Harry Styles Brings Modular Synths to the Stadium Stage in Netflix Special

A Sequential Prophet-6 desktop, a Roland RE-201 Space Echo, and a modular synth walked into a stadium show. That's not the setup up you expect from the UK's biggest pop act, but it's exactly what Harry Styles had waiting at Co-Op Live when he took the stage in Manchester on March 6, hours after dropping his fourth album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.

Netflix filmed the one-off performance for the concert special Harry Styles. One Night In Manchester, which hit the platform two days later on March 8. Thousands had paid £20 a ticket to be in the room; millions more got to watch the gear up close on the stream, which is where the synth community took notice.

MusicRadar's Matt Mullen catalogued the rig and put the key question plainly: "Harry Styles outed himself as an unlikely modular synth fan in his new Netflix special, but was all that knob-twiddling for real?" It's a fair ask. The setup, as Mullen described it, runs a Roland SP-404 MKII sampler, an RE-201 Space Echo tape delay, and a desktop edition of the Sequential Prophet-6 alongside the modular rig. The Prophet-6 desktop is a serious piece of kit on its own, a six-voice analogue polysynth that Sequential still manufactures to spec, and pairing it with an RE-201 for tape-style delay is a choice that points toward someone who has actually spent time with hardware. The SP-404 MKII makes sense for triggering samples live. None of it screams prop.

What nobody can confirm from the footage alone is whether the modular was routed hot into the PA or functioning as a performance gesture. No technical detail from the production crew has surfaced to settle that. The RE-201 and Prophet-6 are at least straightforward enough to run live without drama; the modular is the unknown quantity. Styles was, as described, "twiddling away at the kind of rig you might expect to see at a Floating Points set, not a sold-out arena show from a chart-topping heartthrob" within seconds of hitting the stage.

The album's creative direction contextualises the hardware choices. Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. draws on LCD Soundsystem's high-voltage live approach and the propulsive electronica of Jamie xx and Ben Klock. Those are not casual name-drops: LCD Soundsystem built their reputation on exactly the kind of live hardware integration that Styles appears to be reaching for here. Producer Tom Hull, known as Kid Harpoon, is credited on the project.

The main set worked through the new album front to back, then Styles returned for an encore that leaned hard into catalog: From the Dining Table opened it, followed by Golden, Watermelon Sugar, Sign of the Times, and As It Was. Before diving in, he told the crowd: "We haven't played that one in a while! Truth be told, I haven't played anything in a while. So, if you don't mind, if you've got time for it, we're gonna give you some of the old ones now just for good measure."

The Co-Op Live show was a one-time event built around the album release; the global tour kicks off in May with dates in Amsterdam, New York, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Melbourne, and Sydney. A record-breaking 12-night Wembley Stadium run is also scheduled for the summer. Whether the modular travels with him, and whether anyone can confirm it's actually in the signal chain, remains the more interesting question for the moment.