Guitar World - November 2000
XXX- Men - ORGY'S MUTANT SPACE-ROCKERS AMIR DERAKH AND RYAN SHUCK ARE ON A CRUSADE TO SAVE THE WORLD FROM BORING GUITAR SOUNDS. ON THE GROUP'S NEW SCI-FI EPIC, VAPOR TRANSMISSION, THEY EMERGE VICTORIOUS.
By Christopher Scapelliti
Rock and rollers have always been comfortable- a little too comfortable, perhaps- channeling creative inspiration from outer space. Back in the late Sixties, Jimi Hendrix became rock music's first afronaut, writing trippy, sci-fi-tinged songs, like "Third Stone from the Sun," "Castles Made of Sand" and "1983(A Merman I Should Be)." As Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie impersonated a silver sheathed alien rocker on a mission to save the world from self-destruction. Even Elton John sang about being a "Rocket Man"(although, in all likelihood, rock's most infamous tail gunner wasn't referring to spaceships).
But when it comes to rock and roll spacemen, Orgy appears to be the real deal. The group seemed to come out of nowhere in 1998, claiming the opening spot on Korn's Family Values tour and taking control of radio airwaves with its synth-guitar-saturated cover of New Order's 1983 hit "Blue Monday." Orgy's otherworldly outfits and android boy-toy appearance certainly helped the five member group look the part of body snatchers come to stake their claim in the hard-rock terrain. By the summer of 1999, the band was asserting dominance, as "Blue Monday" climbed the Billboard charts, followed by Orgy's self-penned song "Stitches." Soon after, the band's debut album, Candyass (Elementree), was certified Platinum.
Not bad for a group that had been together only six months before making its first album. But while Orgy's critics grumbled that its mach-speed ascent was part of an industry conspiracy- the L.A.-based band is managed by the company that handles Korn and Limp Bizkit, among others, and Orgy was the first act signed to Korn's Elementree label- the group's fans had apparently seen rock's future and named it "Orgymania."
They'll have little reason to call it anything else when Orgy releases its second album, Vapor Transmission (Elementree), this October. Like its predecessor, the new album finds Orgy glomming the glammest elements of techno, new wave and metal to form a bridge between guitar-based hard rock and dance music. But whereas Candyass was created by a band still trying to find its identity, Vapor Transmission benefits from the group's two years together on the road and in the studio. The songs are tighter, the performances more aggressive and the sounds- particularly the synth-guitar tones invoked by lead guitarist Amir Derakh- more out of this world than ever.
"With this album, we wanted to combine what we learned from doing the first record with what we learned from being a band a little longer and touring," say the laconic Derakh. "It wasn't that we had changed our sound drastically, but we wanted to take advantage of the experience and knowledge we've gained over the past two years. The first record was a bit more of an experiment, whereas this time we had our technique down."
Offers Ryan Shuck, Orgy's irrepressible, hyperactive second guitarist, "I think that our attitude on the first record was, 'This is new, we hope you guys like it and don't think it sucks.' This time it's like, 'Hi. We're back and we're loud. See how loud we are?' We went in the studio with that vibe. We were like, 'Okay, we're just off the road and we're pissed off. We know what we sound like now. We're not afraid of writing really heavy songs, and we're not afraid of writing complicated songs. We know we can do it. And we know who we are."
The public at large, however, might not be as convinced. Despite the Platinum sales of Candyass, many remember Orgy only for "Blue Monday," the hit song the group didn't write. It's a snipe Orgy answered to repeatedly on its last tour. But Shuck says the band members felt they had nothing to prove with the making of Vapor Transmission.
"We were pretty happy with the success of 'Blue Monday.' It didn't bum us out that our big hit song was a cover. With the new record, we really just wanted to kick ass. And in that respect, yeah we hope this record will smash our last effort. We want to annihilate the last thing we did, because I think we always want to improve."
"Fiction (Dreams in Digital)," Vapor Transmission's first single, is a fair representation of Orgy's latest plan for world dominance. Written by the band with their producer, Josh Abraham, the song sounds like what you might have heard in the early Eighties had Duran Duran teamed up with the Psychedelic Furs. A fantasy about the nocturnal habits of a virtual-reality girl, "Fiction is pure Orgy: a meld of Eighties influences executed with new-metal aggression and transmitted on a wave of pure theater. In fact, theatricality is perhaps the defining element in Orgy's music. Unlike nearly everything else in the pop music realm, the group's music is grandiosely evocative. As it happens- and as in all things concerning Orgy- there is good reason for this.
