Return-Path: From: rsgour@aol.com X-Mailer: America Online Mailer Sender: "rsgour" Reply-To: "rsgour" To: bzs@world.std.com Date: Fri, 29 Oct 93 00:17:25 EDT Subject: Chaos4.YouShriek Artist Profile - You Shriek Being a primariy electronic band with heavy gothic influences, You Shriek are kind of an oddity in their home city of Boston. But thanks to a strong live show, the group has managed to make a name for itself in a city dominated by guitars. Acceptance on the local level isn't really a concern to the band, who have set their sights on the bigger picture since the beginning. They currently have two tracks on the third volume of "For Crying Out Loud," and their cover of "Bela Lugosi's Dead" is included on the "Oxygen Denial" vinyl/cassette compilation. In true cyberpunk spirit, the following interview was conducted with founder Raziel Panic (aka Marq Free) by computer. 1.How and when did Y ou Shriek begin? This band started out as my personal outlet for songwriting. I was in a couple of groups that fell apart at the same time, and I decided the only way to have a reliable music situation was to create one. I had just bought a synth-drum-sequencer-effects with a disk drive kind of keyboard for the death rock band I had been in, so when that one ended I had already begun writing some songs. That was a few years ago, and at that time Jason was helping me out as a roadie/guitar tech, so he kind of graduated with me into this new performing group. He fit very well what the band required, keys, bass, percussion, vocal skills, a good musical background, and as it turned out, a charged stage personality, too. 2.While some good groups have emerged in the past few years, there weren't many electronic bands in Boston when You Shriek first started. Did this make it difficult for the band to get establ ished? I don't think we had any trouble getting started... it was actually good that there were only a few electronic bands. The problem is that after we attracted the fans of this type of music, it was difficult to draw a wider audience in Boston. I don't think we are very established in Boston, and I don't care if we ever are. Enough people who run the clubs here have treated us like shit to kill any "local band" spirit I might have had. I really appreciate our fans in the area, obviously, and a small segment of the press has been VERY good to us, also some DJ's and dance clubs, but FUCK the narrow minded rock and roll idiots who book small-time shows without regard for the art, and churn as many ignorant beer drinkers through their doors as they can . I guess when you are on a salary working from 3pm 'till 4am you don't much care or know about what it is like to be on the musical end of things, and that tends to spawn an attitude of contention toward those of us who don't have a set of drums and a denim jacket. We haven't had a rough time at all with the people of the east coast's electronic music scene, and I am happy with the response we are getting from all over the world, but this has NOTHING to do with the way we are treated in the myopic puddle of Boston rock. 3. Why did you chose the name You Shriek? I wanted the word "shriek" in there somewhere, and i didn't much like having a "the" at the beginning of the name, so it fell into place like that. (I am convinced, however that it really doesn't matter what you call your band.) 4. Who would you say the bands major influences ar e? It's always tough to cite influences, but there are many musix that changed the way I write, or gave me ideas for textures or chord progressions, or drum programs. I loved Xymox. Peter Murphy... Sisters of Mercy... White Zombie... Tribe After Tribe. Trent Reznor, The KLF, Orb... Siouxsie and the Banshees, Einsturzende Neubauten. nothing that would be of any surprise, really, but those artists have had some influence on the band's direction. 5. How has the group changed and evolved since its fo rming? At first I thought we were a death rock band, but people soon had us convinced that we were in the industrial genre... now I think we have some elements of industrial dance, some from goth rock and some cyber tech parts, too. I guess the main shift- musically, was away from using typical industrial dance conventions (yes they are already conventions.) I've only been writing these songs for a few years, so I expect that there will be many more changes. The band remains just Jason and I, but he has been playing a much greater role in what I thought was going to be a one man writing venture. I li ke that. We have learned a lot about how the music world works, we've gained management, lost management, recorded in big studios, recorded in our own studio... learned that it is a lot more cost effective to record at home. Our latest advances have led us onto records and into successful merchandi se campaigns. Our synth gear has grown into bigger racks, and we run a lot more MIDI wires around the stage, now. Things have grown into a pretty close version of how we planned right from the start. 6.How does the band work together in terms of songwriting? -Lyrics, song concepts , sequencing, ego trips, posturing: me -Divine intervention, samples, critical adjustment to shoddy song ideas: Jason I'm the stupid robot with a headache from staring at those phosphor dots all night. For the live show, Jason makes the midi wires carry data to the correct machines. I just plug in my guitar. 