Written by P. E. Nelson
Orgy first hit the radar screen with the 1998 cover of New Order’s 80s classic, “Blue Monday,” from their debut album Candyass. The band’s music was initially compared to everyone from Marilyn Manson to Depeche Mode. 2001’s excellent release, Vapor Transmission, further defined their unique sound and garnered them even more fans and accolades. Less than a month before their upcoming disc Statik Punk Paranoia is due to be released, I had the pleasure of talking to Orgy’s guitar synth guru, Amir Derahk about tech, tours and trivialities.
Amir, thanks for taking the time to talk to me today. When I was doing some research on one of your fan sites, it mentioned that you usually don’t get out of bed till 1pm, so sorry for dragging you out of bed!
(laughs)
Statik Punk Paranoia is your first release on the D1 label, which is essentially a “band’s-own” label, and I was wondering if recording for yourselves enhances the creative space that you have or have you always maintained a tight creative control over the end product?
Oh yeah, we’ve always had control over the end product, it’s always been pretty much the same. Basically, the difference is that when we first started recording this record, we were still on Warner Brothers, and we just couldn’t get it together with them to get the record going and they weren’t dropping us. So we finally managed to get let out of our contract and got the stuff that we had already recorded; as part of leaving we got to take that with us.
When you guys are in the studio, are you one of those bands that jam together and then sort out the good bits, or do you all work separately and then come together and assemble the pieces?
Well, on the first two records, we worked more separately and for the most part, most of those songs weren’t played live beforehand, they were mostly just programmed. A lot of the writing went on with groups of us working together at separate times; it wasn’t necessarily the whole band working together, although everyone in the band would work on it. But with the new record, the idea was sort of just to record it… You know, kind of write the songs and then record them, basically, and what we ended up doing was recording the songs while we were writing them, so the band was playing them live.
That’s a big difference.
Yeah, so it made for more of a grungier-sounding record; it’s a little less polished than the other records.
Speaking to that a little bit: In the studio, are you guys more of the back-to-analog, lo-fi, direct-to-tape types or the ProTools, laptop/digital studio types?
Well, we’ve always used ProTools, though we used a little bit of tape on the first record, only because at the time, ProTools hadn’t gotten to the level where we could use it for everything. Now we use ProTools exclusively.
I know that you’re kind of a guitar synth guru. Do you employ any of the multitude of software synthesizers that are out there now?
Umm… not a whole lot yet. Actually, when they first started coming out, I started experimenting with putting them on my laptop and having my guitar synth trigger them, but there was so much latency at the time it really was not useable.
(Tech note: Latency = the lag time between when a digital device is triggered and when it actually produces a sound. A bad thing.)
It’s gotten a lot better now. But I still prefer hardware synths because they’re hardier, especially on the road and generally, something that is just designed to do one thing sounds better. You know, that will probably change eventually but for now, hardware is better because the others are just trying to emulate them. Yeah, they’re good for some things but I don’t use them at all, really.
I have a [Yamaha] DX7 II that I refuse to give up for the software version.
(Tech Note: The Yamaha DX7 was a groundbreaking 80s synth. The software version is one of the most popular soft-synths on the market. )
They sound the same, but that’s not so much the issue for me as is that I like to have a tactile surface. I mean, you can get remote controls for the software but it’s a pain in the ass.
Yeah, twiddling knobs with a mouse pointer is not easy…
…and most of the sounds I use are never stock sounds, they are always ones that I have sort of tweaked.
Yes, in listening to your music, I can tell that they are unique.
I started very young working with synthesizers, so I have a pretty good understanding of not only how they work, but also how to change the sound to something I want to hear.
I read that D1 is interested in developing bands that are outside of Orgy’s usual musical boundaries. Is there any kind of music in particular that you are looking for, or is it pretty much wide open?
Well [singer] Jay Gordon and his dad are pretty much the D1 entity. I think what they are looking for are just good artists. I know, for instance that they are working with a hip-hop artist, so they are not afraid to try different things, I guess – if they find it, they go for it. I doubt they’ll be working with any country artists.
I am not a person who pays too much serious attention to the mainstream music press, but when I was doing research for this interview, I noted that you guys seem to create a kind of press schizophrenia: I see all these really weird descriptions of your sound, like, “Electro-retro-80s-synth-grunge-rock” What do you guys think when you see your music described like that?
Dunno. I guess they have to describe it somehow.
That tells me that the Orgy sound is probably original enough that they’re searching for some way to pinpoint it.
I don’t think we can be lumped into one genre, so they’re always trying to create a label for us, but I don’t think they’ve really landed on it yet; it’s a melting pot of so many different things.
So tell me a little bit about Julien-K (A side project for Amir & Orgy guitarist Ryan Shuck). I haven’t had a chance to listen to any of the stuff you have up on the web, but I really want to because I’m a big electronic music fan; do you see that as something you’re going to pursue – are you going to release something soon?
Yeah, we already have quite a lot of interest in it and we have a lot of songs that are already done; there is a link on my website to the Julien-K website and you can hear little clips of some of the songs… it’s sort of like… we describe it as Depeche Mode meets the Chemical Brothers.
That definitely sounds good to me!
