I’ve been able to listen to a copy of the album and it definitely isn’t what I expected! It sounds very electronic, which comes as a surprise as all sounds on it have been created just with guitars. Have a listen yourself on Jim’s Myspace website: http://www.myspace.com/jimdaviesmusic

I’ve also been able to ask Jim a few questions about the album…

Nekosite: What inspired you to write this album?

Jim: I’ve always written instrumental music from as far back as i can remember, infact i still have dodgy demo tapes from when id been playing a month or 2 but had written these awful little tunes! but its a great way to start getting your head around the instrument.

I wanted to do an album like this for a while now, but i had to find the right angle for it. I didn’t want to do a run of the mill guitar instru album which normally involves you playing 4 minute solos as fast as possibleover dodgy backing tracks! The idea actually came from a Victory pill tune i wrote a s a b-side. Its called ‘Vital signs’ and was instrumental. When we mixed the track we realized ALL the sounds were guitar generated except the bass synth and drums, so it got me thinking maybe i could do a whole album of tunes like that using only the guitar for the ‘sounds’ It was a bit of a mission but i actually didn’t need any synths for this album anyway, all the sounds i wanted i was able to get on the guitar. I had to use a bass synth for some tracks, just to get the low sub sound, but that kind of thing a side the rest of the album is all guitar generated sounds. I spent ages sniffing around guitar shops for weird pedals and effects, it became quite an obsession!

What was the writing progress like, did you come up with most of the tracks in the studio or did you have most of it in mind before the recording?

I approached writing this album the same as i would any other album, i tend to always write instrus first and then add vocals later. Its the way i wrote for Victory pill and the how we used to do it in Pitchshifter, infact Pitchshifter used to have an instrumental track on every album, the one on the ‘Deviant’ album called ‘PSI-ological’ had nothing but guitar sounds in it so i guess ive been heading this way for a while now!

Normally with this album id start with a loop and just jam over that until i found a cool little hook and melody and then build the track around that-the most important thing for me was that this album would appeal to people who don’t play guitar as much as people that do! when you dont have vocals you can lose people easily so i tried to make sure these tunes had a really strong melody and were quite anthemic so they’d stand up without any vocals.

I think i held back alot on the album, i do have that technical background so i could have ‘shredded’ (‘to play stupidly fast’) over the whole album but that would have been criminal! theres some really nice slow dark tracks on the album like ‘Empire’ and ‘Requiem’ and to just ‘show off’ for 4 mins over them would have been ridiculous!. Like i said before the tunes were not just backing tracks for me to show off over, they were equally as important to what i played on the guitar.
So all the tracks came together quite quickly once i was writing regularly and got on a roll. The good thing about writing this album was that i didn’t have to think about ‘is this ‘Pitchshifter’ or is this ‘Victory pill’ i could just go in whatever direction i wanted. i listen to alot of funk and rare groove so theres a bit of that in there but i also love 80′s electronic bands like ‘Depeche mode’ and ‘the cure’ so theres definitely an influence you can hear from that side of things. I really enjoy creating soundscapes and textures using the guitar so that side of things was as important as the lead on this album.

Can you tell me a bit more about some of the tracks? For example, ‘Rockers vs Ravers’, what is this about?

The name actually comes from a tee shirt i got ages back, it just said ‘rockers vs ravers’ on it, i got it in ireland actually when i was there with the prod on new years eve in 1996.
Anyway that phrase always stuck with me, as it was around that time that everything started crossing over musically, when i was at school it was ‘rockers vrs ravers’ today its hard to tell the difference sometimes! Rock kids are as in to bands like prodigy and pendulum as the are the heavy guitar stuff.
The actual tune came about when i hit abit of a writing block so i just challenged myself to write a tune in a completely different genre than i had before on the album, so i came up with quite a hard 4/4 industrial/hard house stomper!!! but again the mission to not use anything but guitar sounds made thattrack abit harder to write than the others, but i actually found i didn’t need any synths, i found a really horrible growling guitar sound that you hear in the intro so that riff really drove the whole track, which meant i could concentrate on just find a strong melody and adding extra layers or guitars like you would with a synth. I really like that track, one of my favs. with this album it was important that the guitars came first though, i had to remember that it wasn’t really a ‘Jim Davies solo album’ Victory pill kinda ticks that box, this album was about the guitars so i had to concerntate more on that than say for instance the beats, it was a nightmare mixing this album as i had sometimes 64 channels of guitars running at once!! so to mix it all in something had to give a bit!!

