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Giannis: Hello, I am Giannis and I’m the guitar player from 1000 Mods.

Giorgos: I am Giorgos, I play for 1000 Mods and the reason I started playing guitar is because of Black Sabbath.

Giannis: The reason why I started playing guitar is because some of the first bands I ever listened to were MC5 and Motorhead.

Giorgos: We knew each other from a very young age. With Lampros, the drummer, we knew each other since we were three years old. After meeting Giannis later on, we started a few bands and we had a few music groups. Under the name 1000 Mods in 2006 we started recording albums.

After a few shows in the Corinthia region and a few festivals, we moved into the Athens music scene, as we wanted to play there and meet different bands. There was a really good music scene there which we became a part of, which as you know there is now a lot of recognition about this scene in Europe. I think all bands either from Greece or coming to play in Greece have only good things to say about it.

Giannis: The first band that I ever saw in a music video playing Orange, were MC5 and then in more modern times, Slipknot. The first Orange amp I ever played with, was an OR-120 and sometime in the middle of 2005, I bought a second one, an Orange 50 Watt Rockerverb.

Giorgos: The first experiences I had, was the Black Sabbath music videos, Paranoid and Iron Man. I remember a very good story when I bought Holy Mountain by Sleep they had written οn the back cover, if I am not mistaken that they were looking for Orange amps and wanted to buy them etc and this made a great impression on me.

I remember a funny story was when we went to Athens to various guitar stores and music stores and we went to a shop that was selling Orange at the time to try a Rockerverb 50 or 100. I remember when we put it on, we turned up the amp
too much inside the store causing some strings from an acoustic guitar to break!

Anyway, when we listened to Orange we realised that this is where the sound is. As the store employee told us, it has a very good “honest” mids and a great headroom and that’s how we started being involved with Orange and buying Orange. I remember buying a Rockerverb 50 then Giannis got an old Orange OR-120 which we used live and from then on we continued experimenting with our sound and with Orange in general, because we loved it. Soon after, Orange started to become more popular, where we were playing, there were Orange and generally we all started playing on stage with Orange and many other music bands, were using Orange amps.

Giannis: From Orange, that is a very fundamental part of my sound I am using an Orange OR-120 1970 and an Orange Rockerverb 100 which are the very base of my sound and I consider them as a part that I can’t replace.

Generally I do a blend of sounds from the two Oranges, where the low and mid frequencies are coming from the old one and from the modern I get the high frequencies that I desperately need.

Giorgos: As we moved forward, we tried different sounds with other amps as well and blended them and about a year ago, it was a great honour for us, to have Charlie coming to Desertfest in London and suggesting us to collaborate and be a part of the Orange roster and become Orange ambassadors.

This period we are on our second round of promotion of our album “Repeated Exposure to…” and in the future we hope to start working on some new material hopefully in the middle of 2019.

You recently released a single ‘Dropout’, can you tell us a bit about it?
Adult Swim approached us about doing a song for their singles series, and since we are all longtime fans of AS, we couldn’t really say no. Historically, Pallbearer has mostly been an album focused band, but this gave us an opportunity to work on something that didn’t have to fit within the context of a full album, which was liberating in a way. Dropout was written, recorded, and mixed rather quickly in comparison to much of our other work, and we’re really happy with the results.

You did a live recording of it at Bohemian National Cemetery in Chicago, how was that whole experience, and how did it come about?
Though it was initially tracked at Fellowship  Hall Sound in Little Rock, Audiotree hit us up about wanting to collaborate on something after our then upcoming show in Chicago. As per usual, we’d celebrated rather heavily the night before with some old friends, so when we rolled up to this old Polish cemetery at 10 am with the task of recording two live tracks, there was a definite heavy feeling in the air. Ultimately, with the help of coffee and whatever else was floating around the cemetery that morning, we pulled it off. It’s easily one of the more interesting places we’ve ever played, and I’m stoked that they reached out to us.

