Was it annoyingly cheeky, a boon for open-minded early adopters, or just plain wrong to place an ad for a Linn drum machine—the digital device that was “taking” gigs away from drummers in the ‘80s—in a magazine for drummers?
Ultimately, it was rather a moot point. Sampled and sequenced drum tracks had their massive moment in the sun, and they absolutely changed the way producers and artists envisioned recording drums in the studio. (In that regard, the ad’s statement that the Linn 9000 “presents a clear vision towards the future of music composition” was prescient.) But the industry adjusted—as it always seems to do—and actual living drummers on real drum kits now co-exist ever-so-peacefully with samples, loops, and sequences.