Any particular music that influenced you during the writing process?

Like i said before i love 80′s bands like Depeche mode and the cure, my guitar sound is quite 80′s sounding i have to admit, that heavily processed sound was big in the 80′s! Bands like ‘the cure’ used the guitar to create amazing textures and their melodies were always so strong so that something thats always stuck with me. But those 2 bands aside i just wrote the kind of stuff i like-i listen to alot of different styles of music, trip hop, hip hop, funk and are groove, even a bit of jazz! With this album i just had to put my blinkers on and write an instrumental guitar album the way i would without worrying about what other guitar instru albums were like, i didn’t want to get put off by listening to stuff like steve vai or those other big guitar instru names cause what im doing is very different!

You mentioned to me you were on a label for instrumental guitar music only. Did the label approach you in the first place or how did this come about? Is it different compared to other labels you have been involved with?

Well Mascot normally do rock/metal stuff, and mostly instrumental, they are the biggest label in the world that puts out instru guitar music. i wasn’t sure they would be into my album as its quite electronic and not just one solo after another, but i sent it to the top guy there and they came back straight away saying they thought it was a really fresh and new approach to the whole genre and that it had a good angle. I was really chugged as some of my teenage guitar heroes are on this label.i do feel like i stick out a bit surrounded by the other rock/metal players they have but i love the fact that my stuff sounds nothing like anyone else on the label! So i was really glad they saw the album for what it is which is quite a leftfield experimental album really. They have been really supportive and behind it.

Were you involved in any of the artwork?

yes i was but only from a ‘can you make it more like this..or that’ kinda way! the artwork was done by my mate ‘Odissi’ who ive been working with on the ‘Sex and Circuitry’ project.

What are your next plans? Do you have any plans to use or propose the music for soundtracks, etc?

id like to but its kind of up to the label if they want to go that route, i actually do quite alot of stuff in that field at the moment, the last victory pill album got used on a few computer games and tv shows and ive recently written a c.d of rocky/electronic music purely for use in films and games ect. Its something i want to do alot more of now im not touring anymore, its something i find quite easy, its just taken a while to build up all the contacts but im on it now.

Do you have any plans to play it live?

Id like to but theres sooooooo many guitar parts, i think the only way to do it would be to be honest and say ‘im gonna play as much as i psychically can, the bits i cant will be coming from the laptop!!’ id need a band of 8 guitarist to pull off the whole album live…and that would be a total nightmare, so yes im gonna try and do it live when i work out how!!

So there you go. I’d definitely go and listen to a track on Jim’s Myspace website and if you like what you hear you can get the album through Amazon, play, iTunes or other retailers worldwide.

We also hear that apart from the album Jim has also been doing toms work with Sub Focus and has ddone some vocals for a track on the new General Midi album that’ll be out in June. And he’s got a new album with his band Victory Pill in the making too, out later this year!

Discuss this on http://www.nekozine.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1240866228/

He also has a track called ‘Hands Up’ coming soon on Genepool and has done a remix of Victory Pill track ‘Odds Get Even’. You can listen to both by checking out Leeroy’s Myspace profile: www.myspace.com/leeroythornhill

It’s a lot of heavy guitars and industrial beats, so if you like Pitchshifter you will love this. It’s out now in the UK in HMV, Virgin and online on play, itunes, amazon and the likes. In the US you can get it from 23rd October.

Find out more on www.myspace.com/victorypill

www.victorypill.com
www.myspace.com/victorypill

For now you can find out more (and listen to some tracks) on myspace:
http://www.myspace.com/leeroythornhill

Additionally to the above, Jim is also still playing with Hyper Live, has been working on the 2nd Hyper album and recently been writing material for an album with Leeroy.