7.Do you have live performance in mind when you compose the songs or does adapting them to the live setting pose a problem? I try to stay away from letting our logistic restraints dictate song arrangement, but I can't help knowing what is and what isn't possible for two people to pull off live. Sometimes I will end up settling on a 5 note melody since one of our MIDI stations has 5 triggers to pound on, for example, but I like to just go ahead and do whatever it takes to get the song to live. It grows where it must... figure out what the humans can play later. 8. Do you use sequencers or DATs to play the parts that you can't reproduce live? It might be fun to use a computer sequencer on stage, but for this music it would be a nightmare. Each song has different drum sounds (we don't have a drum machine- just samplers), rhythm loops, speech samples, effects, equalization, compression, gates... mix- all different for each song. We just throw the work on DAT. The only other way would be to alter the songs to lose all the variety, plus add a couple more musicians to tend the sequencers... we'd rather not. I will get a time code DAT machine at some point to synchronize events on other media. 9.D o you prefer to use sampling or programming sounds from scratch on synths? I do both. I do not have a preference, I find both to be somewhat tedious parts of the songwriting process. I do like to go out with the portable DAT machine and sample. I think it's funny how a sound can be mildly interesting or pleasing in it's original environment, with all the visual cues, but turn out to be "AMAZING!" or "SPECTACULAR!", and make us all excited when we play it back in the studio. It's nifty what a little boost below 100 Hz and a few hundred watts will do for the world outside. 10.What equipment do you use ? My guitar is fed through the distortion/preamp in my rack into a stereo chorus pedal, then to two stereo volume pedals. One goes directly to a 4 ch mixer as L/R, the other goes into a Roland DEP-5 for effects processing, then to the mixer. This way I have control over the effects mix, separate >from the dry guitar sound. The 4 channels are sent to the L/R inputs on a power amp, and from there into a pair of 4x12 Celestion cabs. There is a MIDI controller on the floor for the effects, but live, the control comes from Jason's side. His bass goes through a phase shifter into a big Peavey drum amp. The main keyboard controller is a DPM-3. Drum triggers are from a Simmons SDS9, and from Jason's machine shop. The trigger-to-MIDI units are a Roland PAD-80 and a PM16. All three MIDI sources go into a JL Cooper interface, then to an Akai S-950, an Ensoniq ESQ-M, Yamaha TX16W, E-mu Vintage Keys, and a Roland DEP-3. It also goes to my side of the stage for my JX-3p synth, and my MIDI pedal. (Yes, kind reader, you can feel happy now, 'cause your new piece of gear is better...) The audio goes from all synth/sampler modules in the rack into a Mackie CR-1604 for effects and eq. Our vocals go through a Yamaha dual gate/comp unit, and into a Korg DRV-2000, an Ensoniq DP-4 and a ZOOM 9002. The keyboard synths and DAT( Tascam DA-30) just go right to the house. That's the live setup. In my studio, I have a collection of interesting compressors, delays, distortions, a Sony reel-to-reel for tape effects, a Macintosh SE/30 and a Quadra 900 for digital editing, sequencing, and gr aphics. 11. What made you cover "Bela Lugosi's Dead"? The reason we cover songs at all is for both the instant appeal to the audience, and for our enjoyment of the material. I always look for a song that already has our style in it somewhere, maybe buried a little, and would be easy to translat e into You Shriek conventions. "Bela" already had that standard four- kicks- to-the-bar bass drum pattern that is so often found in dance music, and I thought it would be interesting to bring the rhythm up to the front, make it kick a little. The tempo was already right in the range for club-mixes, so the only real changes we made were instrumental: synths. Some of the Goth purists tend to leave the dance floor during this abomination of a sacred icon, but I meant it as a sincere homage to a music legend; I've been a Bauhaus fan for a long time, and to poor Bela... I don't think I changed the spirit of the song. So far it has proved to be a very good choice, people from as far as Germany and Canada have asked for it, and the compilation record that the song appears on hasn't even gone into distribution, yet. 12. What's in the future for the band? We are working very hard to organize enough people and material to have a strong multi-media performance without bringing in a for-hire company. We have computer animators, film manipulators, laserists, and device control technicians prepped for the crew, but it will take some time to get it all in working order, and convince these independent artists that they should align forces with a music group. CD... real soon... or else! Copyright 1993 Bob Gourley. This article may only be reproduced electronically and for non-profit purposes. Contact rsgour@aol.com