From Mission of Burma to one-man guitar orchestra, Roger Clark Miller remains one of the most quietly influential guitarists of the post-punk era, working to the calendar of his own creative impulses.
The post-punk 6-string hero takes a deep dive into sonic surrealism with his new album, a loop-driven collection of riveting soundscapes called Eight Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble.
If you ever find the opening to ask a composer or producer what it means to āpaint with sound,ā be prepared to frame the question in as many different ways as there are colors in the visible spectrum. Inspired by synaesthesis? Could be. Maybe a deep dive into abstract free-form improv? Sure, always worth a shot. What if you commit to exotic tunings or unconventional music theory? Or how about a mash-up of prepared instruments with some radical effects processing and tape manipulation?
We can do this all day, but before we lean into an āall of the aboveā approach, consider this: The only limit, really, is your imaginationāor, more suggestively, your dreams. āThereās a way to get to that psychedelic state without actually taking psychedelics, which is useful,ā Roger Clark Miller explains, with just a glint of conspiratorial humor. Given his illustrious history as a post-rock guitar guru and multi-instrumentalist with influences that range from ā60s acid rock to avant-shred to modern classical, Miller is intimately familiar with what it takes to push any and all boundaries in search of the music he hears in his head.
āThe first time that I actually did something interesting with it was back in art school,ā he recalls, paying tribute to his teacher Denman Maroney, a legendary jazz outsider known for his work with prepared piano. āHe saw my interests and thought Iād probably like surrealism. Up until then, my idea of surrealism was taking acid [laughs].ā
After reading AndrĆ© Bretonās surrealist manifestos (the second one, in particular, which touches on dreams as a creative reservoir), he set about applying the techniques to making musicāand ran into a roadblock. āBreton actually said because music isnāt so specific, it canāt be surrealistic. And that kind of pissed me off. I was looking for a way to compose, and I didnāt want to use what had come before. I thought, well, if I make music based on dreams, then I can create a surrealistic music, and bypass Bretonās megalomaniaāas much as I respect him! This gave me access to a very organic structure. Everybody dreams, and there are forms to it.ā
Millerās jauntily titled Eight Dream Interpretations for Solo Electric Guitar Ensemble, released earlier this year on the Cuneiform label, is in many ways the culmination of the technique he started developing back in 1975, when he created his first piece for solo violin. Miller has kept dream journals for decades, and uses them primarily as a non-linear source for ideas that he fleshes out into musical compositions. (āI donāt actually hear music unless it was part of the dream,ā he points out.)
āThis kind of music rewards attentive listening because itās really composed and thought-out, so youāre not gonna be bored.ā
If all that sounds a bit abstract and even esoteric, keep in mind this is the very same guy who co-founded Mission of Burma, one of the most viscerally immediate post-punk bands to come out of Bostonās raucous underground scene in the late ā70s and early ā80s. Back then, Miller adopted the much reviled Fender Lead I as his axe of choice, figuring he could put his personal stamp on it. As it turned out, the guitarās cheaper construction and single split humbucker was perfect for sculpting an angular, aggressively jagged, but still bluesy sound through a vintage Marshall JMP-50 combo.
Miller was also a founding member of the somewhat kinder and gentler group Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, in which he played piano. (Due to his early struggles with tinnitus, he had to bow out of Burma in 1983, but the band reunited in 2002 for four more albums.) All this history and plenty more feeds back into the making of the Dream Interpretations, for reasons that Miller loves to elucidate.
Millerās goal for his new album was to bring his surrealistic dreams in sound to life. His most recent tools for this task include three Rogue RLS-1 lap steel guitars and a Boomerang III looping system, which he uses in tandem with the Side Car controller footswitch.
āWith my friend Martin Swope,ā he says, name-checking Mission of Burmaās resident sound technician and live-tape-looping scientist, ālike everybody, we were pretty fascinated with Brian Enoās work at that time. Martin wanted to do a Robert Fripp and Eno style thing, so he had me play this amorphic, modal piano piece that I wrote, and he made these guitar loops going around and around. That was for Birdsongs, but he and I had worked like that on the song āNew Discoā [for Burma]. Thatās how he became part of the band.ā
Over the years, Miller folded what he learned from Swope into the sound he was chasing. In the early ā80s, he acquired an Electro-Harmonix 16-second digital delay. āItās truly one of the most unique devices ever made,ā he says. āItās so unique that I used it as my pivot for quite a few years. I still have it, but its biggest drawback is the memory. If you make something longer than a two-second loop, the fidelity degrades. Back in 1983, memory was not cheap.ā
āWith looping, you can hear a sound and you donāt know when it happened or what instrument did it.ā
The effect figured prominently in the making of his 1995 solo slab, Elemental Guitar, which he tracked using what was then a recently acquired ā62 Strat reissue. The album also features two pieces, āDream Interpretation No. 7ā and āDream Interpretation No. 8,ā that Miller considers to be successful precursors to his current album.
