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Vuvuvultures

Vuvuvultures’ volcanic mix of indie, electro, unforgettable vocals and art show has made them one of the most dramatic live bands around, and they’ve just released their debut album Push/Pull. They are always inventing stuff whether it’s themes for their The Island club nights, tunes, or a junk-art drum machine. Vuvuvultures are Harmony Boucher, Nicole Bettencourt Coelho, Paul Ressel and Matthew Christensen. They invited us to their studio to talk us through their sound and their amazing collection of kit. More pics of Vuvuvultures live here.

Hometown:: London
Label:: Energy Snake
Debut:: 2011
Homepage:: vuvuvultures.com
Twitter:: @vuvuvultures

Crackling unsounds Harmony talks vocals Nicole talks bass Paul talks guitar, synths, producing Matt talks drums Kit List

Crackling unsounds

Vuvuvultures have been attracting plenty of attention with their fuzz-heavy, bleep-tastic, genre-mangling pop, which they themselves describe as ‘the sound of dirty bikers eating microchips’. We talked circuit-bending, blowing up instruments and the quest for the ultimate sound. They’re proud of messing with sound through pedals until it becomes ‘unsound’.

Much as they love to spend time in their studio torturing synths to find out what happens when you solder this bit to that bit and push the wrong button, playing live is equally important to them.

It’s just a massive performance, really, whenever we play. It’s our chance to get out of just doing admin for the band and actually get to play. Because it feels like 80% of being in a band is actually everything else besides getting to play.

Their love of performance means their videos are unforgettable too featuring everything from evil insects to eerie special effects. Their latest is for Steel Bones.

Vuvuvultures say that a live show should always be a real event.

Especially in London, like we’re playing the same city over and over, we don’t expect people to come and watch the same thing. If we want to go for a night out we want it to be like, a fully rounded night out and really fun, so we try and create that every time we play so people know, even if Vuvuvultures are playing and they think, we’re totally fucking sick of that band, it’s going to be a really fun night.

They run The Island, a themed club night in a variety of edgy London locations, complete with props and sets. As bassist Nicole says:

The whole thing about The Island, we don’t really know what it is, it’s just like a way to express our and all of our friends’ interests in a night, so we just build stuff, project things, create a theme and a little world that you can just escape in for a night, that’s kind of the vibe. Making something out of nothing because we have nothing but want to make something. It’s not just us, well as far as The Island, it’s a lot of our friends as well.

Vuvuvultures don’t mind admitting that their musical style is hard to pin down, as all of them are influenced by different musical genres. When it comes to songwriting, they tend to start with new sounds rather than a melody and lyrics. Paul says:

I think every new song we do always feels like it doesn’t fit with anything we’ve done before until we do something new and then it’s like, oh that all fits, but this doesn’t so I think it’s, oh, just a process. I mean the more we play the songs the more they sound like us but they always start from like weird sounds. It works though, because we have all these kind of really interesting sounds and ideas but the songs only really come alive on stage or when we’ve been rehearsing them for ages and we actually play them, and then go back and think oh we’re going to put that on an album or keep it or whatever, I think it’s a good process.

Having their own studio space helps with that. Nicole explains that, as well as having a lot of equipment, the band are ‘very needy people.’

Having that place we go to twice if not more a week to either rehearse or write it’s like, you can feel a bit homeless, creatively if you don’t have that space that you know is there. You just walk in and it’s like, all our stuff’s here, we can start experimenting with the sound we can start just chatting and getting ideas for a party, all these crazy things in the room, you know. Having a home for four ADD people is really important. I would say. We feel very fortunate, though, we were lucky to get this space.

Vuvuvultures Drum Machine Low tech high impact Read More

As it’s their studio they can take things to bits and put them back together again to make something new. They created a drum machine called “Itchy” out of studio debris, and recorded the sound. Or unsound! It had got a bit bashed up but they showed us how it works, “Hi Hat” and all.

Harmony talks vocals

Aptly-named vocalist Harmony writes the lyrics and melody lines for the songs but says she relies on the rest of the band to ‘help them make sense’. With her amazing voice, prowling stage presence and striking looks, she makes a compelling front woman, something she puts down to her background.

I kind of grew up around performance so for me it’s not actually that weird to overperform. I grew up in a theatre company so I think acting, well not acting, I’m a terrible actor, but I think the whole performance element of a live show, for me, is like my main thing, I think. I used to play instruments on stage and we’ve slowly gotten rid of that so I can just kind of go mental, which is great.