What’s your own musical background, earlier and current influences?
The first band I ever fell in love with was Nirvana. I remember reading about Kurt early on, and discovered that he’d loved both the Beatles and Black Sabbath. So I checked them out, and ended up sharing his admiration for both. It was around this time that I first picked up a guitar, and it’s been a wild ride since then. In the last few years, I find myself spending most of my time listening to jazz and country records from the 60’s and 70’s. There’s a lot of prog from that era in the mix, as well. I’m not stuck in the past or anything, and I believe there is a ton of great current music out there, but at the same time, it’s virtually impossible to beat an old Coltrane or Miles record.

What’s your history and experience with Orange?
I wanted an Orange amp the first time I saw one. I remember watching Tony Iommi playing a stack in this old Sabbath video, and I was immediately drawn to it. Years later, when I was finally able to actually try one out, I fell in love. I’ve played about every kind of amp that’s out there, and as the years have passed, I’ve come to realize that there really is nothing that scratches the itch like a cranked Orange. I’m a big fan of the cleans too, especially on the Rockerverb MKIII. In the studio, or a live setting, as long as I’ve got an Orange around, I know I have the best tonal foundation imaginable for what I’m looking for in an amp. I’m an unabashed fanboy.

What’s your current set up?
Currently I run both a MKII and a MKIII Rockerverb simultaneously through a ppc412 and a ppc212. This allows me blend two different amp tones, which to my ears is the best way to achieve a full, interesting sound. It has all the volume I ever really need, and I have used this setup for some time now. Oranges are built like tanks, and they are absolute workhorses, which is an absolute must when you tour as much as we do.

Photo by Johnny Hubbard via ESP guitars.

 

Each Christmas we have a competition called ‘Wish Granted’ where Orange fans could wish for the gear of their dreams – if you could pick any Orange gear, what would it be, and why?I’ve never had the opportunity to play any of Orange’s hand wired/custom shop stuff, and I’m sure they are amazing, so I’d have to go with one of those. Maybe the OR50, or something based off the old OR80’s.

Matt: I’m Matt Pike, from High On Fire and Sleep.

Ella: Thanks for taking the time to chat to us, welcome to Desertfest 2018, you are here with High on fire, you haven’t released a new album in about three years, will we be hearing any new stuff?

Matt: Not so much, I’m not putting it on the chopping block yet. Our album drops in September and it’s really difficult music, I can do some at practice, I’m not going to put it out there yet.  I will put it out there near when the album is dropping.

Ella: So you just released the latest Sleep album, which was a surprise to all of us.

Matt: Ye, long time coming, surprise surprise! We released it on 4:20! Ye it took a little bit to put it all together, there is a lot of stuff on it that is old but its been refreshed. Having Jay actually record some stuff with us, was really good, having our new drummer making an album with us was good. I really like the material on that, I can’t wait to start playing different Sleep songs. We have been playing the same songs for a really long time. I think we all really happy to have a new challenge.

Ella: It’s a great album and it is your first one with Third Man Records, how did that come about?

Matt: Our merch girl, Lindsey its friends with the guys at Third Man and we kind of were talking about how we were going to shop it and who was going to put it out. I like how they are focussed on vinyl and record stores, thats kind of the way Sleep is too. We are into the vintage kind of classic rock, the Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and ACDC. All of that kind of stuff, so going back in time to Rush, the way that they would release an album back then, Third Man is kind of into the same thing. Its old school like that and it seems to work for that band, that’s what that band does, it’s a 70’s rock concert in the 2000’s.

Ella: The reason why we are here today is Orange amps, do you want to run us through your rig which is pretty much all of the amps!

Matt: This tour i’m using two of the dual darks, with High On Fire I can’t go with the whole Sleep rig. With Sleep I’ll hook up nine heads and as many cabinets as I can get and make it controllable. With High On Fire because it is faster and more detailed and precise. When you start making sound waves in that pattern that are that fast, you wouldn’t be able to tell what we were playing, if I was using as much gear as Sleep uses.

The bands are very different in the way that the frequencies are, Sleep you hit a note and you let it ring for a long time. High On Fire you jab it in there. So there is two particular sounds, I have to use filters and with the amps I have to use a higher gain amp. For the Sleep stuff, I have to use a lot of sustain and saturation, for the High On Fire stuff I need it to be a little quicker. I need a quicker pick response, I can’t have so much low end that there is no definition, so there is a lot more mid range.