When you’re in the studio and you’re working closely with something for a long time, you have a certain attachment to it. You really have no idea how the public will perceive it. Has there been anything that you have put out where you thought, “Wow, this is great!” but public reaction was, “Meh…”? Or a track that you thought, “It’s OK, but not our best” only to have the public run with it?
Hmm. The thing is that I think that with the stuff that we do, we pretty much like everything – not to say, “Oh God, everything we do is great!” I don’t mean that at all. It’s just that whatever we finish and put out, we sort of feel like, this is as good as it can be.
So you’re not just cranking out filler?
Yeah – well, we try not to! But you don’t ever really know what the reaction will be. I mean, we make the music for ourselves so when people like it, that’s a bonus. If they don’t get it, then they don’t get Orgy.
Yeah, well, that’s the way it should be, right?
I have this great quote here from your guitarist that totally made me laugh … when Vapor Transmission came out, he said that the album, “Just punches you in the face, but in a manner like, ‘Yeah, I’ll knock you out and take your girlfriend’s lipstick.'”
(laughs)
That being said, in what way will Punk Statik Paranoia sock it to us? Maybe like, “I’ll knock down a Tranny and take her handbag?”
(laughs) Yeah, that’s actually [a] good [description], because it’s a little harder, it’s a little more stripped down, a little more rock…
The new album is being described as more “guitar driven.” As the guitarist, I’m sure you can explain it better, because I would say that all your music is pretty guitar driven. Did you just crank it up to 11 this time?
Yeah, it’s a little more. I’d say that on the past records there were some songs that were more guitar driven – a la, the way it is on this album – but I think on the other records it’s a little more synth driven. It was all programming kind of stuff, whereas this one is a little more straight ahead, a little more based on power riffs. The funny thing is that the thing that Ryan and I are doing (the aforementioned, Julien-K) is just the opposite: there’s no guitar at all.
So I get to play the heavy rock stuff and then I can just go forget about that and do something completely different. It’s kinda cool.
I know that you are getting ready to go out on tour to promote Punk Statik Paranoia. I read on your website that sometimes the way you route devices and effects in the studio is so complex that you actually have to map them out so that you will be able to replicate them live; do you also use computers and software in your live environment?
No, none at all.
Really?
Yeah, we pretty much perform it live, like we did during recording. We want to be able to improvise or change the arrangement of a song or whatever… it’s all coming out live instead of playing to a backing track. Pretty much everything that we have in the studio, I have in a rack that goes with me on the road. It’s all programmed in as I’m doing it, so when I go out to rehearse or perform, the sounds are already there, ready to go.
You’ve done so much with regards to developing and creating the instruments that you use, how does that happen? How do you go from guitar player to guitar creator?
I started in the 80s with Jackson guitars because I really liked them, but on the other hand, I also wanted to paint them a certain way. The only way to do that back then was to have it made custom. Eventually, through working with them, they started to like my ideas and one thing lead to another. I began influencing things more and more there but it wasn’t until I got into Orgy that I actually fully designed my first guitar. I learned a lot from Grover Jackson, who is the owner of Jackson Guitars. He taught me everything I know about building guitars, so over the years I have learned what I like. Also, because I have produced other bands and worked with other bands, when I go into the studio to record them I learned what was working and what was not. I don’t know, it’s just something fun and I seem to have a knack for creating them.
Maybe in 50 years, you’ll be another Les Paul.
Well, that’s not my motivation at all. I really enjoy playing weird guitars! Most guitar players don’t care, they want their Les Paul, they want their Strat, or something like that. I always wanted a guitar that was different.
Well, that’s probably why your sound’s a little different, too.
Yeah. It’s got to be functional, but I also want them to be unique so that people who actually care about that – I don’t think everybody does – but people who do care about it, when they see that, they’re just like, “Wow, what is that guy playing!?”
Cool. So, I promised that I would not only ask you technical, geeky boy questions, so on to things less practical and more fun.
OK.
Say you are asked to do a five-song EP of pop music covers. What would you choose?
Uh, you mean just… boy… pop covers. When you say “pop,” do you mean current or whatever?
Whatever works.
OK. (long pause) Huh. God, I have no idea. I’m actually pretty good at picking covers, it just all depends what day of the week it is and what style of music I’m trying to re-interpret it into… you know, kind of just whatever I’m feeling at that moment.
Say VH1 gives you the go ahead for a series called, Why Are They Still Kicking Ass? Who would be on the show?
(laughs) Why Are They Still Kicking Ass? I don’t know. David Bowie would have to be on there.
Definitely! I think that he’s an alien.
(laughs) Yeah.
He just doesn’t seem to get older.
Yeah, he’d definitely be at the top of the list. He’s just too damn cool!
One more hypothetical question: If on your tour rider you were given J-Lo style carte blanche, what would be the most outrageous item in your dressing room?
Oh boy. We’re so not used to getting that kind of treatment! Umm. What would be my most outrageous item? I think, in just a simple way, a big movie-type popcorn machine. I want one of those. I love popcorn, especially from the movies. So yeah, a movie popcorn machine (laughs) and that’s not even that big of a deal!
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2004-02-02