.
"DJing inevitably is becoming obsolete, partly because of oversaturation," he said. "It was impressive in the early '90s, but now it's like 'big deal. He's playing two records.' I think a lot of people are concerned more with how to be a DJ than with how to make music and that, I think, is a problem."