With High On Fire it’s kind of like part Sleep, part thrash metal, with Black Sabbath tones. I like the Dual Darks for that, Sleep I can use the whole array of Oranges, you just have to kind of get that Malcolm Young kind of sound and then just add your effects and then dial them in. So ye, they are apples and oranges those two bands! So i have to swap pedals and do a bunch of stuff every time I change. But i’m using two Dual Darks and four cabinets, it’s all I need as I have an awesome sound guy. That’s enough for the stage volume and whatever I don’t have the sound guy can pump up.

With Sleep, it’s all about the stage volume, where I’m literally creating my own PA and Al’s making his own PA all the way across the stage. And then when you have another PA that is big enough to expound upon what is already happening, it is massive sounding. But you can’t play fast that way and have anybody understand what you are doing because there is too much going on, there is air moving. But if you just hit it once, then let it ring out for a long time, that’s kind of the point behind that, it’s like an amplifier check that whole band.

Ella: When you are writing, when you are making music, when you have an idea, do instantly know if it is for Sleep or High On Fire? Does that kind of come naturally?

Matt: Kind of, sometimes and sometimes I can make one thing into the other, most of the time I will know if it’s more of a Sleep or a High On Fire riff. I can make a High On Fire riff into a Sleep riff and a Sleep riff into a High On Fire riff, pretty easily. All you have to do is change the tempo and change the bpm’s, change a lot of the accents that are going on.

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For more about the Orange Dual Dark 100 guitar amp click here.

Grutle  I am Grutle Kjellson, singer and bass player of Norwegian heavy metal band Enslaved.

I spent some time finding the right amplification, I tried several brands but I was never satisfied with the way the sound of the bass just didn’t blend in the way I wanted it to blend in. It might sound good individually but it’s supposed to fit in with two guitarists, keyboards, drums and vocals.

When you have five members in a band all playing, it’s of course difficult to separate all of the instruments for a sound man, live and in the studio. It’s crucial to have the right amps, that blends well with one another. Orange is probably the easiest amps to blend with other things, the attack is still intact, the tone is intact, the thickness is intact. Even with loads of other sonic violence surrounding it , like the attack of two heavy metal guitars, or some massive organs and the pounding of heavy metal drums.

I think Orange is perfect for, not necessarily for blasting black metal or death metal but if you add a little dynamic and groove into the mix, then Orange is definitely the real deal. Everything from pop/rock and all the way up to extreme metal, as long as you are using the dynamics of the music and don’t just go full throttle, if you go full throttle then it doesn’t matter what you play.

My live set up at the moment is an AD200 B amp head and an OBC410 cabinet, which is more than enough. On this tour the hire company only had an 810, and i’m standing right infront of that! It’s pretty massive, it really works! I would prefer on the smaller stages a 410.

I’m really happy with the gear, I have done a few tours with Orange and they are real workhouses. There is never any problems with amps or cabinets, we always have two amp heads, one spare and never have I had to use the spare one. It’s really reliable and they sound the same and great every night.

It feels great to be on the Orange roster, I could never picture being on the same roster as Geddy Lee 15 years ago or any of the other great musicians. It is full of really great and cool musicians and it’s an honour to be onboard.

 

David Sullivan –  Hi I’m David from the band Red Fang and I play guitar. The first time I saw an Orange amp that I can remember, was a band called “Das Damen” sometime in the 90’s and it was in a small club, and they were really loud, sounded amazing. I remember the guitar player reaching back to his amp, I think it was an OR series amp, an older one, and he turned a switch and then it became even more amazing sounding and I didn’t really know much about amps at the time. I mean I was playing amps at the time but it just sounded amazing and the Orange always stuck in my head, and I always remembered the symbols that you guys use for the controls. That was probably the first time in the 90’s, when I saw “Das Damen” and it blew my mind!

What do I look for in terms of an amp? Well I like a nice, you know I want everything to be articulate, so I want to hear everything, the low notes and the high notes all at the same time. I like some beef to it, some “oomph” to it, basically that, articulate but have that growl!