"Everything we write is composed in a make-believe world," explains Shuck. "We have a futuristic, alien land that we visualize when we sir down to write, or even when we speak about Orgy and how we fit into the scheme of things. That's where a lot of the imagery in our songs comes from, and it's how we come up with ideas for our clothes and everything else."
However startling the group's overnight success may be, what's truly surprising is that five musicians with such eccentrically like-minded sensibilities ever met in the first place. In reality, Orgy's members knew each other years before the group formed. Derakh, vocalist Jay Gordon and drummer Bobby Hewitt had met in the late Eighties and played in a band together in the mid Nineties. Gordon has known bassist Paige Haley since childhood, and hooked up with guitarist Ryan Shuck in the mid Nineties. More recently, Gordon and Derakh worked together producing and engineering Coal Chamber's 1997 debut.
"It was probably inevitable that we would all form a band together,” says Shuck. "I mean, when I first met Jay, we were just amazed to find someone else who had similar ideas about music. And when he introduced me to Amir and the other guys, we were all so in sync with each other. It was wild."
The band members didn't share just a taste for high-fashion clothes, makeup and science fiction movies; each of them was also fed up with the L.A. music scene's follow-the-leader attitude. Says Shuck, "We thought, God, every band right now sounds like Korn, and before that every band sounded like Alice in Chains and Nirvana. And everybody's wearing baggy clothes and baseball caps.
"And we said, 'Fuck it! Let's not give up the things that are of interest to us. Let's be as heavy as we want to be, but let's not be afraid of pop and heavy metal.' That's why Amir uses guitar synths, and why I use all my pedals and effects. The goal of this band is to create its own sound, and our guitars are a huge part of that."
In that respect, Orgy benefits from the contrary natures of its guitarists. At 27, Shuck is the eager neophyte, whose imagination is freed by not knowing the limitations of his instrument. Derakh, at 36, is the older, accomplished master with the know-how to turn Shuck's pipe dreams into reality. "Amir's helped me because he's more experienced and he has a degree in audio engineering," says Shuck. "I'll come to him with a sound I want to create, and he'll know how to do it. I'm like, nine times more knowledgeable about sound and equipment since working with him. And I know he gets off on my energy and conceptualism. He's said to me, 'I don't know where you come up with some of this stuff. You're worse than my kid.' "
Although he didn't play in a band until he was in high school, in a way Shuck was working on his career well before he reached his teens. Lacking any distinct artistic inclinations, he was drawn to music, in particular heavy metal, largely for its dramatic trappings. " I was kind of a manic and hyperactive when I was a kid. I was always writing these elaborate stories with my Star Wars action figures and creating soundtracks for them with my albums. When I was probably nine or 10, I used to dress up like Kiss every day. I would really get into trouble for that, too. I used to have to go over to my friend's house to do it."
Shuck's nascent creativity was in great part driven by his need to escape the stifling confines of his hometown, a small, culturally isolated community near Bakersfield, California. "I was born in a shit town, and I lived there until I was 18." he says. "We didn't get MTV until two years after everyone. The best that could happen to you in that town was getting a job out in the oil fields, because you'd make like 15 bucks an hour. That was, like, rich! You could get a nice house."
His imagination fueled by comic books, Shuck eventually developed his creative abilities- not to mention his entrepreneurial skill- through drawing. "At school I became known as the 'The Artist.' I drew naked ladies, and the kids would give me their lunch money for the pictures. 'Cause, you know, I'd only get two bucks a day for lunch. Me and my friends would go to McDonald's, but all I could afford was a cheeseburger and fries. That's not enough for a kid! So I started drawing pictures of naked chics for my friends, and that's how I'd get my extra buck or two so I could get a 'Number 3.' " He laughs. "Ridiculous, huh? I was a fuckin' idiot. The burgeoning businessman! "So I was gonna do that for a living. Then I discovered the guitar."
At 16, Shuck picked up the instrument, he concedes, "just to get girls. Art wasn't really helping me score the chicks." With a few chords under his belt, Shuck formed a band with his boyhood pal Jonathan Davis called Sex Art. The friendship would prove valuable to both teenagers: Together, they wrote "Blind," the song that became the first hit for Davis' current band, Korn. Years later, Davis returned the favor by introducing Shuck to his friend Jay Gordon, thus paving the way for Orgy.
"When Jay and I met, we discovered there were other people like us." says Shuck. "That's when I started to realize that I could pursue my dreams. But even then, it was really hard to see beyond my upbringing. I still have that small-town mindset: I want to break out of the box. I still wake up hyperactive every afternoon."