Harmony plays guitar, piano, keyboards and is learning the drums, however she doesn’t claim to be a virtuoso on any one instrument.

I kind of play instruments enough to write a song with, but I wouldn’t say that I specifically play any. I don’t have a main thing that I sit down and play all the time, except my voice, which actually I don’t play besides writing and singing live. I don’t spend hours a day like, practising.

She doesn’t use any specific vocal effects, preferring to keep things as clean as possible.

I just try and persuade the sound guy to put a little bit on me so that I don’t get totally lost in the production of everything else, but I don’t use anything specifically. Every now and then we’ll put my voice through a synthesizer or something when we’re writing, to try and come up with a funny sound, but generally I just try and keep it as real as possible. Because, you know, it’s more fun, and you actually have to learn how to sing that way.

Shure SM58 The best basic live mic you can get Read More

When it comes to microphones, she likes a Shure SM58 on stage.

It’s kind of the best basic live mic you can get I think. I’ve tried some others and they always sound a bit weird, or they sound like I’m going through some kind of weird tunnel or something.

Harmony prefers a RØDE mic for studio work.

I’ll often demo just with the SM58 and then we’ll record it again with the NT1 RØDE just to make it sound clear and nice.

RODE NT1-A Condenser studio mic Read More

She’s influenced to an extent by the female vocalists her sisters loved when they were growing up, such as Suzanne Vega and Beth Gibbons of Portishead.

I always liked Kate Bush, growing up, but then decided a few years ago that I was going to attempt never to sing like her, just because there’s way too many girls that do.

One thing she doesn’t have in common with many newer singers is that she also does some serious fashion modelling. She keeps the two lives apart, though it can only help the band to get write-ups in mags like Italian Vogue.

Crackling unsounds

Nicole talks bass

Bass powerhouse Nicole includes Tom Waits, Johnny Cash, John Bonham and Muse among her influences. She loves experimenting with sounds and laments the lack of interesting noise-making equipment to be found in South Africa where she grew up. Though it made her resourceful.

I originally went to an audition to be a guitar player in a band and it turned out they were actually looking for a bass player, so I ended up falling into the role of a bass player. However I lived in a third world country and there was no access to any interesting gear, so I got bored of bass very quickly. So I just started trying to get interesting sounds out of really shit tiny amps which, all you really could do then was distortion by overloading the resources you had, and then I realised, oh, you can actually just get that in pedals, that make different kinds of distortions and put them through bigger, more quality amps, and that’s basically where it’s gone from there.

Her current set up, a mix of Big Muff and other pedals, allows her to get the sound she wants.

I’m known to be quite anal with distortion sounds so if you look at the pedals they’re actually all marked with different little lines and stuff, and for most of the gig, it’s spent on the floor re-aligning my pedals to get a sound for each song. I could probably just stick to one or two distortion sounds but it’s much more interesting to craft sounds for each song as we intended them to be. I kind of live in the bass world on stage so it kind of makes sense for me to be on the floor crafting sound the whole time. Even though it might look dorky.

Everything starts with her unusual vintage Fender JP-90 bass, with GHS strings.

The basic bass I play is a Fender JP-90, which was made in the 90s, which is one of my favourite decades. It was also when I started playing bass, which is probably why I have it. I like it so much because a it’s a Fender and there’s something totally about Fender basses that I’ve just never come across in any other brand, sorry guys. And it’s a JP because it’s a Jazz and Precision hybrid. So it’s got both pickups, which is nice, because it’s a versatile bass and it sort of combines that softer jazz sound, and a growly precision sound, and the neck is a jazz neck so it’s a bit thinner for my tiny hands, and that’s why I like it. Also I’ve had it since I started playing so it’s got a lot of sentimental value. I’ve gutted it and put different like little electronic bits in it to boost parts of the sound so, it’s my baby.

Fender JP-90 Bass It’s a versatile bass and it combines that softer jazz sound, and a growly precision sound Read More

Nicole gave us a tour of her sound.

The bass also has a stunning custom pick guard made by Nashville metal sculptor Robert Cortner. It looks like something an angel would be proud of.

He made this wing pick guard for me out of two metal plates and he did the whole thing by hand and drew on it with other bits of burning metal and then painted it afterwards and really sculpted it, it’s one of my prize possessions.

From the JP-90, the signal goes into her Electro-Harmonix-heavy pedal chain.

Well I’m kind of obsessed with Electro-Harmonix, possibly because they look so cool, actually. They’re like enormous and look really nice and there’s a really tangible feel to when you’re playing with these massive knobs and sliders and stuff. It almost becomes a bit of a performance playtime. So I use Electro-Harmonix Synthesizer Bass pedal, a Worm Electro-Harmonix as well.

