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 A day before the Brisbane floods, GEARED caught up with local indie-rockers THE ART OF SLEEPING’s keyboardist JARRYD SHUKER – who talked synths into him – at an Ashgrove coffee shop.
GEARED: Do you mind telling us a little about your role in The Art Of Sleeping, Jarryd?
JARRYD SHUKER: I’m a keyboardist in a five-piece – myself and the guitar are both lead instruments. It’s kinda ... piano-driven rock a lot of the time.
G: From what I’ve heard, you’ve got a Nord keyboard these days...
JS: That’s right – Nord Stage 73P. I’ve had it for about a year and a half.
G: Excellent – I also presume it’s not your first keyboard either.
JS: I’ve had Korgs before – a Korg Trident – but nothing beats Nord’s quality of sounds, richness of the piano and the quality of hardware. Also, things like reverb, delay, compression – it’s hard to beat for a lot of pedals and stuff.
G: Which pedals do you run your Nord through?
JS: I go through a Boss RC-20 Loop Station and then into a volume pedal, which means I can turn off my volume pedal so it doesn’t come through, listen through my headphones and record loops and then play them back in reverse. I then go into a [Voodoo Lab] Sparkle Drive, which dirties up my piano sound – just to make it cool, scratchy and organic – and a Teletronix Talent Boost v. 2. It’s used by John Mayer’s band and it sounds great – it’s a clean boost that can used as an overdrive when cranked. If you run it hard, it cranks up a little bit, which is nice on my organs – and it also has dual outputs. I run it into a Radial J-48 active DI.
G: In your opinion, how do Nord’s reverb and delay compare to the stompboxes?
JS: I’ve used a Boss Giga Delay previously and I think it can be good at times, but it doesn’t have the sharpness – with piano and delay, it needs to be quite sharp to cut through the mix, so it just sat back a little with the reverb. I’ve used other reverbs as well, like the Boss Space Echo – but again, it doesn’t beat the Nord. I wouldn’t just have it for the sake of it – and they’re both great pedals – but sometimes unnecessary.
G: I’ve played with a Space Echo a couple years back, but a friend of mine who owned it couldn’t find much use for it and sold it, leading me to eventually getting a TC Electronic Nova Repeater, which does the job.
JS: Absolutely – I think it would beat the Giga Delay. Also, a simple digital pedal like a Boss DD-5 is also very good and is a lot sharper, but you can’t set tempos on it, you have to tap them in – that’s the difference. I think it’s the closest to the Nord delay, but again, it doesn’t beat it.
G: Coincidentally, I used to have a DD-5 for nine years – it was one of my oldest pedals.
JS: Yeah!
G: As a keyboardist, what are your favourite TAOS tracks to play?
JS: I have to say Colourblind, because it shows the style of delay I use a lot, but also probably Breathe because of its live energy. It’s not as noticeable on the recording, but live I think it’s got an energy that just ... feels great.
G: On the same note, who are your biggest influences as a player?
JS: Bands like Lydia and Copeland were a basis when I started to play music, but now I listen to a lot of Foals and Local Natives. Although I don’t think I sound like them, I take elements from them and then it kinda becomes what it is.
G: A lot of keyboard players these days use software like Ableton Live onstage – have you played with it before or are you thinking about it?
JS: I have played with Ableton and I’ve also played with Mainstage, but I enjoy using hardware – I just like that it’s there in front of you and you can create sounds with your hands and your ears rather than playing around on a computer, especially live. There’s something cool about using hardware.
G: Speaking of live gigs, I’m aware that you guys have a show coming up at The Zoo soon as well as a festival appearance in New Zealand.
JS: Yes – we have our EP launch at The Zoo on Jan 22, where we will be headlining, and then we fly straight over to NZ for the Parachute festival and a couple gigs around Auckland and Hamilton that we are about to announce. When we come home, there will be a couple festivals around here.
G: How would you describe a TAOS live show?
JS: What we’re trying to do is create the energy, but also create an ambience – we break into a lot of vocal loops and harmonies, that kind of thing, and build energy along drawn-out instrumental sections. Live, we’re very different from our recordings – we’re just trying to create an experience so that people could feel something. Especially now, we’re looking at other things like lighting and we’re making some multimedia videos behind our tracks – which you’ll see at The Zoo.
G: That actually made me think of The Morning Benders at Sunset Sounds just recently – when they played their set, they didn’t so much reconstruct their songs or alter any of the hooks or progressions, but added a couple of those lengthy, trippy self-oscillating outros.
JS: Oh yeah. With us, sometimes they’ll be there and sometimes they won’t – I guess that when you know you need to drag it out longer and enjoy it.
G: And lastly, what are TAOS’ other big plans for 2011?
JS: We’ll announce all the shows in Brisbane and we’ll definitely be heading to Sydney and Melbourne in the next four to five months – we have a festival in Melbourne in April. That’s where we are at the moment.
G: Awesome – thanks Jarryd!
THE ART OF SLEEPING launch their latest EP COLOURBLIND (out now on iTunes) on Sat Jan 22 at The Zoo, supported by Misere, Vasy Mollo and Jordan Butler. www.myspace.com/theartofsleepingsound
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