More than 25 years later, Eight Dream Interpretations opens with āDream Interpretation No. 16,ā a chilling excursion that suggests a serpentine path being resumed, although much has changed in the interim. For starters, Miller has added three Rogue RLS-1 lap steel guitars to his arsenal: one tuned to unison E and used exclusively for slide parts, and the other two prepared with alligator clips and strung with different gauges to capture a wider palette of tones. Heās also mothballed the Electro-Harmonix in favor of a Boomerang III looping system, which he uses in tandem with the Side Car controller footswitch.
Roger Clark Millerās Gear
Besides looping and other effects, plus his trusty Stratocaster, Miller relies on a trio of lap steels to create his celestial soundscapesāin three different tunings.
Photo by Roger Clark Miller
Guitars
- 1990 FenderĀ Stratocaster ST62 reissue (made in Japan)
- Rogue RLS-1 lap steel (three: one tuned to unison E and used as a slide guitar, two others prepared with alligator clips)
Amps
- Fender Deluxe Reverb (two)
- Sunn bass head with 610L cabinet
- Peavey Classic 50 410 combo
- Walrus Audio MAKO Series ACS1 Amp and Cab Simulator
Effects
- Electro-Harmonix 16-Second Digital Delay
- Boomerang III Phrase Sampler with Side Car controller
- TC Electronic Brainwaves Pitch Shifter
- TC Electronics Rush Booster
- Electro-Harmonix East River Drive
- Source Audio Kingmaker Fuzz
- Ernie Ball stereo volume pedal
Strings & Picks
- Ernie Ball Regular Slinky (.010ā.46; Strat)
- DāAddario EXL 157 (.014ā.069; lap steel)
- DāAddario Medium EXL 160 (.050ā.105; lap steel)
- Dunlop Max-Grip .73 mm
Along with his trusty Strat, when Miller seats himself behind the Rogues itās as though heās strapping in for an interstellar journey at the helm of a homemade time machine. And the music comes across that way, from the dueling dive-bombing waves and high-pitched jet washes of āNo. 19ā to the softly percussive melodies and clean, pitch-shifted guitar lines of āNo. 18.ā (The tracks are sequenced as any album would be, not in numerical order, but according to the listening experience Miller wants to establish.) Outfitted with various effects that he dials in with the precision of a surgeon, Miller literally choreographs each move he makes to create the music. Itās mesmerizing to watch him in the video, directed by filmmaker Jesse Kreitzer, that accompanies āNo. 17āāa wildly cinematic and soundscape-y piece thatās driven by a persistent, pulsating rhythm and a haunting sci-fi melody straight out of vintage Doctor Who.
When asked about influential recordings that have inspired him, Millerās tastes run eclectic, to say the least. Fred Frithās groundbreaking Guitar Solos album, an experimental classic, is ājust an amazing work. I learned about using alligator clips from that album.ā And then thereās the 1982 minimalist epic Descending Moonshine Dervishes by Terry Riley (āthe first honest looper,ā he says). But when it comes to specific guitar players, there are two in particular who move him to rapture.
The reunited Mission of Burmaāguitarist Roger Miller, drummer Peter Prescott, and bassist Clint Conleyāat the All Tomorrowās Parties festival in London, England, in 2004.
Photo by Neonwar/Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons
āSee, Iām a little older than some of your readers here,ā he warns, ābut I came to my creative start during psychedelia and the British Invasion, so my heroes were Syd Barrett and Jimi Hendrix. I mean, Jimi was like a bolt of electricity from who knows where. He embraced the electric guitar as an instrument that could explain all sorts of alternate realities, and he wasnāt the first to use feedback, but he walked into it with complete conviction and cut a path for others to follow.
