 From your first listen to the slice-and-dice grooves and abundant synth earworms on No Más, one thing is clear: Nobody else sounds like Brooklyn
duo Javelin, and they sure as heck don’t sound like anybody else. By turns disco, ambient, techno, and cinematic, their inimitable sound issues from
an improbably diverse collage of influences and gear. During Javelin’s spring 2010 tour with Yeasayer, George Langford told me how he and cousin
Tom Van Buskirk crafted some of No Más’ signature sounds. Our opinion? Más, por favor!
Synth bass on the opening track, “Vibrationz”
That was Tom’s Nord Lead 2X. We used to run a lot of things through a
reel-to-reel tape recorder to warm them up a bit, which [I think] we did
with this track after recording it as a MIDI track in Logic. UPDATE: During our trip to MoogFest 2010, Javelin closed out the night at Stella Blue in Asheville, NC, and just before a set that rocked our socks, gave us a tour of the small but functional onstage rig they use to take the polyglot sounds of No Mas on the road. Interview continues after the jump. Can't see the window? CLICK HERE.
Swelling choral samples on “Vibrationz”
I cut up part of an old R&B track, and we overlaid it with some of our own
vocals to make it less identifiable. We do that a lot—we take small snippets
of a sample and embellish them with our own voices or instruments.
 “Oh! Centra” chipmunk vocals
We sampled the whole track into an Akai MPC,
pitched it down four or five steps, then recorded ourselves
rapping and singing over it at that speed. Then,
we pitched the whole thing back up to get a more natural pitch shift than
going through an effect.
High-pitched percussive synth answering the vocals
on “On It On It”
Actually, that’s a sample from an R&B singer—I think either Aaliyah or
Beyoncé. I . . . find a long note that’s sung out, sample a fraction of a second
of it, then map that across the keyboard and turn it into a patch. Then,
I’ll layer that with some kind of sound from the Nord.
Live rig
We have two Akai MPC1000s. I plug a DrumKAT MIDI controller into
mine. Tom has a battery-powered Zoom recorder for backing
tracks, and messes with vocal effects like harmonizers,
pitch shifters, and delays.
 Studio rig
We use Logic Pro as kind of a tape recorder and final
editor. We’re hardware-oriented, and if we’re doing
electronic stuff, it’s really centered on the MPC, the
[Yamaha] DX7 and vintage analog synths, and a
whole array of Casios. We have that Nord
Lead 2X and a Nord Rack. I also
use a Casio CZ-101 as a “distortion
synthesizer.”
Boomboxes as amplifiers
We have a little FM transmitter that has nice
digital tuning. You go down the dial and find
a blank spot, then tune all
the boomboxes to that
one station. The mains
of our mixer go to the
house, and we run a
send to that transmitter. You can overdrive
the transmitter and get
this really great FM
radio-style distortion. Web Extras - Extended podcast of editor Stephen Fortner interviewing Javelin's George Langford. - Catch Javelin live near you.
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