Electro-Harmonix The Worm Bumper box of modulation Read More

It’s a sort of four-part effects unit, which is wah, phaser, tremelo and vibrato, and you’ve got control of the rate and range as well so you can get some really interesting sounds when you combine it with distortion and different octaves and things.

Nicole says her heavy foot-stamping means she breaks lots of pedals along the way. She has names for a lot of her gear, even her pedals, and there’s a religious theme going through - or maybe she’s hoping there will fewer breakages!

From there it goes into The Priest, or Sans Amp made by Tech 21, which is an overall signal boost. I also sometimes run a clean line out of there to keep bottom end when I engage different distortion sounds. It’s got an equalizer so you can craft your sound a little bit.

Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Driver DI It’s got an equaliser so you can craft your sound Read More

Out of there it goes into my newest pedal, the Dirt Transmitter, made by Earthquaker devices, which is a totally badass distortion pedal which I discovered from the North London metal scene guys actually. It basically sounds like an earthquake. A dirty earthquake! I was like, I love Big Muff and everything but sometimes you just want it to be more bottom-endy and more cutty so they were like, you need this pedal, it’s called the Dirt Transmitter, and I got it. It’s got the most enormous sound you’ve ever heard. Love it.

EarthQuaker Devices Dirt Transmitter Totally badass distortion pedal Read More

And then from there it goes into the creamier Big Muff sort of overdrivey distortion pedal. From that guy it goes into the bass synthesizer, also by Electro-Harmonix and you’ve got sort of octaves on here, square wave, delay, it’s really fun to play with, you can really get into the sliders and stuff.

Electro-Harmonix Big Muff Pi I love Big Muff Read More

Then that whole chain goes into the Orange MK3 bass head, a nice valve amp, lots of nice organic gain sounds, straight into the big, boomy but yet crispy 15 inch speaker.

Orange AD200B Bass MK3 Head Lots of nice organic gain sounds Read More

She’s fond of her Orange amps, but retains a soft spot for one particular amp combo.

My favourite amp combo of all time is an Ashdown ABM 500, the old series through a 70s 215 Ampeg cabinet, which I do actually own, but I had to leave it (the cab) in Nashville because it’s literally bigger than me, so I couldn’t get it on a plane.

Ashdown ABM 500 My favourite amp combo of all time Read More

I found a pretty good substitute in these Oranges. MK3 with a 1X15 speaker works better in London as well because you can actualy get it onto the tiny stages, and it’s got a really gritty valvey analoguey sound. It’s actually kind of breaking at the moment which I’m sort of enjoying, it just kind of goes crackle at all the wrong moments sometimes.. but it’s really fun to play, and it’s loud and dirty and bassy and looks fabulous as well.

Orange OCB115 Bass Speaker Cabinet Boomy but yet crispy Read More

Nicole considers Nashville as the place where she grew up as a musician.

I started playing bass in South Africa and that was exciting and interesting, just because I’d never played music before, but then moving to Nashville and being exposed to so many incredible players and incredible producers and just every area of music industry, there’s someone like, wow, inspiring. I learnt a lot of what I know about playing and gear off other musicians who had been doing it for a really long time… it was really just a melting pot of music knowledge for me. It’s very much about vibe and feel there as well. I didn’t really get exposed to that much to working with producers until I met Paul, it was all very much about what you could make on the spot.

Nicole and Paul spend a lot of time bouncing ideas off each other in the studio.

Paul and I nerd out a lot and will experiment with software and running sounds into other sounds and quite often we’ll start with him playing with the drum machine, running it through a bunch of effects and me playing my bass through a whole bunch of effects. We’ll swap now and then and swap chains and it’s really quite an incestuous little nerd-fest. We’ll play anything that makes sound and run it through pedals, and you can get interesting melodic and sort of percussive loops out of it if you mangle them enough.

The ukulele is one of her favourite instruments to have fun with.

I don’t think we’ve ever ended up using ukulele on a Vuvuvultures track but we’ve used it for making samples and sounds and things. We also have this little toy collective called Sh! Pop Studio, it’s like this little really, really fucked old speaker, everything you put through it distorts so immediately sounds awesome, and it’s got a drum machine, a keyboard and a mic, and we basically had a whole bunch of sessions playing ukelele and then playing off that, like little keyboards and drum parts and stuff.