For all of Shuck's impetuosity, Amir Derakh is reassuringly cool and self-possessed. Whereas Shuck still comes off as the wide-eyed kid who can't believe he's making records, Derakh functions closer to the ground, and with good reason: he has the benefit of years of experience as a professional musician, having played guitar in the mid-Eighties hair-metal band Rough Cutt.
"That was a great experience, " says Derakh, who played a traditional six-string guitar in the group. "But had it lasted much longer it would have been a little suffocating. I mean, there's just so much you can do with straight guitar. In that respect, I find my work with guitar synths much more stimulating and challenging."
Derakh didn't become interested in music until he was a teenager. When he did, it was the synthesizer, not the guitar, that held the San Diego native's interest. "I was completely fascinated by it," he recalls. "All those buttons and switches and sliders." Derakh might have turned out to be a latter-day Keith Emerson had his cousin, a classically trained pianist, not bought a synth first. Rather than compete, Derakh picked up the guitar. "I got my first guitar when I was 16 but didn't start playing until I was 18. I took some lessons from a guy who taught me nothing but scales. And I hated it, because he wasn't teaching me any songs. So I ended up teaching myself things like AC/DC, and all these rock songs. I figured them out pretty quickly, and it came really naturally to me."
Within two years, Derakh had become known as one of San Diego's best guitarists. The Rough Cutt gig got him to L.A., and when the band folded, he stayed on, forming a band with Jay Gordon and Bobby Hewitt. It was around this time that he began dabbling in guitar synths. "I'd been collecting guitar synths ever since I was in Rough Cutt," says Derakh. "I just liked how they allow me to be a synth player even though I'm a guitarist."
When that group folded, Gordon began working with Shuck, writing songs and cutting demos. As it became obvious to them that their material had potential, Gordon called upon Derakh and Hewitt to join their sessions, bringing in his friend bassist Paige Haley to round out the group.
Within months, Orgy was ensconced in a ski chalet near Lake Tahoe, recording Candyass. Shortly after the album's release, the group found itself playing the Family Values tour, honing its act before thousands of fans each night.
"We played a whole Family Values tour not knowing if people were gonna like us or not," says Shuck. "There we were, playing next to bands like Korn and Limp Bizkit, who were causing an earthquake every time they played. And what we found is that we're a heavy band. We didn't know that until we went out on the road and got a chance to play on a tour with heavy bands."
Once the tour ended, Orgy immediately went into production mode, eager to put the energy of the road into its record. Although Vapor Transmission was mixed and mastered in L.A. studios, the group recorded the basic tracks with Josh Abraham in Hollywood-area homes using Orgy's newly acquired mobile hard-disk recording studio. "We recorded in three different houses," says Derakh. "The first one we shared with Korn for a month while they were making their new record. The bulk of the recording was done in a really big house in the Hollywood Hills, where we all lived for three months. And then some of the last parts were recorded at Jay's home studio."
The hard-disk studio is critical to Orgy's music, as it plays a major role in the group's writing process. For example, "Dramatica," one of the first songs written for the new album, was driven by a rhythm Gordon dreamed up, with the group layering its parts over his drum pattern. In another instance, guitar parts were digitally chopped up and processed, thereby producing sounds that resulted in new songs. "Some of the songs were created just from somebody being in the studio and making something up and the rest of us adding to it," says Derakh. "There are songs that we started based simply on vocals or a sound. It depends on who's around at the time."
Derakh explains that the Vapor Transmission song "107" began life as a series of unusual tones he created on his guitar synth. "I had these wild sounds and I was anxious to use them. Generally, that's what starts me off: I'll program a sound that will get me to start playing something. I had, like, four or five new guitar-synth sounds, and that's what we used to create '107.'"
Nearly every guitar Derakh owns has some sort of synth in it. For the making of Vapor Transmission, he employed his numerous vintage guitar synths- including a rare GR-700- as well as some newer Roland Units. "I'm just trying to create a sound that's different. I can get good regular guitar tone, but what I try to do is find something that has the attack and the edge you'd expect from a guitar, along with an overtone that's sort of lurking in the background."
For amps, Derakh relies on his stash of Marshalls, although for the making of Vapor Transmission he also used amps by Roland and Line 6, as well as a Yamaha modeling amp. "I'm actually working with Yamaha to create a new version of that," he says. "It'll have a new look, and I've modeled a couple of tones I created into it."