āAnd whereas Hendrix was a true guitar master, Barrett was considerably less skilled, but his vision, when operating on all cylinders, just transcended the limitations. For him, sound and vision were more important than technique. He was also a painter, and that may well have had something to do with itāpainting with sound indeed! His solo on āTake Up Thy Stethoscope and Walkā was once described to me as the ugliest guitar playing anyone had ever heard. Not for me!ā
āI came to my creative start during psychedelia and the British Invasion, so my heroes were Syd Barrett and Jimi Hendrix.ā
With ears wide open, Miller is constantly exploring new directions. His most recent composition, the nearly self-explanatory Music for String Quartet and Two Turntables, has just been recorded with members of Bostonās Ludovico Ensemble. He also has a new album in the can with Trinary System, the rock trio he founded in 2013, planned for release next year. Whether heās painting with sound or testing the very elasticity of time, his multidisciplinary method of mining his dreams and looping the sonic events of his waking life continues to yield dividends.
āI donāt really think about it per se,ā he clarifies, ābut certainly with looping, you can hear a sound and you donāt know when it happened or what instrument did it. Thatās when looping messes with time. And then in dreams, time is elastic, too. So perhaps itās a mixture of those things. To me, this kind of music rewards attentive listening because itās really composed and thought-out, so youāre not gonna be bored. But it does also work for me as an atmospheric, swirling clouds-in-the-room kind of thing. That makes me happy.ā
Mission of Burma - Laugh The World Away (Live on KEXP)
Stripped down to their punk rock essentials, this 2009 in-studio performance finds the reunited Mission of Burma line-up of Roger Miller, Clint Conley, and Peter Prescott giving the next generation a hard act to follow. Miller carves out a relentlessly knife-edged distortion with a battle-tested Fender Lead II.
"I donāt like any type of art that has to be explained."
The profoundly prolific guitarist leads his band of tricksters through a surrealist sonic exploration of deep, esoteric rhythms and intricate interplay on Thisness.
On his new album Thisness, Miles Okazaki is credited as playing guitar, voice, and robots. If you imagine that the reference to robots is some sort of artsy kitschālike trapping a Roomba Robot Vacuum into a tight space to sample its struggles as it percussively barrels into the four wallsāyouāre very far off the mark. Okazakiāwho has an elite academic pedigree with degrees from Harvard, Manhattan School of Music, and Julliard, and currently holds a faculty position at Princeton University (after leaving a post at the University of Michigan, to which he commuted weekly from his home in Brooklyn for eight years)āwasnāt kidding.
āThe robots are machines that I made in Max/MSP,ā clarifies Okazaki. (Max/MSP is visual programming language for music and multimedia.) āItās kind of a long story, but Iāve been doing this stuff on the side for 20 years or so. Some of the music theory, some of the conceptual stuff involved in the album, I programmed into these things that I built. These improvising machines can do things that humans canāt do. Theyāll play faster than humans, but theyāll fit in because theyāre playing the same type of material.ā
I'll Build a World, by Miles Okazaki
Okazaki explains that he creates parameters for the robots to improvise within: āIām just telling this robot, āPlay at this tempo and play this many subdivisions per beatāeight subdivisions or something like thatāso that itās linked up with the drums.ā For pitches, he assigns a scale and can control the phrasing. āIām saying for the pitch choices, āYouāre going to use a chromatic scale and youāre going to play each note of that scale until you exhaust the scale without repeating a note,ā which makes a 12-tone row. It could be any scale, but thatās one of the settings that I have made in there. [After each 12-tone row is done] I tell it, āYouāre going to take a little break, but I donāt want it to be the same break every time,ā so that itās a phrase.ā
To get a sound that convincingly blended in with the rest of the tracks, Okazaki had keyboardist Matt Mitchell run the robots through his Prophet Six analog synth. āI wrote a file of them improvising and ran that file through the synth,ā explains Okazaki. āMatt would do the sounds for it,ā so both the robots and Mitchell used the same Prophet Six in their own way.
āIāve never been that interested in imitating anybodyās style.ā
Okazaki, a family man with three children, seems busy in all parts of his life, but he must have learned to maximize his time because heās incredibly productive. In 2018, he recorded his magnum opus, the critically acclaimed Workāa five-hour, 70-song marathon of the complete works of Thelonious Monk, all performed on solo guitar. Itās a project heās wanted to do since his teen years. But in the process, he labored so relentlessly that he ignored his bodyās warning signs and suffered a repetitive stress injury. That didnāt stop him from intensely preparing for and entering the New York City Marathon just a few months later. When that chapter was over, Okazaki again focused on his musical pursuits and proceeded to record several more albums, both as a leader and side musician.