When I first played an Orange it was probably playing a friends Orange, just messing around. But the first Orange I got was the Tiny Terror, the 15 Watt, I love it. Actually on our album “Murder the Mountains” the recordings were done with some different amps but all the overdubs were done with the Tiny Terror. Now I have a Dual Terror, which I love, that’s my main amp I practice on at home. Now I have the CR120, which is the newest amp that I’m playing, I’m used to solid state amps, we have been using the Sunn Beta Leads for years and not that this is the same but it sounds awesome. I know a lot of people are like tubes over solid state, you’ve got to have tubes but I think solid state amps can sound amazing and this definitely sounds amazing.

It just so happened, that our bass player had three or four beta leads and we were all at practice one day and we all said lets see what it sounds like if we all play the same amp. So for Red Fang it’s always been solid state, the solid states are great for traveling as they are rugged, there are no tubes to break but I really like the sound of nice tubes but thats what I love about this, it sounds like a fuckin’ tube amp, it sounds great! I like all kinds of amps, I don’t have to have solid state, I’m not like no tubes at all but I know that a lot of people don’t realise that solid state can sound really good. I feel that there are people who think it can’t be as good as tube amp but it definitely can be.

I like the Orange because it has a nice, little mid bump, it’s just perfect and as I was saying I like it to be articulate, so I like a little extra mids. Well to be honest I don’t have much experience with different cabs, so when I got the Oranges, it was like “there it is”. They sound great, really nice and they are rugged. Oranges has been great to us, Orange is like legendary, especially in like our, I don’t want to put a label on us but in the stoner rock, doom. I consider us hard rock but its great to be representing Orange!

Hey man, who are you, what’s your band, and what are you guys up to?
Dennis: Hey, I’m Dennis, I sing and play guitar in Ghost Bath. We play depressive, suicidal black metal, and we’re on Nuclear Blast! We’re currently on tour – we got here on the 5th of May, and we’re flying back to the states on the 26th of June, and I reckon we’ll have about a total of ten days off in that time. Busy times!

It’s a pretty accurate description that, ‘depressive suicidal, black metal’ – when you started up the band did you all want to play ‘depressive suicidal, black metal’, or did you come from a black metal background and just wanted to do something a little bit different?
Dennis: Until 2015, I was the only member of the band and writing all the music. Originally I heard bands such as Agalloch and was really into them, as well as bands such as SBM (Scream Blue Murder), and I wanted to make depressive suicidal, black metal that was recorded very well, as a lot of the recording quality on that sort of music is – I wont say it’s bad, but purposely made more rough, so I wanted to take that and have it more polished.

Makes sense, a lot of the black metal sounds like it’s been recorded in some cave in a Norwegian mountain at night time, in winter.

Anyway, you recently released your latest record ‘Starmourner’, how’s that been received?
Dennis: It’s been pretty polarizing like all of our stuff, people either love it or hate it, but a lot of people have said it’s more of a grower not a shower, basically.  The first time you hear it you’re not quite sure what to think of it, then the more you listen to it the more you’ll get into it, and I get that myself with music as well; a lot of the records I listen to today was records I wasn’t quite sure of at first, and then they slowly grew on me.

Now, let’s get down to business; Orange Amps. What’s your history with the company?
Dennis: I grew up in a small town in the mid-west in the US, but we still had a decent music scene. One time this one band I was really into and looked up to brought out this Orange Amp on stage, and it just looked so cool and really stood out with the bright colour. I’m not too sure how old I was, but I reckon it was early teens. Since these were guys I looked up to, I just knew that I needed to get an amp like that eventually, and I finally did about eight years ago when I got a Rockerverb 100, which I could just plug in and play, I don’t even have to tweak anything, it just sounds better than all the other amps I’ve had, and that’s literally all I’ve used since.

From doing these interviews that’s probably what I’ve heard the most – ‘I just plug in and play’, which is exactly what you want. You don’t want to sit there for 40 minutes fiddling around, tweaking a bunch of knobs.
Dennis: Yeah, I had a Rectifier before the Orange, and that one I couldn’t even tweak. I’d be at it tweaking for weeks just all like ‘ugh oh why…’. So yeah, I’ve never looked back after I got an Orange!