For live performance, Derakh plans to enhance his rig with a Roland D-Beam light-sensing controller that allows notes and effects to be manipulated via hand movements. "I'll be able to control different sounds with it just by the way I move my body." Compared to Derakh's setup, Shuck's rig seems downright spartan. The heart of it is his Ibanez Universe seven-string and a Marshall JCM800 with a modified gain control. "It's a distortion modification and lets me control my tone just by raising and lowering my volume," he says. "If I want a clean sound, I just turn down."
In addition to his seven-string, Shuck played a custom Jackson seven-string on Vapor Transmission, as well as Schecter Celloblasters, five-string baritone guitars tuned in fifths (high to low: A E B F# C#). Says Shuck, "I play them for the same reason I picked up the seven-string: I don't get inspired by technical know-how, I get inspired by a different toy. We had a lot of fun with the Celloblasters on this record. No one knew what to do with them, and I was saying, 'These are dope. We'll have fun with them.' "
In addition, Shuck used a slew of Boss stompboxes, an Ibanez Tone-Lok PH 7 phaser pedal and Line 6 DL4 Delay Modeler and MM4 Modulation Modeler pedals.
While the unusual guitar tones and part and parcel of Orgy's distinct sound, Shuck and Derakh stress that it's not a case of art for art's sake. In the meticulously groomed world of Orgy, every bleep and blip has a purpose, fitting into a complex matrix that defines the band's place in the modern-rock universe.
"We like being a rock band," says Derakh, "but we don't want to sound like everybody else. It's a fine line we have to walk to accomplish that."
Should Vapor Transmission bring the group success of a more widespread nature, Orgy imitators- so far nonexistent- are likely to start popping up everywhere, like the creatures from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But according to Derakh, no one in Orgy is worried.
"We always ride the technology. We just stay right on the edge of the latest innovations and put them to work for us. That's why there's no telling how even our next record will sound. It's going to depend on the technology that's available to us. And that's always gonna be changing."
ORGYMANIA Their industrial-style remake of the Eighties hit “Blue Monday” has brought hard-rocking Orgy fame, fortune and a shitload of new clothes.. by Christopher Scapelliti.
Someone has to take the heat for all those pre-fab guy groups, those ‘N Syncs and 98 Degrees. Who would have thought it would be an industrial-hard rock group from L.A. named Orgy?
When Orgy scored a record deal just six months after forming, more than a few critics began sharpening their knives. Not only were the group signed to Elementree, the Warner Bros.-distributed label run by Orgy’s pals in Korn, but they were presented with a coveted spot on Korn’s Family Values tour last summer, despite having never toured. It didn’t help that, until recently, Orgy were better known for wearing makeup and girls designer tops than for writing enticingly dance-heavy grooves, or that their management company, in addition to handling Korn and Limp Bizkit, also represents a certain teeny-bop sensation known as the Backstreet Boys.
Then came “Blue Monday,” the hit single from Orgy’s debut album, Candyass. The song was a hit on modern rock radio this past spring, peaking at No. 2 on the club charts and turning Orgy’s opening spot on the current Sugar Ray tour into a nightly riot of screaming girls and mosh-pitting boys. But while the kids danced, it was left to the critics to point out that “Blue Monday” had been a hit once before, in 1983, for the British electronic-dance group New Order.
What’s a band got to do to get a little respect these days?
"People will say whatever they want to say,” guitarist Amir Derakh says without a hint of defensiveness. “Our version of ‘Blue Monday’ sounds enough like us that a lot of people don’t even recognize it as the New Order song. We even created the chorus-the ‘how does it feel?’ section-because the original song didn’t have one.”
As for the band’s glammy fashion sense, Derakh admits that, at the time of Family Values, Orgy was more femme than its members had intended. On the Sugar Ray tour; the group has opted for what guitarist Ryan Shuck calls a “cleaner, futuristic look” that probably wouldn’t look out of place in a stage production of Blade Runner. “The clothes and makeup are things we were doing before we were a group,” Shuck explains. “I was a hairdresser before I joined the band. Fashion is a way of life for us, and it always will be.”
Whatever the naysayers think about Orgy’s sudden emergence as a synth-rock sensation, the fact is, each of its members earned his leather pants the hard way, working L.A.’s aggressive club scene. Both Shuck and Korn vocalist Jonathan Davis were members of the band Sex Art, and together cowrote Korn’s hit “Blind.” Derakh, for his part, drew some attention in the mid Eighties as guitarist for Rough Cutt, a hair-metal group who scored a minor radio hit with nothing less than a cover of Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart.”