Thisness is Okazakiās fifth album in a three-year period and reflects his collaborative approach. It features his Trickster band, which includes Mitchell on keyboards, Anthony Tidd on electric bass, and Sean Rickman on drums. Okazaki has worked with each of these musicians for years, both in his own group and in saxophonist Steve Colemanās, and theyāve developed a creative relationship that made it possible to record complex music quickly. The entire album was recorded over a two-day span with the quartet recording live on day one and overdubs the following day.
The Trickster band (left to right): bassist Anthony Tidd, keyboardist Matt Mitchell, drummer Sean Rickman, and Miles Okazaki.
And the music on Thisness is incredibly complex. Though Okazaki has studied Indian music seriously, his compositions are also somewhat reminiscent of contemporary Western classical music. Youāll see no shortage of odd note groupings, polyrhythms, and mixed meters carving out space for intricate atonal melodies throughout. Plenty of advanced jazz musicians that proudly boast about their ability to play John Coltraneās āCountdownā in all 12 keys would cower in fear if they were asked to perform some of Okazakiās works.
Despite the puzzling, esoteric nature of his compositions, Okazakiās roots draw from the jazz tradition. After initially starting on classical guitar at age 6, he developed an interest in jazz at 12 and was doing solo guitar gigs at a local Italian restaurant by age 13. His first guitar teachers were Michael Townsend and Chuck Easton (a bebop-influenced Berklee grad), and he took music theory group classes in a cabin in the woods with a teacher named Alex Fowler.
Miles Okazakiās Gear
Miles Okazaki can be seen with a host of instruments, but his 1978 Gibson ES-175, which has a Charlie Christian pickup, is his most common 6-string companion.
Photo by John Rogers
Guitars
ā¢ 1937 Gibson L-50
ā¢ 1940 Gibson ES-150 Charlie Christian (bought with matching EH-150 amp)
ā¢ 1963 Gibson C-O Classical
ā¢ 1978 Gibson ES-175 with Charlie Christian pickup
ā¢ 2018 Slaman āPaulettaā with Charlie Christian pickup modified with adjustable pole pieces drilled into the blade. A hum-canceling coil was recently added by Ilitch Electronics.
ā¢ 2002 Yamaha SA2200
ā¢ 2016 Kiesel HH2
ā¢ 2008 Caius quarter-tone guitar
Amps
ā¢ Quilter Aviator Cub
ā¢ Quilter Tone Block 200
ā¢ Raezerās Edge Twin 8 cabinet
Effects
ā¢ Boss OC-2 Octave
ā¢ Boomerang III Phrase Sampler with Side Car controller
ā¢ One Control Mosquito Blender Expressio
ā¢ Gamechanger Audio Plus Pedal
ā¢ Dunlop CBM95 Cry Baby Mini Wah
ā¢ Boss RV-5 Digital Reverb
ā¢ Analog Man Peppermint Fuzz
ā¢ MXR GT-OD
ā¢ Electro-Harmonix Micro POG
ā¢ Dunlop DVP4 Volume
ā¢ Sonic Research ST-300 tuner
Strings and Picks
ā¢ Thomastik-Infeld Flatwound .013s (Gibson ES-150 Charlie Christian and Slaman āPaulettaā)
ā¢ Thomastik-Infeld Flatwound .014s (Gibson ES-175 with Charlie Christian pickup and Caius)
ā¢ Thomastik-Infeld Flatwound .012s (Yamaha SA2200)
ā¢ Thomastik-Infeld Flatwound .011s (Kiesel HH2)
ā¢ DāAddario Roundwound .014s (Gibson L-50)
ā¢ DāAddario Pro-Arte high tension nylon (Gibson C-O)
ā¢ Fender .88 mm for .012 strings, 1.0 mm for .014 strings
ā¢ Homemade picks using Pick Punch (Preferred material is American Express Delta Sky Miles Credit Card)
ā¢ Ilitch Electronics Driftwood pick
ā¢ Knobby picks bought from an Instagram metal shredder
During his teens, Okazaki went through a jazz-snob phase, and although he hails from Port Townsend, Washington, he never got into the nearby Seattle scene. āThe ā90s, Nirvana and Soundgarden.ā¦ No, I kind of missed all that,ā he admits. āI was there, but I was into Wes Montgomery and Thelonious Monk. I was stuck in the ā60s and ā50s at that point.ā He still cites those musicians, in addition to Grant Green, George Benson, and Charlie Christian (whom he hailed as āthe greatest guitarist that ever livedā in a blog post) as influences.