Smash Hits Sh! Pop Studio Everything you put through it distorts so immediately sounds awesome Read More

Nicole is very particular about her strings and needs something that stands up to her powerful playing. She uses a range of different strings from GHS, who personalised things just for her.

The reason I started working with them is that they were up for making me custom gauge sets. I like to have a different range of gauges, and as a rule always get the first G.50 or up.

My favourite are the Progressives. I was drawn to them because of the strong wire and magnetised core. And they do actually have an amazing tone, and they last ages and I feel like I won’t break them no matter how hard I play!

GHS Progressives An amazing tone, and they last ages Read More

Also I like the Infinity Steel (cool name too), as a coated string option. Also they coat them RED. Win. I was specifically looking for black coated nice sounding strings at one point for fun and GHS mentioned these so I tried them out.

Electro-Harmonix Bass Micro Synth Add synth tones to your bass playing. Read More

Harmony talks vocals

Paul talks guitar, synths, producing

Paul has many roles in the band - including playing guitar and keyboards live, producing, and making weird noise objects! He never really considered himself a guitarist, though some of his influences are pretty traditional.

I hate to say it because Harmony’s going to hate me but I’m a big Radiohead fan, especially like their earlier stuff and their guitar work. Big Jimmy Page fan. Stuff like Led Zeppelin, like Hendrix, just something about the way they were exploring what distortion was about and there’s just something amazing about the kind of sounds they were getting then. Today I find the whole tendency is for sound to get really big, you know, 24x12 Marshalls and like 15 digital distortion effects pedals and stuff, and it’s just too much. I definitely prefer a simpler sound.

He’s equally inspired by more modern, technology-driven music, however, when it comes to songwriting.

I totally fell in love with Amon Tobin, Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, like the whole sort of IBM scene really changed things a lot for me, and I think my production approach has always got something of that in it, so all the sounds and percussion beats and noisy synths, they always form the basis and then the song kind of grows around that.

Paul plays a Fender Mustang, which he runs through an Electro-Harmonix Double Muff.

He’s happy with what some people would consider the vintage Mustang’s faults, as well.

I love my guitar, because it’s really messed up and old and squeaky and the parts are noisy and the wiring’s terrible but there’s just something really great about it. I get looked down upon every time I go into a studio because they’re all like, Oh god your guitar won’t stay in tune, but it doesn’t need to stay in tune!

Fender Mustang There’s just something really great about it Read More

His amp is a vintage Music Man 112 RD that looks like it’s seen a lot of action!

Music Man 112 RD One Hundred What I love about it, it’s very dry Read More

I don’t use any sort of delay or reverb or anything. Even on the clean sound the gain is all the way up and it’s very distorted and very overdriven, and then I use the distortion pedal and then it’s just ridiculous, and that’s kind of my guitar sound. What I love about it, it’s very dry and it definitely feels like that kind of 70s overdrive sort of vibe to it, it’s just really raw and noisy and kind of unforgiving, and a lot of feedback, and I kind of like it. Because my playing style’s quite messy so I think it sort of works with that.

Paul’s equally passionate about synths, especially his Casio PT-1.

Casio PT-1 I found it in an antique store Read More

I found it in an antique store, believe it or not, and this thing was made in the year I was born, 1981, so that’s pretty special.

Paul has an unusual a Suzuki Omnichord that he uses a lot for writing music.

It’s like an electronic harp thingy from the 80s it makes really really interesting sounds. I did a little bit of circuit bending on it just to get some of the weirdness out of it. I love the natural sound of these instruments, but for me the real fun is in putting it through different processors and effects to get even more interesting sounds. Hours of fun really. Usually when we are writing stuff we mainly start with a beat, taking something like this or an old 505 drum machine and getting a basic beat going. We’ll start playing around with that and layer ideas over it.

Suzuki Omnichord Makes really really interesting sounds Read More

He often puts it through a Sherman Filterbank.

Sherman Filterbank Analog filtering and distortion with extreme tube overdrive Read More

As for the Roland TR-505, despite the one of the pads being broken, he coaxes plenty of good sounds out of it.

What I love is that by putting it through effects you can completely change the character of the sound. You have an infinite palette of analog sounds that you can play with, it seems a lot more fun than plugins.

Roland TR-505 A lot more fun than plugins Read More

Paul is just getting into Atari synth carts.

It’s basically just a normal Atari Junior, like 2600, but it’s got the cartridges that turn it into a synthesiser and then you just build a little breakup box with a midi and that sort of stuff but it’s pretty cool because it sounds like all the sound of those old games you basically now have control over and you can turn it into a synthesiser with arpeggiators and drum machines and it’s so tiny, it’s awesome.

