Ryan Lerman is the cofounder of Los Angeles-based dynamic funk project Scary Pockets. The musical collective has been crushing it on Youtube since 2017, and eventually they decided to take their show on the road—a shift that’s turned them into a celebrated and successful touring act. Lerman met up with PG’s John Bohlinger before Scary Pockets’ Nashville show at the Brooklyn Bowl to talk through his current touring rig.
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Making Melodies
Beatlemania—With Fuzz
In the Lap of De-luxury
On this leg of the tour, Lerman is rolling with backline amps—generally two Fender ’68 Custom Deluxe Reverbs.
Funk on the Floor
For his stompbox kingdom, Lerman tapped Dave Phillips at L.A. Sound Design to build him a road-ready board. First up, Lerman runs a 1/4" cable from his guitar right into a 29 Pedals Euna. From there, the signal runs the gauntlet through: an Electro-Harmonix Superego, WMD Geiger Counter, Rainger FX Reverb-X, Ross Compressor, Klon Centaur, JHS SuperBolt, JAM Pedals WaterFall, Non-Human Audio Slow Loris, Eventide H9, Strymon Flint, Empress Superdelay, Sonic Research Turbo Tuner ST-300, Fairfield Circuitry Shallow Water, Mooer Slow Engine, Surfy Industries SurfyVibe, and a Lehle volume pedal.
ScrewedCircuitz
Canadian company ScrewedCircuitz is Dan Roleau and Kassia Lebeau, and synthesis is their game—aimed at recording, live sampling, and the spontaneous creation of freaky, haunted-house type atmospherics. Dan builds the circuits and Kassia does the design of the enclosures. They have many strange creations, but the Ring Mod Skull pedal is one of the visually strangest. It offers a passive ring modulator with eight oscillators, lo-fi pre-amplification, and feedback loop options—all built inside a replica of a human skull!
There are controls for each of the eight different oscillators in the Ring Mod Skull. Each knob controls oscillator pitch independently. Each oscillator has its own switch that gives the user the option to flip between resistors and diodes, in order to create two different sounds within the matrix mixer. Courtesy of Dan Roleau and Kassia Labeau or ScrewedCircuitz
“We love matching the enclosure to our sound,” says Roleau. Hence, also, the Harsh Noise Coffin Synth, which is a tiny device shaped like a wooden coffin that sounds like a box full of snakes … until it starts to whoosh and whoop.
“We were inspired to create something dark, atmospheric, and harsh all-in-one,” Roleau says about the Ring Mod Skull. “The pedal is based on our very first Zombie-Head Synth, which was noisy as hell and freaked everyone out because of the realism of the enclosure. The Skull circuit is handmade from scratch using whatever components were laying around at the time. We added cool LEDs because … well, because why not? Who doesn’t like ’em? We aim to please ourselves before anyone else, so when someone appreciates our work it’s a bonus.”
Almost all ScrewedCircuitz effects and sound circuits are built inside of unique, one-of-a-kind enclosures. Plastic toy organs and locomotives, repurposed keyboards, and Walkman cassette players are all fair game, although builds like their Lo-Fi Sampler, Lo-Fi Looper, and some of their other sound twisters come in conventional enclosures.
Prepare for some uneasy listening, but hang in through the end to hear the full range of buzzing, grinding, hissing, warbling, and even vaguely threatening sounds that come from this little box of horrors.