After attending Harvard University, where he earned a bachelorās degree in English Literature, Okazaki came to New York to pursue his masterās degree in guitar at Manhattan School of Music. There, he found a mentor in Rodney Jones, a jazz/R&B player with tremendous chops. āI studied with, and continue to study with, Rodney,ā explains Okazaki. āHe was my teacher from 1997. I worked pretty closely with him for about 10 years, rebuilding my technique. My technique wasnāt good. You know I didnāt really have a teacher before him that really talked about guitar so much. I had teachers, but it was more just sort of like other people from other instruments. His technique is based on a hybrid George Benson type of deal. It has to do with the picking, but also there are many, many things that have to do with micro movements of the right hand. So, I spent a long time studying that. I still donāt really play like that, but I play kind of like a hybrid version of his hybrid version. Now mine is mixed with some other stuff.ā
TIDBIT: On his new album, Okazaki creatively repurposed an influence in his approach to āAnd Wait for Youā: āI played a piece of a Charlie Christian solo that Iām kind of riffing on. Thatās a phrase from āStompinā at the Savoyā but obviously the context here is a little different.ā
Jones referred Okazaki to legendary saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, and Okazaki did a few gigs with the soul-jazz master shortly before his passing in 2000. It was around this period that Okazaki made his mark on the NYC jazz scene. He worked with vocalist Jane Monheit and was initially cast as a straight-ahead guitarist. āFor a long time, I was just a standards player. I was pigeonholed in that area,ā he recalls. āI did this weird stuff on the sideāwell, I didnāt consider it to be weirdābut it was hard for people in their mind to imagine that you do different things.ā
The guitarist found he was able to fully explore other sides of his playing when he landed a gig with Steve Coleman, whose M-Base Collective created a new language of incredibly challenging, forward-thinking music. From 2008 until 2017, Okazakiās artistry thrived as he played alongside Coleman.
āI donāt know how many people you know that can play in James Brownās band. Itās harder than playing in my band, thatās for sure.ā
Very few players can comfortably hang with both the down-to-earth, bluesy jazz sounds of George Benson and the futuristic, ultra-heady maze of Colemanās music like Okazaki can. The guitarist sees the two approaches as sharing common heritage. āBensonās language is blues and R&B, and Steve Colemanās is, too. Thereās different theories and stuff behind it, but itās not technically different to me,ā he explains.
āIf it was language, Iām interested in the grammar, not so much what language Iām speaking about,ā he explains. āOr if it was cooking, I might be interested in the principles of āhow do you cook a piece of meat,ā as opposed to, āIām doing French cooking.ā George Benson has a style for sure, and a lot of people, when they learn about George Benson, will also sort of imitate his style. Iāve never been that interested in imitating anybodyās style. I kind of want to have my own style.ā
Trickster performs during their recent residency at SEEDS:: Brooklyn.
Photo by Alain Metrailler
Okazakiās style is radically different from both the sounds of his main guitar influences and other offerings in todayās jazz landscape. His abstruse music has been called academic, but thatās a label the guitarist isnāt particularly fond of. āI would push back a little on āacademicā because, first of all, I donāt like academic music,ā he says. āI donāt like any type of art that has to be explained. When I go to an art museum, I donāt want to have to read the little blurb. I donāt want anybody to have to know anything about music to appreciate it. There are things involved in how itās made that are interesting to me, but I donāt care if theyāre interesting to anybody else, or I donāt want that to be a feature of it thatās really that important, unless people want to look for that.ā
For Okazaki, his music might be also called academic, or complex, or cerebral, but that doesnāt explain his purpose, or set him apart. āJames Brown is complex, or Robert Johnson is complex,ā he says. āAll these things are complex, meaning that theyāre not easily explained. I donāt know how many people you know that can play in James Brownās band. Itās harder than playing in my band, thatās for sure.ā
āThe test is: Does it sound good, or does it not sound good? Thatās the only question for me.ā
Complexity comes in many forms. Just because a piece of music happens to be based on one chord āthat doesnāt mean that itās simple,ā Okazaki observes. He believes the opposite is true as well. āThere are things that take a lot of work, and thereās a lot of machinations involved, and a lot of manipulation of materials and thought, and construction, and it still sounds like shit,ā he laughs. āAnd there are things that are just one chord and amazing.ā
As much as Okazaki is known as a musical thinker who can throw down some heavy information in his compositions and playing, what matters most is how it sounds. āIt might look good on paper, but if it doesnāt sound like anything, then itās not good,ā he says. āThe test is: Does it sound good, or does it not sound good? Thatās the only question for me.āTrickster's Dream - "The Lighthouse"
The Trickster band was scheduled to go on a six-week tour starting in May 2020 but got derailed by the Covid lockdowns. Instead, they created a video concert featuring music from Okazakiās 2019 release, The Sky Below. This version of āThe Lighthouseā is from those sessions and captures the band conjuring the energy and spirit of playing to a captive audience.
