AGOGKAO >> ChartAttack with Ryan

It's All About New Wave With Orgy

Tuesday October 31, 2000
We don't know whether it was an odd coincidence or if it was some how planned when ChartAttack was on hold waiting for Orgy guitarist Ryan Shuck, but while waiting for him to get on the line we heard "99 Luft Balloons" by Nena. Who would've thunk that Orgy would have so much in common with '80s new wave?

Ryan Shuck: Yeah, it's the "flashback lunch." It's really cool, they play all sorts of cool music.

ChartAttack: It's nice to know that you can get into the older flashback music.

Shuck: Oh yeah, totally. It's great. It almost sounds more current than a lot of music out right now.

ChartAttack: Well, yeah. That's for certain. We all miss that new wave sound.

Shuck: Oh yeah, totally.

ChartAttack: Which you guys have, it's in your music to an extent.

Shuck: To an extent, definitely. It's kind of a futuristic new wave or something... a future wave. An interesting contrast to heavy metal.

ChartAttack: You guys dress pretty...

Shuck: Yeah, we're pretty cool looking. HAHAHA... I'm just kidding.

ChartAttack: You got Troy Van Leewen (guitarist A Perfect Circle) to work on the album for two songs. How did that hook-up?

Orgy: He actually kind of co-engineered a little bit with us. He did a, well I wouldn't say co-engineering, but he's learning a lot of the computer editing, a lot of things like that. He actually edited a lot of the drums, like chopping a lot of the excess sound off inbetween, the notes and stuff like that. And he's a long time friend of ours, just like everyone that works with us usually is a friend of ours. We have absolutely no problem shoving a guitar in someone's hand and saying, 'Hey, do something on this. Let's see how it sounds.'

ChartAttack: That's a great thing to do, say, 'Here you want to play a guitar riff here? Go ahead."

Shuck: Totally. That is totally how we do it. A lot of the additional stuff on our records, parts and noises and you know this and that, are people that are friends of ours. We call them lurkers. If you hang out for over a day, we call you a lurker. And all the lurkers got to play on this record, instead of having like people from big bands and that kind of stuff. There's a lot of talent lying around us. We happen to know a lot of talented people and they are all our close friends that just hang out and are around us all the time. So those are our biggest influences. And we let them all play on our record.

ChartAttack: That's great having those types of friends where you can just sort of hand them off...

Shuck: Oh yeah, we think it is fine. It's like, 'Hey I'm fucked, I can't do anything right here... here!'

ChartAttack: Well, it adds to the creative juices.

Shuck: There is even some stuff, some really outlandish stuff that we did with some of our friends, that actually didn't make the record. It's pretty cool.

ChartAttack: Maybe an EP or something. Or digitally release it.

Shuck: That would be awesome...'Orgy's Lurkers.'