Inevitably, the incestuous forces that shape L.A.’s music community drew Orgy’s five members together, united by their shared ideas about music and fashion. “I think we first noticed each other because of how we looked,” says Shuck. “We saw each other as being a little cooler looking than everyone else.”
While their critics have yet to be entirely won over, Orgy does agree with them on at least one point: the group’s success is somewhat premature. “None of us expected this kind of response so soon, because we’re just starting out,” says Derakh. “It’s a little overwhelming sometimes. When we played in Oregon in April, the fans totally swarmed out bus. They had big signs that said, ‘We love Orgy,’ and they were screaming and yelling. They ripped Ryan’s $800 shirt, and he was whining about it for a week.”
"There are times when they just won’t let go of us,” says Shuck. “We call it ‘Orgymania’.”
GUITAR WORLD How have your lives changed since “Blue Monday” became a hit?
AMIR DERAKH It’s gotten pretty crazy, especially since we started the Sugar Ray tour, because we have so many more fans now. It’s good, though-things are a little easier, and we get treated a little better by the media. But we’ve got more work to do: more interviews, more shows.
RYAN SHUCK It’s also weird, though. We can’t go to McDonald’s sometimes. We walk into the hotel lobby and there’s maniacs waiting for us.
GW Most groups spend their first year or so trying to figure out who they are and what kind of music they want to make. How did you attain such a focused vision in so little time?
DERAKH We came into Orgy knowing what we didn’t want to sound like or look like, and we just took it from their. That’s how we figured out what we wanted to do in this group, by narrowing our focus.
SHUCK The number one thing is, we don’t want to sound like anyone. When Orgy first got together, everyone had spent 10 years playing in other groups, figuring out what kind of music they wanted to play and what they wanted to do with the music. Orgy just happens to be a group of people who all agree on those ideas. For example, Amir and I didn’t want our guitars to sound like guitars, which is why he uses Roland guitar synths. And I felt that when the guitar was playing rhythm, it should sound like a machine. So there’s an example of finding a vision by the process of elimination.
GW Your first touring experience was opening for a lot of tough, testosterone-charged acts on the Family Values tour. Did their fans ever make you fear for your safety?
DERAKH Korn has very open-minded fans, and the fans on that tour were pretty cool. Obviously, you’d think we would have gotten killed for wearing makeup on such a heavy tour. And there were definitely night when there were hecklers in the crowd. They might throw a water bottle at us, but that shit happens anyway. Basically, the audience was there to check us out, and now they’re coming because they’ve heard the music and want to see us.
GW How did you come to remake “Blue Monday,” and how did it become your first single?
DERAKH We had a couple of cover songs that we were considering, and “Blue Monday” happened to be one of them. It came together really easily. After we finished the album, Warner Bros. brought us to New York to introduce us to the company staff. They had a video presentation to off show their new bands for the coming year, and our version of “Blue Monday” was part of it. The song just sounded so good. That’s when I first realized that we were going to make it a single.
GW Is it disappointing that, out of all the original songs on the record, the cover became the hit?
SHUCK It’s fine. Not only do we respect that song but we made it our own. It’s like we adopted it; it’s someone else’s kid, but we’re raising it. I mean, if we played our show and no one cared about the songs until we did “Blue Monday,” I would be worried. But the kids are singing along to all our songs-not just “Blue Monday.” And there’s definitely about six songs in the set where it’s just a panic. It looks like people are going to kill each other. [laughs] So that’s good!
GW Why did you call your album Candyass?
DERAKH It’s actually the name of a drag queen our singer [Jay Gordon] met at a party in L.A. We just thought that would be a funny title for our record. And we thought it was cool, because it was like we were making fun of ourselves.
SHUCK It’s kind of a play on us and the way people look at us like, “Ah, ya bunch of faggots.” I think the word does suit our image. It’s not that far off.
GW In June, Orgy is going to be featured in a new Calvin Klein ad campaign. Considering all the backlash you’ve received for wearing makeup and girls clothing, isn’t posing for Calvin Klein just asking for trouble?
DERAKH No, because from the very beginning we told everybody that we were fashion whores. We like clothes, and we like to wear expensive makeup.
SHUCK And it’s working for us. A lot of bands do get fucked with for trying a lot of different stuff, but obviously we’re getting a lot of support from our fans for what we’re doing.
GW So you think the time is right for it?
SHUCK I think the time is so right for it. I see less of a definable trend in music. The only thing popping up right now are bands in the style of New Kids on the Block.
GW You mean like the Backstreet Boys?
SHUCK [laughs] Yeah! [coughs] And, you know...that’s cool too. (GW)