TRAMP BOOZE AND 20P FX PEDALSHow The Horrors Made the Best Album of the Year BY ANDY CAPPER PHOTOS BY GAVIN WATSON
During the course of this interview with Horrors guitarist Joshua Third, we experience the following technological breakdowns.
1. Gavin Watson loses his camera bag outside a pub.
2. His back-up camera runs out of batteries.
3. My dictaphone runs out of batteries after 30 seconds.
4. The Guinness we buy takes eight minutes to pour.
5. Most of the interview is impossible to transcribe due to Watson blathering away in the background and then a guy drilling a metal sign into the wall.
Still, we persevere and manage to salvage the following text, which mainly concerns the making of the Horrors’ excellent new record, Primary Colours.
Vice: You’re like the mad scientist in the Horrors.
Joshua Third: My entry into science was quite misguided. The main reasons were that I really wanted to believe in something, and go to university and move to London. We had a really good physics teacher so we were all good at it, so I thought it would be an easy thing to do. It wasn’t actually that easy.
I couldn’t do physics at all. I couldn’t understand it at A-level.
They teach it by saying things like, “Imagine it’s a waterfall, and you are at the top, and if you go down you will crash.”
We used to laugh at the teacher because he had a speech impediment. He said “umbra” and it would come out “umbwa” because he had massive lips.
Physics teachers are always quite unfortunate-looking, aren’t they? It’s such a shame.
So, were you playing music at the same time you were at college?
Yeah, but student bands are shit. No matter how many guitarists you meet, they’re all like, “I like Hendrix and I like Interpol.” What a combination.
When I first met you and the Horrors, you’d just graduated. What was that in?
Physics.
What did you get?
A first.
Did you start to make your own guitar pedals because you were such a science nerd and needed an outlet?
No, it was because I was poor. Physically, all the parts of pedals are really cheap. I mean, 50 percent of the price of these things goes on making the logos and the paint.
And coming up with names like “Shredburner”.
Yeah. So I just learned to make them instead.
What do you need to make one?
A soldering iron, some chit-chat with the people at Maplins and some resistors and capacitors and transistors. Thanks to the internet there’s a lot of bullshit about parts people need for pedals. They tell you that if it’s 40 years old it will sound better. Unfortunately it’s all bollocks. It’s quite funny watching people spend £100 on something that costs tuppence.
People do that?
Yeah. Some guy was telling me he had a part that had aged for 60 years and that it would make my guitar sound like Hendrix.
But Hendrix didn’t have a 60-year-old pedal, did he?
“Yeah, mate! That’s how Hendrix plays.” What? He went into the future to play it?
At studios you always find engineers who prefer one box or the other. It’s the same. That’s how it starts. It’s just because it says something different on the front of it.
The music business is so full of bullshit.
Oh yeah. There’s no science in it. It’s art. And with art…
You can get away with murder.
Precisely. Ha ha.
See all articles by this contributor Anonymous, on Aug 14, 2009 wrote:
I actually like his honesty and how he’s direct. by the way primary colours is good if anything it’s better than strange house i.e the album that for some people made them seem like posers. | | Anonymous, on Jun 15, 2009 wrote:
easy dude. a bit heavy handed for an article about guitar effects, no? | | Anonymous, on Jun 14, 2009 wrote:
FUCK YOU VICE, YOU FUCKING BLOW. GO FUCK YOURSELF. | | Anonymous, on May 21, 2009 wrote:
Too cheap? That EHX Hog on the right costs like 800 fucking dollars. TWATS. | | Anonymous, on May 18, 2009 wrote:
Most lackadaisical live show ever. Ask for your money back before you even buy the tix, U.S. | | Anonymous, on May 13, 2009 wrote:
"Did you start to make your own guitar pedals because you were such a science nerd and needed an outlet?"
haha great question | | Anonymous, on May 13, 2009 wrote:
The new album really surprised me. Good stuff. Give it a chance if you haven’t yet. | | Anonymous, on May 12, 2009 wrote:
There new album sounds like Simple minds in 1979. | | Anonymous, on May 11, 2009 wrote:
"the longer your pedal chain, the more resistance builds up and the more high end gets rolled off your tone. you also lose punchiness"
I’m guessing that’s why he built the bypass box on the bottom left.