As a producer, he’s worked with a variety of artists, though he’s reluctant to name names, preferring to talk instead about software.

All the writing and stuff we do in Cubase, and then all the live work like the back tracks and synths and samples and stuff that we run on stage is all going through Ableton. But I like making things in the real world, in terms of hardware and I also like writing synths and plug ins and stuff so I’ve made a couple of things in Reaktor and use programmes like Audiomulch to plug things together digitally, in a way that you wouldn’t normally do, just to try and get interesting sounds. Software and audio manipulation and digital sound mangling is just sort of infinite, which is really cool.

Steinberg Cubase Pro 8, Artist 8 All the writing and stuff we do in Cubase Read More

Ableton Live The backing tracks and synths and samples and stuff that we run on stage is all going through Ableton Read More

Native Instruments Reaktor 5 I’ve made a couple of things in Reaktor Read More

Electro-Harmonix Double Muff Two distortions in one Read More

Nicole talks bass

Matt talks drums

The newest member of the band, Matt, loves the way Vuvuvultures’ electronic experimentation makes him think about drumming in a whole new way.

I joined after Harmony and Paul and Nicole had been already making music for some time as a studio project, and the thing that really struck me was just how the beats that had come out had obviously not been thought up by a drummer. But I loved that because they were just thought of in such a refreshing way. It’s kind of forced me to alter the way that I think about drums, because if you sit down in front of a drumkit you kind of naturally gravitate towards certain things based on the way that a body moves so learning how to adapt that and respond more to sound than falling into the same old patterns all the time… It’s been something that I’ve had to learn pretty quickly with this band which has been really, really exciting.

His influences include Roger Taylor, John Bonham, Dave Grohl and Mutemath’s Darren King.

All of them quite different but all of them hard-hitting players. I think I’ve always been fascinated with the way that drums are just dynamically - you can change one little thing and it changes the whole mood of the song. That’s such a subtle thing but sometimes it’s things you don’t really even notice but they’re really quite important to the way that people respond to music.

Playing live is where he feels most at home.

Live I really get a chance to match things up properly with Nicole as a rhythm section. We really have bonded, Nicole. I kind of feel like that’s the sort of bedrock that allows the other interesting musical textures to come out so I guess that’s the live dynamic.

Matt’s current drumkit is a Pacific FX (a brand owned by DW), which he bought off a friend.

I think it’s made of birch and I like the way it sounds. That’s pretty much all I have to say about it. I didn’t choose the different sizes and stuff but it seems to work for what we’re doing, but I think with drums… Ideally you want to have loads and loads of different things to experiment with, which is when playing in the studio really gets interesting because then you can kind of experiment with them all.

The two floor toms are my favourite part of the kit because they’re really deep and boomy but without too many overtones and so they really have a lot of meat to them. The guy who played them before me was actually more of a jazz drummer so he had them tuned up quite a lot more, but I’ve got more rock tendencies, so I’ve kind of loosened things up and made them a little bit more meaty.

Pacific Drums and Percussion FX Series Really deep and boomy Read More

He regrets the fact that he left his favourite cymbals in South Africa when he moved to the UK.

I just play a fairly cheap set of Sabian cymbals. There’s nothing wrong with them but they’re a sheet cymbal as opposed to cast cymbals so they’re quite a bit cheaper but they seem to do the job.

I’ve got one Zildjian A-custom projection crash which is kind of my one remaining good cymbal. That’s set up to the left and I’ve got a big 18-inch crash to the right. And then a right cymbal and obviously hi-hats. I don’t really like those small splash cymbals, kind of the fizzy ones, they just seem a bit sort of naff to me.

Zildjian A 18” Custom Projection Crash Read More

His drum pedal is an Iron Cobra, which has lasted him through many wild performances.

Tama Iron Cobra Drum Pedal A solid dependable piece of kit Read More

As for drumsticks, he likes some of Vater’s signature ranges.

The Stewart Copeland sticks, are kind of my favourite ones if I can get them. If I can find them, I’ll buy them, but otherwise, the (Zildjian) Taylor Hawkins signature stick is really good, nice and thick.

Vater Stewart Copeland Standard My favourite ones Read More

A lot of the time you know, you inevitably buy a whole lot of the ones that you really like and you go back again in a couple of months and they don’t have them any more.

Paul talks guitar, synths, producing

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Vuvuvultures

Crackling unsounds

Harmony talks vocals

Nicole talks bass

Paul talks guitar, synths, producing

Matt talks drums

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