Greetings from Iced Ink guitarist Mike.

I’ve always loved writing music with drum machines. Upon the DR-670’s release in the early 2000’s I saw a photo of it and had an instant gear crush. What an attractive piece of machinery. I love its colors and the fonts on all of the buttons. It kind of reminded me of a Stormtrooper. I had to have it and sold my BOSS DR-550 to pay for part of it. This is what was used for drum tracks on older Iced Ink demos – it’s still used now but only as a MIDI trigger for VST drum plugins.

The title comes from the scene in the movie Mask when Rocky Dennis was making his blind love interest Diana hold various items and explain to her what they looked like. If I were able to alter that scene he would hand her this exquisite looking contraption and tell her “White box with black buttons.” And then she’d press them and totally ruin the heartfelt moment with the resulting electronic drum sounds. This is assuming for some reason it was plugged into a PA system on the horse farm or wherever it was they were at.

Without further ado, here is White Box with Black Buttons.