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 IANBOY APULI from local water-sport rockers THE ROCKETSMITHS.
What gear do you use? I play an American Stratocaster through a Marshall JCM2000 TSL601 combo. My on-stage pedal count is currently a whopping total of one – a Boss TU2. They’re ever so handy at keeping me in tune. FX isn’t my big thing. I recently purchased a Zoom G7.1ut multifx pedal I’ve been messing around with. The amp modelling/crunch/drive settings sound pretty terrible, but running delays and wahs through the amps FX loop it sounds quite nice. I’m looking to bring this into my stage sound in the next few months. I’m not sure if we’re talking about recording here too... but anyhow. I’ve made a few late additions so I’m currently running 2 x Mackie Onyx 400fs and a Yamaha MG16/6FX desk into Cubase. For monitors I have Rokit RP8’s, which I very much like, and then all the mics and a ridiculous amount of dollars worth of cables as you’d expect. It’s a work in progress kind of set up. Thank god for credit cards. What piece of kit is your favourite and why? Definitely my Strat. It was an 18th birthday present from my parents and a surprise on top of that. Absolutely gorgeous even with all the chips, dings and scratches. I was so damn careful with it at the start but I’ve started becoming a little too complacent with it lately. I’ll never sell it in my life so I can call the defects ‘character building’ to help me feel better about throwing it at a drum kit. Loading in and setting up: a boring waste of time or part of the craft? Both. The worst part is really the wait between soundcheck and playing. If you soundcheck at 6pm and play at midnight the temptation to have a drink or many is very high. We all discovered a little while ago we don’t play so well when we drink. And we yell a lot. But I suppose the setting up is a necessary evil. Without loading in I don’t think we could get very far. You recorded The Rocketsmiths’ last EP – were there any technical hurdles getting the band’s sound onto tape? Most definitely. It was done early this year and we had terrible sounding rooms with limited space and time. I was certainly lacking in experience and had never done anything to this extent before. All that being said, I’m still very happy with it. I know it’s a snapshot of a certain time of my career and I learned a great deal doing it. The whole experience really made me far more serious about wanting to write, record and produce music. How much input should a band have as far as mixing and mastering goes? As much as they can I think. The producer and engineer are there for a reason and their opinion should be thought very highly of, but the band should really have the final opinion. It’s probably not much of an idea to demand things if you have no idea what you’re talking about. It can’t hurt to voice your thoughts. Unless they’re hurtful thoughts... THE ROCKETSMITHS play the UV Magazine launch at Alhambra ,Thursday December 6.
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