Three abnormal basses, two loopers, and a few warping stomps help Kristian Dunn morph and multiply his buoyant post-rock tones.
Pedals can be a source of inspiration. But can they be the catalyst to start a band? The argument could be made that without a looper bassist Kristian Dunn and drummer Tim Fogarty wouldāve never taken flight as El Ten Eleven. (The band is named after the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar airplane.)
āI knew I wanted to start a bandāin my mind it was probably going to sound like El Ten Elevenābut I didnāt know exactly how Iād do it. I got Tim [Fogarty] to play drums and I thought Iād get a third person for keyboards,ā recalls Dunn.
Fogarty wondered if Dunn had ever heard of a looper pedal. He hadnāt, so Dunn borrowed one from a friend and brought it to band practice. āWe tried it, and right out of the gate our eyes lit up and we thought out loud, āOh my god! Could we just do this with the two of us?!āā
Since 2002, the live-looping masterminds have taking to the skies performing their organic, net-free, high-wire act. (Even Fogarty loops electronic drum parts through Dunnās Boomerang that runs into a Gallien-Krueger MB Fusion 800 and a GK 115 RBH cabinet that sits near Fogarty.) And to celebrate two decades of their clever, playfully poetic, post-rock instrumentals, theyāll release their ninth album, New Yearās Eve, on March 4, 2022 via Joyful Noise.
Before El Ten Elevenās headlining show at Nashvilleās Exit/In on January 26, juggling, tap-dancing, bass-playing Dunn gave PGās Chris Kies 30-plus minutes to detail his cockpit. He explains how a late-night Genesis video influenced his doubleneck duality, illuminates why he always carries a marker, and then unlocks some expressive cheat codes with his pedalboard and signal chain.
Brought to you by DāAddario XPND Pedalboard.
Two Instruments, One Musician
āIām a bass player,ā declares Dunn. āIām a terrible guitarist [laughs].ā Late one night while watching VH1 Classic, Dunn saw a Genesis video where Mike Rutherford used a guitar/bass doubleneck. Up to that point, he was crudely looping by putting on and taking off various instruments. (He still uses several instruments during one song.) This doubleneck would alleviate all that rigmarole. So Dunn pivoted to eBay and immediately found this 1977 Carvin DB630 Doubleneck that has a 6-string top and 4-string bottom (30" scale length). It features a birdās-eye maple
body, a bolt-on, hard-rock maple neck, APH-6S pickups (guitar), and APH-8 pickups (bass). Each set has master volume and tone controls, plus phase switches and coil splitters. Dunn uses Ernie Ball 2221 Slinkys (.010ā.046) for the guitar and Ernie Ball 2852 Short Scale Regular Slinkys (.045ā.105) for the bass. The guitar neck is tuned to E-A-D-G#-B-E, while the bass neck is tuned to D-A-D-A.
A Head Above the Rest
Here are the matching headstocks for the doubleneck, revealing both have a zero fret.
A Wal of a Good Time
āFor me, Wals are the best basses in the world,ā contends Dunn. āIāve never heard a better-sounding bass.ā This 1988 Wal Mk1 was bought from Rig Rundown alumnus Tim Lefebvre. It has a Brazilian mahogany core thatās masked by a birdās-eye maple cover. The fretboard is made from Indian rosewood. The humbuckers are controlled by a master volume that can pulled out to engage āpick attackā circuity that Dunn describes as having āa brighter sound.ā The pickup selector is actual a knob that dials in each pickup for maximum blending control. And each pickup has a low-pass-filter knob.
