SMD first got our attention with their
U.S. debut Attack Decay Sustain Release.
Chock full of analog synth goodness and
club-ready anthems that were way hookier
than most four-on-the-floor fare, it lived up
to its name. Their latest, Temporary Pleasure,
evolves their tradition of collaborating
with singer-lyricists that drip with underground
cred, including Gruff Rhys of
Super Furry Animals, Beth Ditto of the
Gossip, and Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip.
Chatting with Jas and James reveals the
abiding love of analog and serious synthesis
scholarship behind their infectiously
tight grooves. Here are some highlights — click here for Steve Fortner's full audio interview with Jas and James.
Influences and heroes: Delia Derbyshire
of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
When you listen back to those recordings,
they’re so intricate and detailed. Which
leads to Isao Tomita, the king of fine detail,
and a pioneer of things like running two or
three sequencers at a time. Todd Rundgren,
who we sampled on the track “Synthesize.”
Raymond Scott, who designed
crazy modular setups [such as the Electronium]
well before the Moog Modular was
invented. Joe Meek, for his use of the studio
as the instrument.
Favorite gear: Our Analogue Systems
modular synth. You can wire up a very simple
patch — your standard VCO feeding a
filter and VCA, and get a straight keyboard
sound. But when it gets really interesting is
when you start to cross-modulate things.
In particular, when you introduce feedback,
especially in terms of control voltage. As
soon as something starts feeding back on
itself . . . you turn a knob up but whatever
aspect of the sound goes down, for example.
You think to yourself, “I don’t really
understand why that works, but I like it!”
There’s this tipping point of complexity
when you hit a certain number of modules
and you’ve slightly forgotten where you
started. It’s something we look for even
when we’re not using modular gear — that
element of the irrational.
Other live gear: The Korg MS-20, and the
MS-50 expander for it, which are semimodular
themselves. We also just got a new
Prophet ’08, which does a lot of what Roland
Junos did on the record. We’re quite used to
being able to look at a synth and know what
it’s going to sound like, so we’re quite happy
they’ve now made a potentiometer version
[as opposed to the one with endless
encoders]. We’re going to get that.
On the current state of electronic
music: It’s foolish to second-guess electronic
music, because it moves really fast
and unpredictably. That said, it feels like on
one hand there’s the noisier, more electrobased
stuff — which we were associated
with in the early days — as well as the rockbased
aesthetic we’ve seen in the wake of
bands like Justice: short songs, and in
terms of DJing, short mixing — playing just
a minute or two of each track. On the other
hand, there’s longer-form stuff, the more
techno format of, oh, [Hans-Peter] Lindstrom,
[record label] Border Community,
and so on. We think the noisier, short-form
side of things has run its course — with
notable exceptions of course, like Justice.
But some people that are copying that just
seem to be making bit-reduced noise.
Favorite new music: Grizzly Bear is
great — we saw them play recently, and were
blown away by their live show. We’re also
big fans of Joakim. It’s a really good time for
music; there seems to be a strong, interesting
scene going on, what with bands like the
Dirty Projectors and Animal Collective getting
the attention they’re getting.