Joy Formidable Go Synth-Free on Debut EP

Posted on Jun 14th 2010 4:00PM by Kenneth Partridge
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On 'The Greatest Light is the Greatest Shade,' the opening track on their debut EP, 'A Balloon Called Moaning,' the Joy Formidable sound a lot like a brooding, melodramatic synth-rock band. This, it turns out, is a false first impression. The Welsh trio is, in fact, a brooding, melodramatic guitar-rock band -- one with a knack for studio trickery.

"It's all guitar," singer and six-string warrior princess Ritzy Bryan tells Spinner, explaining that the only keyboard she used on 'Balloon' was the standard QWERTY kind. "We've always liked pushing the boundaries of the instrument and what's possible and being as experimental as possible. There are a lot of different [computer] programs you can mess about with, with the guitars."

In recording 'Balloon,' out now on Passion Pit keyboardist Ayad Al Adhamy's Black Bell label, Bryan used software and effects pedals to achieve a range of sounds, among them punk fuzz, power-tool shrieks and noise-rock drones. Her experimental style was born of necessity: In the early days, the group's practice space was too small for multiple instruments, and onstage, backed by only bass and drums, she felt compelled to do the work of multiple musicians.

"Live, when you're a three-piece, you're quite naked in some respects, and you definitely have to, if you want to cover as many aspects of sound, to be powerful live and not miss that fourth instrument, you have to work on your sound, for sure," Bryan says. "It's something we've enjoyed messing about with."

All the tinkering has turned Bryan into something of a gearhead. While that's good news for the band, it's bad news for whoever gets stuck lugging her equipment.

"I do get quite excited when new pedals come my way," Bryan says. "We have friends that come across old pedals and say, 'Do you want to mess about with this?' They know where to bring them. If my pedal case gets any bigger, we're not going to be able to ship it anywhere. I'm constantly being chided by the guys."