On their upcoming album, New Yearās Eve, Dunn rides the bridge pickupās low-pass filter at about 4 and kicks on his Marshall Guvānor for the nasty groove in āMeta Metta.ā He did use roundwound strings on this instrument for years, but after having the fretboard sanded down from the wear they caused, heās since opted for Ernie Ball 2813 Hybrid Slinky Flatwounds (.045ā.105) that are kinder to the wood and still give a brighter tonal sheen.
Hungry Like the Wolf
āWhen I was a teenager, one of my bass heroes was John Taylor of Duran Duran, so Iāve always wanted an Aria like his,ā states Dunn. This is an Aria Pro II SB-1000 with an ash body, a 7-ply maple/walnut neck (with thru construction), an ebony fretboard, a 34" scale length, a MB-1E Double Coil pickup, a 6-way low-pass filter preset, and Gotoh hardware. Varying the low-pass filter allows Dunn to loop several parts atop each other, providing tones to handle bass, guitar, and keyboards. This one takes Ernie Ball Hybrid Bass Slinkys (.045ā.105).
Captain Hook
El Ten Eleven has had the pleasure of opening for Peter Hook and his various outfits several times. Hook is known to perform with custom Shergold Marathon 6 basses. (The difference with this instrument are the extra two strings are higher-tuned, allowing it to creep into a guitarās range. Most standard models have the standard four bass strings plus one higher and one lower.)
With the help of Hookās son, Dunn was able to secure one of the beasts. He did several tours with it, but has since retired the unique instrument because supposedly only about 100 of the 6-string models were made. Luckily, in 2019 Eastwood struck a partnership with the famed New Order and Joy Division bassist and released the Hooky Bass 6 Pro. Dunn admits to trying several other 6-string models from Fender and Schecter, but says those are designed more for guitarists, whereas the Shergold and the Hooky have bassists in mindāwith wider string spacing that allows Dunn to play fingerstyle as he would on a normal 4-string.
Its ingredients are a solid alder body, bolt-on maple neck, maple fretboard, an Eastwood custom humbucker, and a 30" scale length. Dunn tunes his D-A-D-A-B-E and uses a custom range of Ernie Balls that starts with Hybrid Bass Slinkys (.045ā.105), and the 5th-string is a .042 and the 6th-string is a .030.
With a Little Help from My Marker
To help him see the upper register for more precise picking, he added in some Sharpie inlays to give guidance when the lights go low during the show.
Growling With the Gallien
Dunn only plugs into this Gallien-Krueger MB Fusion 800. He gooses the treble control to help the guitar and keyboard sounds push through the other layers. He swore by GKās 4x10 extension cab for years, but after doing a shootout with different configuration and speakers, he surprisingly favored the ported GK 115 RBH cabinet that has a ceramic driver and tweeter. He loves this setupās hi-fi sound.
At one point, Dunn had three pedalboards and would have to crouch down and manipulate settings all night. Most of the swatches coloring his sound come from the Line 6 M9 Stompbox Modeler. The two Boomerang III Phrase Samplers are what make an El Ten Eleven show (or record) happen. In line, theyāre separated by the DigiTech Bass Whammy. Dunn routes his signal this way so he can use the Whammy to shift octaves or keys on entire loops in Phrase Sampler one. The second Phrase Sampler, after the Whammy, allows him to pitch-shift specific loops without impacting the whole song or other loops (which can be done by the first Boomerang). The Strymon TimeLine sees the spotlight for precise repeats and specific delay settings not in the M9. The Electro-Harmonix Superego is a secret weapon harnessed by Dunn for sleek, reverse-sound bends. When he holds down the freeze function, it holds the original note. Then he continues holding down and plays the next note (which is not audible), but once he releases the switch, the ongoing audible note bends into the second note. The remaining two pedals are more standard fare: a Nu-X NFB-2 Lacerate FET Boost and a Marshall GV-2 Guvānor Plus. A Boss TU-3 Chromatic Tuner keeps his instruments in check.
Bradshaw Breakthrough
Simplifying scene changes and making life a little easier for Dunn is this Custom Audio Electronics RS-T MIDI Foot Controller. The unit talks with the M9 and Strymon, alleviating some tap dancing for Dunn to pull off an El Ten Eleven performance.