Oh, and, who cares. | | Anonymous, on May 11, 2009 wrote:
these guys aren’t posers at all! | | Anonymous, on May 9, 2009 wrote:
your right he does look a lot like ian curtis. | | Anonymous, on May 8, 2009 wrote:
when did johnny greenwood join... | | Anonymous, on May 8, 2009 wrote:
"Anonymous, on May 8, 2009 wrote:
but all the pedals in the world can’t save you if you have shitty technique. Jazz cats use virtually none. You shouldn’t NEED to use a pedal to get your musicality across."
What? If you’re talking about musicality you should know there is a massive difference in it and sound. Yeah, your jazz semi-hollowbody might give a different sound than a strat, but neither is going to give you delay or distortion like good pedals. Listen to A Place to Bury Strangers, Jesus and Mary Chain, and others and tell me they don’t need pedels to attain those sounds. | | Anonymous, on May 8, 2009 wrote:
the longer your pedal chain, the more resistance builds up and the more high end gets rolled off your tone. you also lose punchiness | | Anonymous, on May 8, 2009 wrote:
but all the pedals in the world can’t save you if you have shitty technique. Jazz cats use virtually none. You shouldn’t NEED to use a pedal to get your musicality across. | | Anonymous, on May 8, 2009 wrote:
also, even old school repros of things like paper in oil capacitors have different tonality than newer designs. | | Anonymous, on May 8, 2009 wrote:
wow a piece on vice about effects pedals? I disagree with this dude. The old components (specifically transistors) were made out of things like germanium and you CAN’T GET THEM anymore. Therefore you need to buy NOS parts. | | Anonymous, on May 8, 2009 wrote:
"The music business is so full of bullshit." "Oh yeah. There’s no science in it. It’s art. And with art…""You can get away with murder.""Precisely. Ha ha."
This needs to be carved into the side of a building somewhere.
| | Anonymous, on May 7, 2009 wrote:
echorec units are tape units like the fulltone echoplex. you’ll need to sell your soul to possess one of these in working condition. | |
| zerotransfat, on May 7, 2009 wrote:
wow the guy on the left has an incredible resemblance to ian curtis from joy division. | | Anonymous, on May 7, 2009 wrote:
i always hated physics...and chemistry and calculus. no wait i never got to calculus. i meant algebra | | Anonymous, on May 7, 2009 wrote:
i always hated physics...and chemistry and calculus. no wait i never got to calculus. i meant algebra | | Anonymous, on May 7, 2009 wrote:
anyone with this many pedals i’ll give a good listen to. i saw longwave at my girlfriend’s request and the pedal board was huuuuuge. then i knew maybe she wasn’t crazy for making me go. | | Anonymous, on May 7, 2009 wrote:
really that good of an album? okay then i will give it a whirl. i thought the horrors were just some scene band with matching suits. | | Anonymous, on May 7, 2009 wrote:
Disappointing article... thought you’d maybe talk about the making of the album and maybe about Geoff Barrow’s production. Oh well. | | Anonymous, on May 6, 2009 wrote:
the yellow things look like the old waterproof sony walkmen. every kid wanted one of those so they could rock nkotb at the pool. | | Anonymous, on May 6, 2009 wrote:
does "a first" = a? | |
| whitney, on May 6, 2009 wrote:
i hope this isn’t all plugged into a single outlet! smokey would not be happy. | | Anonymous, on May 6, 2009 wrote:
oh you mean they sound british? | | Anonymous, on May 6, 2009 wrote:
He completely copped Sean Purcells’ vocal style. | | | Next 30 comments > |
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